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ANNALS OF HUMAN BIOLOGY,

1999,

VOL.

26,

NO.

2, 179 184

Hierarchical di erences in body compos ition of professional S umo


wrestlers
K. Hattori , M. Kondo , T. A be, S. Tanaka and T. Fukunaga
Department of Health and Physical Education, Ibaraki University, Ibaraki, Japan

Department of Exercise Physiology, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan


Department of Exercise and Sport Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan
Department of Sports Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Received 11 June 1998; accepted 16 September 1998

The body composition of 36 professional Sumo wrestlers and 39 collegiate male


students were assessed densitometrically. The means of body weight, BMI and % fat for
Sumo wrestlers were 117.1 kg, 36.5 and 26.2% , extraordinarily large compared with
untrained men ( p < 0. 001). Results of the analysis of variance of divisions of Sumo wrestlers
revealed signi cant di erences in body weight, fat-free mass, fat mass, BMI, fat-free mass
index (FFM/height2) and fat mass index (FM/height2). For the visual expression of the
hierarchical di erences of body composition, fat mass index and fat-free mass index of
the wrestlers in various leagues were plotted on a body composition chart. Wrestlers in
the Sekitori division had signi cantly larger fat-free mass index scores in comparison with
wrestlers from the lower divisions who share a common area of the chart. The cut-o point
of fat-free mass index which divided Sekitori wrestlers from other wrestlers is approximately
30 and this value may be one of the anthropometrical indications of whether or not a Sumo
wrestler is destined to be successful.
S ummary.

1.

Introduction

Physique and body composition of athletes di er from sport to sport (Watson


1984, Mokha and Sidhu 1987, Russo, Gruppioni, Gueresi, Belcastro and Marchesini
1992). Jockeys are one of the best examples where body weight should be minimized.
The athletes in other sports, weight gain accompanied by the accumulation of fatfree mass is an essential factor to attain high performance. Professional Sumo
wrestlers are examples of this and the peculiarity of their physiques is remarkable
(Hattori 1995). The extremely large body size of Sumo wrestlers is mainly due to the
nature of the competition. In Sumo, the most important factor for winning is the
momentum produced from the product of the wrestlers body mass and the velocity
of his charge. Therefore, increasing both mass and velocity through increased fatfree mass is more advantageous than increasing mass at the expense of velocity.
Hence, Sumo wrestlers have a great amount of fat-free mass that has been described
as the upper limit for humans (Kondo, Abe, Ikegawa, Kawakami and Fukunaga
1994). In this paper, we deal with the question of variability of body composition
within the di erent ranked classes in the sport.
2.

S ubjects and methods

The subjects were 36 Sumo wrestlers with 3 30 years of professional experience


and 39 collegiate male students who served as a control group. The Sumo wrestlers
belonged to one of six competitive Sumo leagues. These leagues are determined on
the ability in the sport. Seven wrestlers were from the Sekitori class, competing in the
top two leagues (Makunouchi and Juryo). Twelve wrestlers participated in the thirdranked Makushita league, 12 in the fourth-ranked Sandanme league and ve
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180

K. Hattori et al.

wrestlers were participatants in the lowest and second-lowest Shindeshi league. The
collegiate students were non-athletes with no known health problems.
Body density (BD) was calculated from measurements of underwater weight and
residual lung volumes. In each case, the average of the three most closely agreeing
underwater weights of ve or six trials was used for determining BD. Body weight in
water was measured using a force electric-plate, which was equipped with a chair.
The water temperature was maintained at 37 1 C. Residual lung volume was
measured by the oxygen dilution technique (Wilmore, Vodak, Parr, Girandola
and Billing 1980). Percentage body fat (% fat) was calculated from BD using the
equation of Brozek, Grande, Anderson and Keys (1963), and FFM was estimated as
the di erence between total body mass and fat mass.
Fat mass index (FMI) and fat-free mass index (FFMI) are derived from the
equations FM/Height2 and FFM/Height2 respectively. The body composition
chart (BCC) is the graphical equivalent of those two body composition indices
(Hattori, Tatsumi and Tanaka 1997).
We used the student t-test to determine di erences in means between Sumo
wrestlers and untrained men and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure
to evaluate the variables for di erences between the wrestling leagues. When signi cant di erences were found in the main factors, then Fishers protected least signi cant di erence post hoc test was employed (see table 3).

3.

Results

Physical characteristics and body composition for Sumo wrestlers and untrained
men are presented in table 1. The means of all variables for Sumo wrestlers are
extraordinarily large compared with untrained men p < 0. 001 .
The means and standard deviations of the variables for Sumo wrestlers in each
league and results of the analysis of variance of divisions of Sumo wrestlers are
presented in table 2. Signi cant di erences between wrestlers in di erent divisions
were found in body weight, fat-free mass, fat mass, body mass index, fat-free mass
index and fat mass index. No signi cant di erences were observed in stature and
% fat. Table 3 shows the multiple comparison test results for variables in which
signi cant di erences in the main factors were found. Signi cant di erences are
observed in all comparisons between Sekitori and the other divisions.
Table 1. Descriptive characteristics for Sumo wrestlers and untrained men.
Sumo wrestlers
( n 36)

Age
Stature (cm)
Body weight (kg)
% fat (% )
Fat mass (kg)
Fat-free mass (kg)
BMI (kg/m2)
FMI (kg/m2)
FFMI (kg/m2)
** Signi cant at 0.01 level.

Untrained men
( n 39)

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

t-test

21.1
179.1
117.1
26.2
31.8
85.3
36.5
9.9
26.6

3.6
5.2
27.0
6.5
13.5
15.4
8.0
4.5
4.1

20.3
171.2
63.0
15.9
10.3
52.7
21.5
3.5
18.0

1.1
4.5
7.5
5.8
4.7
4.4
2.3
1.6
1.2

**
**
**
**
**
**
**
**

181

Body composition in professional Sumo wrestlers

Table 2. Physique and body composition of Sumo wrestlers in each league and results of the analysis of
variance of leagues for Sumo wrestlers.
Sekitori
( n 7)

Makushita
( n 12)

Mean SD
Age
25.6
Stature (cm)
180.1
Body weight (kg) 154.2
% (fat) (% )
28.6
Fat mass (kg)
45.4
Fat-free mass (kg) 109.0
2
BMI (kg/m )
47.5
FMI (kg/m2)
13.9
2
FFMI (kg/m )
33.6

2.9
6.1
24.9
5.1
14.6
10.7
6.7
4.3
2.7

Sandanme
(n 12)

Shindeshi
(n 5)

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F values

df

20.7
178.8
105.7
22.2
24.0
81.7
32.9
7.5
25.5

2.2
5.8
17.5
5.4
8.8
11.3
4.4
2.6
2.7

19.8
179.4
109.3
28.2
31.3
78.0
34.0
9.7
24.3

3.5
4.4
18.2
4.2
9.6
9.2
5.8
3.0
3.1

18.7
177.3
110.7
27.4
32.5
78.3
35.6
10.5
25.0

3.1
5.3
24.7
11.3
17.0
8.4
9.1
5.6
3.6

0.305
9.926
2.586
5.040
16.087
9.706
4.903
16.513

3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,

di erence
32
32
32
32
32
32
32
32

**
**
**
**
**
**

** Signi cant at 0.01 level.

Table 3. Results of the multiple comparison between Sumo wrestlers groups.


Stature weight
Makushita, Sandanme
Makushita, Sekitori
Makushita, Shindeshi
Sandanme, Sekitori
Sandanme, Shindeshi
Sekitori, Shindeshi

**
*
**
**

% fat

FM

FFM

BMI

FMI

FFMI

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

**(*) Signi cant at 0.01 (0.05) level.

The individual values of FMI and FFMI for Sumo wrestlers and untrained men
are plotted in the body composition chart in gure 1. The plots of wrestlers are
located towards the upper right side, showing that the Sumo wrestlers have markedly
large FFMI and FMI. In Sumo wrestlers, the plots of Sekitori are positioned further
to the upper right section. They have larger FMI and FFMI. The plots of the
wrestlers from classes lower than the Sekitori are located in the lower left section.
The lower division Sumo wrestlers share a common area in the chart and no hierarchical di erentiation can be observed among them.
4.

Discussion

The physiques of Sumo wrestlers are extraordinarily large. The plots of Sumo
wrestlers and untrained men are completely separated in the chart. It is usually
believed that Sumo wrestlers are obese and are therefore living anachronisms in a
modern lean-oriented society. However, the plots of Sumo wrestlers from the lower
divisions and untrained men overlap on the FMI axis. This means that adiposity
level of some Sumo wrestlers is not necessarily higher than that of some untrained
men. On the other hand, the di erentiation of the FFMI between Sumo wrestlers
and untrained men is conspicuous and important. It is due to the remarkable development of musculature of Sumo wrestlers as a result of continuous physical training
(Kondo et al. 1994).
Among Sumo wrestlers, a signi cant correlation was observed between FMI and
FFMI (r 0. 73). This is in contrast with the situation in the general population, in

182

K. Hattori et al.

Figure 1. Body composition chart for Sumo wrestlers and male students. Oblique lines representing the
BMI and% fat. All plots for Sekitori division wrestlers exceed 30 on the axis of fat-free mass index ( d
Sekitori, 3 Makushita, h Sandanme, m Shindeshi, s Untrained men).

which low interrelationships have been found between these two variables (Hattori
1991, Hattori et al. 1997). During training, professional Sumo wrestlers attempt to
gain weight by excess energy intake in addition to muscle training. This strategy is
used because the accumulation of body mass with the development of muscles is the
essential factor for the wrestlers to gain promotion to a higher league. This concordant change of body composition has been described by Forbes (1987) who
mentioned that individuals who gain weight due to a positive energy balance
would be expected to sustain an increment in FFM as well as fat. The mean % fat
value of all Sumo wrestlers was 26.2. This value is close to the mean % fat of
Shindeshi Sumo wrestlers (24.5) reported by Tanaka, Kato, Kikuchi, Nagatomo,
Nakajima, Shibayama, Ebashi, Nishijima, Matsuzawa and Ogawa (1979) and much
smaller than the value of moderately obese subjects (32.5) (van der Kooy, Leenen,
Deurenberg, Seidell, Westerterp and Hautvast 1992).
In this study, Sumo wrestlers demonstrated extraordinarily large values of FFM,
therefore their adiposity level tends to be underestimated. FMI is an indicator of
adiposity level which shows a signi cant correlation with % fat (r 0. 97 for males
and r 0. 95 for females) (Hattori 1991) and total fat thickness (Ishida, Kanehisa,
Carroll, Pollock, Graves and Ganzarella 1997) in untrained subjects. As this index is
independent of body weight, the adiposity levels of di erent groups which show large
discrepancies in body weight can be properly evaluated by this index. Means of FMI
for Sumo wrestlers and untrained men were 9.9 and 3.5 kg/m2 respectively. Among
the di erent levels of Sumo wrestlers, those from the Makushita class demonstrated
the lowest% fat (22.2) which is 6.3% above that of untrained men (15.9). However,

Body composition in professional Sumo wrestlers

183

the FMI of Makushita wrestlers is 7.5 in contrast to a value of 3.5 for untrained
men more than twice as great.
Results of the ANOVA reveal that Sekitori division wrestlers had signi cantly
larger FFMI scores in comparison with wrestlers from the lower divisions. Wada
(1987) pointed out that the weight gain during the period between the beginner and
champion stages was mainly due to an increase in the lean tissue weight, particularly
in the muscle volume, rather than an increase in the fat tissue weight. The cut-o
point of FFMI which divides Sekitori wrestlers from other wrestlers is approximately 30 as shown by the bold line in gure 1. This may be one of the anthropometrical indications of whether or not a Sumo wrestler is destined to be successful
unless the existing rules for Sumo bouts are amended.
Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Dr Richard Danielson of Laurentian University for his
helpful comments and encouragement which led to the improved presentation of this
paper.
References

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characteristics of Shindeshi Sumo wrestlers. Japanese Journal of Physical Fitness and Sports
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J. G. A. J., 1992, Changes in fat-free mass in obese subjects after weight loss: a comparison of body
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W atson , A. W. S., 1984, The physique of sportsmen: a study using factor analysis. Medicine and Science
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Address for correspondence: Komei Hattori, Department of Health and Physical Education, Faculty
of Education, Ibaraki University, Mito, Ibaraki 310, Japan. e-mail: hattori@mito.ipc.ibaraki.ac.jp

184

Body composition in professional Sumo wrestlers

Mittels Densitometrie wurde die Ko rperzusammensetzung von 36 professionellen


Sumo-Ringern und 39 ma nnlichen College-Studenten bestimmt. Die Mittelwerte des Ko rpergewichts,
des BMI und des prozentualen Fettanteils waren bei den Sumo-Ringern mit 117.1 kg, 36.5 und 26.2%
im Vergleich zu den untrainierten Ma nnern extrem hoch ( p < 0.001). Eine Varianzanalyse des Ko rpergewichts, der fettfreien Masse, der Fettmasse, des BMI, des Index der fettfreien Masse (FFM/Ko rperho he2) und des Index der Fettmasse ergab signi kante Unterschiede zwischen verschiedenen Divisionen
von Sumo-Ringern. Zur visuellen Veranschaulichung der hierarchischen Unterschiede in der Ko rperzusammensetzung wurden der Index der Fettmasse und der Index der fettfreien Masse der Ringer verschiedener Ligen auf eine gra sche Darstellung der Ko rperzusammensetzung geplottet. Ringer aus der Sekitori
Abteilung hatten signi kant gro ere Scores des Index der fettfreien Masse im Vergleich zu Ringern aus
den unteren Ligen, die einen gemeinsamen Bereich auf den Charts abdecken. Der Cut-o -Punkt des Index
der fettfreien Masse, der Sekitori Ringer von den u brigen Ringern trennt, betra gt ca. 30, und dieser Wert
ko nnte als anthropometrischer Indikator dafu r herangezogen werden, ob ein Sumo-Ringer dazu bestimmt
ist, erfolgreich zu sein.
Zusammenfa ssung.

La composition corporelle de 36 lutteurs professionnels Sumo et 39 etudiants masculins a ete


estime e par densitome trie. Les moyennes de poids, dIMC et de pourcentage de graisse des lutteurs sumo,
extraordinairement eleve es par rapport aux hommes non entra ne s, sont 117.1 kg, 36.5 et 26.2%
(p < 0. 001). Les re sultats de lanalyse de variance des divisions de lutteurs sumo re vele des di erences
signi catives de poids, de masse maigre, de masse grasse, dIMC, dindice de masse maigre (MM/stature2)
et dindice de masse grasse (MG/stature2). Pour obtenir une expression visuelle des di erences hie rarchiques de la composition corporelle, on a porte sur un graphique lindice de masse grasse et lindice de masse
maigre des lutteurs de diverses ligues. Les lutteurs de la division Sekitori ont des valeurs dindices de masse
maigre signi cativement plus eleve es que ceux divisions plus basses qui partagent une meme aire du
graphique. Le niveau de lindice de masse maigre qui se pare les lutteurs Sekitori des autres lutteurs est
approximativement 30 et cette valeur peut etre lune des indications anthropome triques qui dit si un
lutteur sumo peut ou non re ussir.
Re sume .

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