A Day in a Rikishi's Life
Train on an empty stomach before most people are awake. Eat enormously in the middle of the day, then sleep. Eat again in the evening. The order looks strange until you know what it is for.
All of this happens inside the stable, and the shape of the day comes from two things: the wrestler needs to be large and strong, and the junior members of the house also have to run the house.
Morning: training, before eating
The training session starts early — generally well before the working day begins outside — and it happens before breakfast. Not a light breakfast: no breakfast.
That is the general pattern rather than a rule. Some stables now keep to different hours.
Rank decides who is in the ring and when. The junior wrestlers train first, and the 関取 (sekitori) come in later, so a young wrestler's morning is longer than a senior one's.
Midday: the meal
Training ends and the meal follows. It is cooked in the stable by the junior wrestlers, who take it in turns.
The word for it is ちゃんこ (chanko), and it is worth getting right: chanko means the food cooked in a sumo stable, whatever it is — not one particular dish. The hot pot that English-speakers usually mean by the word is ちゃんこ鍋 (chanko-nabe), which is one kind of chanko and the best known.
It is not eaten all at once. As a rule the senior wrestlers eat first and the junior ones after them, so the ranking sheet reaches into the meal as well.
Afternoon: sleep, then the running of the house
After eating, the wrestlers sleep.
To an outside reader this is the line that sounds like an indulgence, and it is the opposite: it is the point of the whole sequence. Hard training on an empty stomach, followed by a very large meal, followed immediately by rest, is a way of putting on size and keeping it.
A wrestler needs the mass described in the article on weight classes — and he needs it as usable body, not just as bulk. The day is designed to produce that.
The afternoon is not only sleep, though. For the junior wrestlers it is also when the work of the house gets done: cleaning, and preparing the evening meal for everyone.
The trap for new viewers
It is tempting to read this as "they eat a lot and lie down". What is missing from that description is the training session that came first, which is long, and which in most stables happens six days a week — with Sunday off — for years. The size is the visible half of a routine whose other half you never see.
Evening
There is an evening meal too — the earlier description of one enormous meal a day is the part outsiders usually get wrong. After that the evening is the least regimented part of the day, and how free it is depends on rank. A sekitori has more of his own time and more obligations outside the stable; a junior wrestler has duties in the house.
Then an early night, because the next morning starts early.
During a tournament
All of the above describes an ordinary day between tournaments. During a 本場所 (honbasho) the shape changes: the day is built around the wrestler's own bout, and the lower his rank, the earlier in the day he fights.
That is the reverse of what you might expect from watching on television, where the famous names appear at the end. As the tournament format explains, the card runs from the bottom of the sheet upwards.
Almost nothing in a sumo wrestler's day is separate from the sport. He trains where he lives, eats what the house cooks, sleeps to a schedule that serves his weight, and does it alongside the same people he trains against. There is no version of this that ends at five o'clock.
What to watch for
Next time a broadcast shows footage from inside a stable — morning training, a meal being prepared — you now know roughly where in the day you are looking.
And if you see a wrestler you recognise doing something menial in the background, check his rank. You are probably looking at somebody below the salaried line, in the middle of the ordinary part of his job.
The building all of this happens in, and the line drawn through the middle of it.