My Experiences in Sumo Training Stable

by Ben Thompson

During a recent trip to Tokyo, I went to watch sumo wrestlers during their morning training at a sumo stable. These are moments where wrestlers go through their daily training routines, and spectators are allowed to watch-as long as they do not disturb. Talking, eating, or doing anything that might distract the wrestlers is discouraged. You can take photos, but without flash.

I arrived early in the morning, as training starts quite early. I showed up at 7:30 AM at one of the sumo clubs. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary building, but as I got closer to the windows, I could hear heavy breathing and the thud of bodies colliding.

After ringing the doorbell, I waited a moment. A round face appeared at a window and cheerfully said, “Douzo!” (Please, come in!) I opened the door and found myself in a small wooden-floored entryway, the walls decorated with portraits of wrestlers and a large wooden plaque roughly carved with the name of the club. The atmosphere felt stern and traditional, like that of old sports clubs, with dark wood furniture, trophies, and quiet conversations about training schedules and fellow athletes.

I removed my shoes and walked over to a stack of cushions, taking one to sit on. Another spectator was already seated, watching the practice intently, and motioned for me to join. Before sitting down, I glanced toward the wrestlers-and froze for a moment in awe at the rare scene unfolding before me.

Set below the main floor level was a pit filled with sand. Around ten enormous, half-naked, sweaty men were rhythmically lifting and stomping their legs as part of their warm-up. The light was dim, and the backlighting silhouetted their figures, making the scene surreal-almost dreamlike. It felt like one of those nature documentaries, where a cameraman silently approaches a herd of large animals at dawn. Not because the wrestlers were beast-like, but because of the sense of wonder one feels when witnessing in person something you've only seen in photos or on television.

Suddenly, there weren’t just flat, 40-centimeter-tall silhouettes on a screen-there were real, towering humans, heavy-breathing, glistening with sweat, with sand clinging to their legs and worn yet expressive faces. They were eyeing me too-curious about the new presence in their dojo. For them, I was the novelty of the day-though unlike me, they probably forgot about me shortly afterward.

Without saying a word, the wrestlers continued their warm-up for another 15 minutes. I couldn’t resist capturing the moment-taking photos nonstop and even recording with a video camera.

After the warm-up, they moved on to individual and paired training. Some wrestlers practiced holds and stances off to the side, while others struck wooden targets. At the center of the training area, the real action began: drills on falling and being thrown. Wrestlers rolled onto the ground, landing alternately on their left and right sides.

This rather long phase exhausted some of the younger wrestlers. Then came the most intense part for them: two younger, much lighter wrestlers were repeatedly called upon to challenge two of the massive senior wrestlers. Only occasionally did the seniors lose their balance and get pushed back. Most of the time, the younger wrestlers were immediately thrown to the ground.

But their ordeal was just beginning. While the seniors barely needed to move to repel their opponents, the juniors had to put all their strength into every charge-again and again, with no rest. Their breathing grew louder, they were drenched in sweat, and they staggered with fatigue. Still, the coach showed no mercy. “Again! Position… attack!” he shouted. “Get up, again!”

Eventually, he was shouting just one word: “Up!”-as the two lay increasingly longer between attempts. “Poor guys,” I thought, “what a brutal training. But that’s the price of climbing to the top.” What I didn’t expect was what came next.

One of the senior wrestlers grabbed a thin bamboo stick and, with light but rapid strikes, began hitting one of the exhausted juniors on the back and legs to push him to rise. The senior smiled, clearly amused. Others laughed too. The younger wrestler, despite the stings, stood up and launched another charge-only to fall again, and be met once more by the bamboo stick. It wasn’t pleasant to witness-not so much for the hits themselves, but for the atmosphere of complicity around it.

Fortunately, it didn’t go on too long. The younger wrestler seemed to catch his breath and launched into renewed attacks, with a bit more success. His senior, perhaps tired from all the punishment or bored of being a human punching bag, responded with minimal effort-just blocking instead of throwing.

Eventually, even this fierce morning training came to an end. It was now 10 AM-time for the wrestlers to devour their calorie-dense stew and then head to bed to sleep and bulk up.

Sumo athletes follow a strict daily schedule dictated by their stables. Even though sumo isn’t a team sport, their lives are very much communal.

Behind me, like little goblins serving their demon masters, appeared the stable assistants-thin men, unmistakably bringing with them the smell of freshly cooked food. They began grooming the wrestlers’ hair into proper sumo topknots. I was already dreaming of snapping a hundred more photos of this personal care, the food, the meal, and maybe even nap time-but then we were politely asked to leave, as the session was over.

Reluctantly, I parted from this richly heavy experience and stepped back into my lean, everyday life.