Araiso-oyakata plans NFL training methods

[maorencze 144]

13 hours ago, Yamanashi said:

In American football, offensive linemen are huge and tall, but they have to be quick.  They cannot (legally) hold their opponent, but they learn hand-check skills, and they have to have superior footwork.  The dream of every offensive lineman is the "pancake block", in which they drive their opponent backwards and onto the ground.  Incidentally, in terms of IQ's, statistically OL guys are at the top -- often engineering majors in college; an NFL tackle has written a master's thesis on numerical analysis. 

IMHO, some of the physical training has Sumo equivalents (blocking sled -> butsukari, though lineman work as a team), but the  breakthrough that NFL team trainers have made is in knowing the types, duration, and combination of exercises that maximize the increase in power, strength, speed and flexibility without causing injury.

 

That breakthrough is exactly what I suppose is going to be the most useful. Max results with min. effort needed means more time for regeneration, and if you couple that with some "lessons in healthcare" taken from NFL textbooks, this could bring interesting results.

Still, nothing will help if the NSK doesn't at least reassess the amount of jungyo days during the year - too much wear and tear accumulated and no time left to heal

[Tsuchinoninjin 1,261]

Yeah, I wouldn't say the NFL approach to health is much better than sumo. It might even be way worse. For example the team doctors don't even share their diagnosis and long term outlook with the players. There's a lot of high tech PT but it's to get them back on the field temporary, not solve long term health issues.

[Churaumi 728]

My biggest question is if there is the money in sumo to institute much of NFL-style training and rehab techniques. Each team has a whole gaggle of trainers, nutritionists, doctors, therapists, coaches, and other staff whose whole jobs revolve around keeping the athletes on the field. That’s just the team. High-profile athletes then have their own staffs on top of that. I don’t know how deep a prospective Araisobeya’s pockets will be. Hopefully Araiso can learn some things about rehab, nutrition, and smart training habits, but I don’t know how much of that he can recreate staff-wise. Maybe at the ichimon level they can pool resources to employ some of these. 

[Yamanashi 3,779]

10 hours ago, Churaumi said:

My biggest question is if there is the money in sumo to institute much of NFL-style training and rehab techniques. Each team has a whole gaggle of trainers, nutritionists, doctors, therapists, coaches, and other staff whose whole jobs revolve around keeping the athletes on the field. That’s just the team. High-profile athletes then have their own staffs on top of that. I don’t know how deep a prospective Araisobeya’s pockets will be. Hopefully Araiso can learn some things about rehab, nutrition, and smart training habits, but I don’t know how much of that he can recreate staff-wise. Maybe at the ichimon level they can pool resources to employ some of these. 

Employing 20% of good new ideas might make things 20% better; you don't need to try for 100%.

[Tochinofuji 377]

5 hours ago, Yamanashi said:

Employing 20% of good new ideas might make things 20% better; you don't need to try for 100%.

Pareto might go so far to say that if you pick the right 20%, it might get you 80% of the way there.

[Churaumi 728]

I see wear and tear on joints as the big physical problem rikishi face. The NFL isn’t great about that either, but they do train smarter than they used to. Modern top-of-the-line strength training can help stabilize joints, and lower body fat ratios for the same weight. Plus, it pays to be stronger than the competition. That’s kind of the point to all this. Endurance training will help keep good form in long practices to help prevent injury. Maybe they’ll look at the daily routine and optimize it. At least many rikishi are flexible, which goes a long way toward injury prevention. I hope they also incorporate sports psychology into their schemes, it might help prevent the choking.