#2510 - Devon Larratt

The Joe, Rogan, experience.

Train my day, Joe Rogan, podcasts, my night, all day. [MUSIC PLAYING] Chuck, what's happened to my man? That's so happy. So happy to see you.

Wow, let's go on. Joe, thank you so much for-- I love you. I feel like you are the loudspeaker of the planet, man. And I'm so honored to be here.

That's a very uncomfortable position to be in. That's very good. I bet. I bet. But look, I mean, you've talked to everybody in the planet.

“And I think I'm honored to be your first arm wrestler.”

Well, if I'm going to have an arm wrestler, it has to be the goat. Oh, highly debated, highly debated, but I'll take it. You're in the conversation.

Yeah, I'm in the conversation.

There's a couple of us, I think, John Brazank. How close do you follow arm wrestling? Very little. Yeah. I follow you.

I'm most fascinated by the fact that you can't extend your arm. Look, yeah, his arms don't straighten out. No, they don't. Unfortunately, that didn't work.

It didn't work when I was trying to fight Thor either. It kind of limited the extension. But when did that start happening? So I got into club arm wrestling. I wrestle with me when I was a kid.

But I got into club arm wrestling around 18. By the time I was 20 or so, we have this champion called Crazy George. He's like a very old, very decorated champion. He famously, at the time, for me, he couldn't straighten his elbows.

And I was like, oh, man, I can't wait till my elbows don't straighten.

Like, I still wish, right?

“So it started early, I think I was probably in my late 20s.”

And I just, the range started to shrink. And what is that from? It's just pressure, mostly. Like, just the constant pressure on the elbow joint causes, you know, osteophytes potentially. Like, and it doesn't happen to all the arm wrestlers.

Have you got an MRI on it? I've had three surgeries to straighten them out. To remove bone and scar tissue. Just chip bones and stuff. Chip bones, Dr. Pollock, bless his soul at the auto hospital, has extended my career

till this age, you know. Yeah, it can, that's probably one of the worst chronic conditions that arm wrestlers get is, you know, if the bone growth gets bad enough, it can start to constrict your nerves or blood flow. And that's when it becomes a problem.

Has that happened to you? 100%. Yeah. So I was, what, I was probably, it was like 2013, so, like, 13 years ago, was when I had my first surgery.

And at that point, like, trying to move forward, trying to move forward and pull it out as far as you can go. That's it. That's it, buddy. That's it.

Wow. Yeah. The left is a little more than the right. It looks like it. Probably a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. And I've had two surgeries on the right, one on the left. But in my mind, you know, it's a small price to pay. You know, like, I'm, I'm as all in in arm wrestling as you can possibly be.

And this is our cost of admission for some of us, you know, and does that happen to every arm rest? No. No. No.

There's lots of arm wrestlers. It's, it's a style thing. It's a, it's a, it's a genetic predisposition. It's, I rolled the dice wrong one day and had a bad match.

“You know, I think what happens is, it's really, it's the pressure, it's the bones over time,”

if you're, and then it's, if you're a dummy and, you know, keep on doing it when you should probably rest. That probably doesn't help and I'm, I'm guilty, you know, so nice, most of the greats. Anyways, I'm everything. It, it doesn't affect me in the sport.

I, I, I actually, I call it weaponized arthritis because there are ways you can kind of make your loss of range work for you at times. Really? Yeah. Like, right, you know, like if you're doing an arm bar, okay, like your body resists

with the ligaments and the tendons, so that starts higher for me. And I think that there's a muscular strength component that kicks in as well right at the end of the range to protect you. So I just have a higher, you know, arm bar, you know, does it, does it help you in arm bars as well?

Oh God. No, it does. No. No. No.

No. No. It's just gonna snap higher. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not been bad places. Yeah. Did you ever try hanging from like a chin up bar to straighten it out? I've tried a lot of things. I saw a video with you in, uh, juju mufu.

Yeah. Is that what he says, name? Yeah, juju.

Yeah, juju mufu. John call. Yeah, he's great. He's great. He's such a character.

But they were rolling, they were trying to, like, do some stuff with, like, these big

metal bars to roll out your muscles. Yeah, and you were in fucking agony. Yeah. I was like, that is crazy to watch. Yeah.

You really can't straighten your arm when they were trying. You were screaming. Yeah. Yeah. It's terrible.

I've kind of just accepted it. Did you ever try to hang? I've tried so many things. But when I was young, when I was 20, I was wishing for the day that I could be like crazy George.

I'm sorry. No. It's, it's interesting, you know, like, I'm not, if I was like all about straightening my arm, I could probably still do it.

Because the bone is actually removed.

Now it's a sheath. There's like a capsule that surrounds a joint that is probably the root cause of it. What is the capsule made of?

“I believe it was a fascia, just connective structure.”

I think it encapsulates the joint. So everything is just sort of condensed to hold the joint together. I think so. Wow. That's kind of a unique study.

If you were like a physiologist or you're studying human anatomy, you would say, okay, like, what is possible? Yeah. You know, like, do you know about David Goggins's knees? I know David Goggins.

I don't know about his knees. His knees are so great. He's bone on bone with both knees. And he went to the doctor and the doctor said, I don't know how you can walk with these knees.

Forget about run thousands of miles. So his knees had the, it's, what is it called, Jamie? It's like wolf something. It's like there's a condition when you're bone on bone for so long. Where the bone actually spreads out.

And the doctor said, I'd heard about this in theory.

I've never seen an actual human being where his knee, the bone had grown out so weird

that his knees were moving at like odd angles. So they had a saw, his tibia, and moved his knee down. So he's still bone on bone. But now he has a flat surface. And so they cut it and then screwed it into place.

And then he just wrote a stationary bike for like, fuck them five months, like a maniac and then started running again, bone on bone. Beautiful. Love it. It's crazy.

Wow. See, we can, see, we can find what the condition is. Says it's called wolfs law by logical principle stating that bones adapt and growth thicker and denser physical stress. Is that?

Yeah. Yeah. And his group thicker and like kind of mushroomed out at the top of the knee because there's nothing there. There's no, and it's just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, so it just kept growing out.

“And if you see, see, do we have the images of the surgery?”

It's, I know I sent it to you long-ass time ago. Yeah, I mean, it's showing a bunch of pictures from when you was on here. So see that where he, the fingerprints on his chin, that's because he had so much a demon on his leg that he could squeeze it and put his, that's after the surgery. Awesome.

Yeah. But look at the actual, yeah, look at that, the photo of what the knee looks like. That's not him. That's not him. Where's that?

That's like an image of what it looked like. Okay. So they saw it and then they screw it down in place. They saw it slightly, you know, like a leg off a piece of wood. You lower it, level it out, and then screw it in place.

Yeah. That was similar. I've been bone on bone for probably two decades. Really? Yeah.

Well, the car would just gone. Nothing. So when I went and got my surgery, Dr. Tolmy, I have no, like there's nothing there of a bone. He said, maybe we can extend, maybe we can give you another couple of years on your,

on your career. Maybe. That was like 15 years ago, I probably know kidding, I probably pulled off my best show ever six weeks ago. Really?

How old are you? I'm 51. That's amazing. And I have another shot at the world title. I'm still number one in the divisions, so, you know, I'm lucky.

But I think it's all, it's, the doctors will say something, but it's just not true. You can, you can do anything. Well, Goggins is a perfect example of that, and I guess how are you? It's like the idea that you can't do something as based on when most people quit. Yeah.

Pain is an interesting thing to try and master, you know.

“It's, it's information and you have to be a live with it and work with it.”

But it's, it's, it's good. It's good to have this pain because it's kind of a guide on where you need to get better. Um, you know, the tendons and the tendonist structures of the elbow are super, super taxed in our wrestling. And the process of rehabilitation and development of these structures under great

a lot of people aren't willing to put in. I'm shocked at how much time grip training takes. Yeah. It takes forever. I've, I've been trying to jack my, my, those, those grip strength things, the strongest

I ever got to is 164, and I'm like, I want to get to 200. I feel like in my lifetime, I can get to 200. I can't get past 164, and the thing is, like, I keep lifting weights with my arms.

I keep, and I've always tired, so like every time I squeeze that thing, my hands are always

sore, so I'm like, shit, I got to take some time off to see if I can get it stronger. And so I'm doing all these risk curls, and I've got the forearm finisher from Golden grip, and I've got these big fat things that I use for, for cables to rotate risk, and my hands got bigger. I'm definitely stronger, but it's like, I don't know, when to lay off of it or when to put,

how many days a week do you do grip training? Well, what's your guess? Every day. Of course. Every day.

And is that the way to do it? Is that the smart way to do it? Well, I know you talked a lot of those rock climber guys, and they have the craziest grip strength. Yeah.

One of the things that I'll just say right away is a lot of people associate grip with arm wrestling, and 100%. It's a massive importance, but the real technical nuance of the sport is to try and make the other person hold on to you, right?

So it's not necessarily, grip is more like defense and added offense, but the first step

is to try and tax the other person's grip, but how do you do that?

“I think that everything, there's, we're opening up like technical arm wrestling, okay?”

Open it up. Yeah. Okay. So, I think, from my position, the opening move in arm wrestling is a concept called rising, like, you know, the movie over the top, okay?

This is the opening step of the sport, and what it is basically an attempt to get a better grip, and if I can, the concept of making the other opponent hold on to you, that's the first step in technical supremacy, okay? If you can make the other person hold on to you, if you can touch their fingers, if you can get their fingers activated, and they're holding on to you, that's their, they're less

efficient. Okay. Yeah. So it's about attacking weakness more than it is about going where you're strong. So the most efficient way, it's palm to palm, and everything's grip nice and tight,

as soon as you get like out here.

“You want the pressure interaction to be unfair to your advantage, right?”

Like if, if we were to arm wrestle, you would want to put the pressure in my fingertips, like with, like, almost like a hammer type motion, right?

So you're basically, it's almost like a curl.

It's, it's more complicated, but that's like the first way to start to think about it. Like people think about arm wrestling and think about pinning each other, right? And this is, this is a very short-sighted way to think about the sport. You think about pulling the match close to you. This, this concept of rising is this upwards spinning, slipping motion where the end result

is you have a better grip, and anything that they try and do, it's going to go through the weakest system they have, which is their fingertips. Yeah. So it is great to have an awesome grip really. It's not everything.

I, so like proportionally in my workload, if I was doing 21 sets, 21, I think I do 21 working sets, typically in my workouts, one of them is dedicated purely to grip every day, all day. All day. So you just doomed throughout the day.

I, I lead a very simple life at the moment. So structure, like how do you do it?

“My structure right now, and I think that I'm probably one of the most dedicated arm”

wrestlers in the world in time, in terms of like what I do with my life and how much energy I give the sport, is I, I base it off of a week, okay? So I train with club probably twice a week. This changes, but typically I'm going twice a week, and these are my hardest days. And I go in there and I just completely red line and max out in the sport, okay?

All the exactly what I got to do, I'm doing it my highest, highest capacity. I have my, my family, we're all my wrestlers, so my kid, I mean, he's a pro, too. Wow. Yeah, he's competing this weekend. That's correct.

Yeah, it's crazy. So we, like, we have our own thing where we'll hit a, hit a, like, we'll train together, but really two hard sessions a week and then whatever I fit in with my kids, and then the rest of the days are like mindless, not just the monotony level is extreme, my wife and I, I'm retired, right?

So like, it's all day, it's all day. I wake up and I'm training like all day. So these machines, like, this is some of the shit that you have. Yeah, now is this a machine that's specifically designed for arm wrestling, did this exist or did you, did you, did you help create this?

This actually, machine is handed down from me from the best female arm wrestler ever to exist, Leanne Dufrain, Johnny Robbins, so this is like a very standard arm wrestling equipment.

“It's basically an arm wrestling table with a cable system, and this is super old, okay?”

This table you're looking at here, that's like 40 year old table, and it's still working,

but yeah, you can buy pulley system on a table, and that's really like this is basically

all I do. I work on off of a table, different angles, different pressures that all just replicate the pressures in arm wrestling. So you have a fat grip, looks like a PVC tube, and then you're using that to work your fingertips and roll your wrists and just get to be really strong with that position where

you're turning someone's wrist over, we call that a multi-spinner, and what's interesting about it is you see it's a single-point attachment, so it's a little bit like Swiss ball for the wrist, so it's a Swiss ball, you know, like a Swiss ball, like people do like squats on, I'm like the ball in the gym, people do like, so it's like a bosu ball, so it's ball suits like a half, right?

Oh, is that what it is? Swiss ball is like just the big round balls that you see, yeah, and you see people

in yoga ball, whatever they call them, you ever jumped on a Swiss ball and done squats or

anything? No. Okay. Well, I have the half one that I do stuff on. Yeah, Swiss ball is way more unstable, so it's similar concept where it's very unstable

through the wrist, and there's different wraps, but there's like a few base moves in arm wrestling, probably top rolling, hooking and pressing, and you just do shit like this all day, and this is in my taper, okay? I know, it's crazy. That's the hardest part.

This is in your what room? This is in my basement. Oh, your base, right? Yeah, and what you see here, this was actually my final workout before I pulled the Russian champion Vitaly Letton like six, seven weeks ago, so I've tapered, normally all these

movements you see, I'm doing like a hundred repetitions, so lots of blood flow. And when you do in a hundred repetitions, like what 50% max weight, what do you wait? Nothing.

“Like 20 pounds, something like, yeah, really, is that the key?”

I'm a bit, I experiment a lot, okay. I've done so many different systems, but this is what I've come up with that I think is best. So I basically, it all revolves around these arm wrestling practice days, where it's a hundred percent, this is what I want my body to maximize about, but the off days, the

Tuesday, the Wednesday, the, it's all day, just doing blood flow, just increasing the amount of blood that flows through the fascia, flows through these chains in arm wrestling motions. And the hundred is, all I'm trying to do is increase my circulation, especially through my connective structures.

And movement is so essential.

Why that over? Why is that more beneficial than like hard strength training, like small reps, like low numbers of reps, but high weight? So super debatable, okay, and I've done all of it. What I've found is, in my opinion, you only have so much energy, and this is something

we got a really weigh in, because if I could just smash heavy stuff all the time and take steps forward, I do it, but I've found that you don't want to detract from the thing that you're really, really trying to do.

“So anything that takes away from your ability to do that, I think you should look at cutting.”

The best part of my training is on the table. So anything that kind of messes with that, I don't want to do it. I've done a lot of systems where I'm lifting heavy, but the thing is, is they take energy, they take resources, and what I really want to do is prepare my body so I can do that at specific task as good as possible.

The high rep training heals me, and heals me. A lot of people are like, "Oh, that's a lot of work," and I'm like, "It's really not." It's just, it's a form of healing almost. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. Just the blood flow and the consistent movement and high repetitions. Yes. It's highly debated, okay, but I'm proving it over and over over the years. I started doing, because I'm messing with a strength sport, no doubt about it.

So right away, people think, "Oh, heavy weight," and high reps is dangerous because you're

But when you go low, your work volume is tremendous, okay?

If you're doing light weight all day long, I mean, the amount of total weight that you're lifting becomes astronomical.

“And I think that that adaptation over long periods is wonderful, and you can't get the”

blood flow through the connective structures without movement. So this is really why I do it. The healing aspects, the overall metabolic conditioning that you get, yeah, and the taper is a big part of it as well. But yeah, I'm doing all my heavy lifting specifically in the sport, like I'm not doing

my heavy lifting at this time in my career, and also I'm 51, and I'm plagued with injuries so I have to be very specific, I have to be very precise, yeah, this is the best formula I've come up with. And when you were younger, did you approach it differently? I have made so many mistakes.

Was the initial approach, just lift as heavy as you can? Yeah. Lift as heavy as I can. Where your giant dude already, right? So you already naturally have like big bones, big genetics.

“So did you power lift, like, would you do initially?”

I was a judo guy, I was a basketball guy, I was a military guy, so I did a lot of different stuff. I was very cross-trained. I even did Iron Man for a bit, but I just got to be so hard for you, yeah, it's really a weight.

Oh, yeah, so when I say Iron Man, apologies, not traditional military Iron Man. So what's the difference? Military Iron Man, you're doing it with a backpack, you're portaging a canoe, you're paddling, you're running with a backpack, so that race, you know, a winning time is, you know, probably anything under six hours, like five and a half to six hours, so it's long duration, but

it's slightly heavier, so I'm still big, even for that, like most champions, most guys who win the Iron Man or, you know, average size or even smaller, but yeah, this side, I mean,

I'm a bigger person, but yeah, I did a lot of different sports, but I've always loved

“Iron Man wrestling, it's always been the one to come back to, it's, you know, what is it about it?”

I think that there's a lot of things about it, you know, for me personally, it was my first sport. Like I started Iron Man wrestling with my grandmother when I was like four years old. Would your grandmother? Yeah, really?

Never underestimate the power of a grandmother, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a rowdy little kid and, you know, with a German mother who didn't let me do too much crazy stuff around the house and my grandmother used to come over and it was a reward system. She'd tell me to do chores and the result was, I got to arm wrestle with her, yeah, I never beater.

That's great.

I never beater, it's funny, her name was Levan and the current super heavyweight world champion

is Levan. So, I've never beat either of them, yeah, it's been trippy, yeah, so I started, I started young, I love arm wrestling because it's, it's a very safe fight, okay, like I, I love fighting, everything in my life has been about fighting and arm wrestling is one of those fight sports that has super low costs, like we don't punch each other in the head, I'll

be able to walk, nothing on my spine, my elbows don't straighten, you know. So it's low cost, you can do it your whole life, like we have, we've had world champions in the open division who are almost 70, what's yeah, yeah, that's cool, right? That's incredible. I love it.

How's that possible? Yeah, the hand is weird, like this thing here is designed for volume and it just slowly builds, you know, the hand is, the structure has, has so much connective tissues in it, so much tendon, and that's just, it takes so long to build, you know, ages and advantage in a lot of ways because you just have more time to get further in arm wrestling.

Yeah, I'm 51, I'm telling you, I, I probably competed at the highest level and I believe I can still go further, it's non-typical, you know, it's non-typical, and the thing that I love most about it, the very most is the family and the bonds, arm wrestling clubs are special places, it's very blue collar, open doors, man, there's, there's not a lot of money associated with the sport in terms of membership fees, I mean, yeah, I'm wrestling

each other's garages and houses, and, and it breeds a very tight family, like, I consider

that's what sports all about, you know, yeah, an arm wrestling is very conducive to that.

So when you say it's non-typical that you could compete at this level, at this age, what, what, how old are like most of the top guys? I'd say that you hit your probably peak typically when you are low thirties, so very standard,

“you know, that's my buddy pork chop, oh, there's crazy George, this is the guy, okay?”

So this guy has one's crazy George. But dude who's down there, not the guy on the green shirt, so these are both my good buddy. And this is the guy who can't straighten his arms on. Oh, he can't, no, he's super locked up, okay? But so he's doing this move called a king's move or outside top roll, and you see pork chops, wrist is bent back, I love porky, I train with porky twice a week, but yeah, crazy George, and crazy George is

like 160 pounds. And porky, yeah, and porky is like 230 completely tremendously jacked and strong. Yeah, and pork chop is like a professional arm wrestler pulling at East versus West,

okay? That's our highest league. And crazy George is, yeah, he's, I think, incredible.

Yeah, it's completely incredible. Yeah, another guy from our club, Matt Smith, against crazy

“George, I think Matt actually may have beaten him here. This is actually the time period of crazy”

George's downfall, okay? So how old is crazy George in this film? He'd probably late 60's here, okay? Yeah, he's an absolute legend to me in sport, like technically. So this guy, he spent the first like 20 years in the sport, two up, two down, okay? Go to tournament, double elimination. He's, and that's the Canadian champ. These guys are all champions that you see him arm wrestling with. And he invented basically, he didn't invent it, but there

were very few people doing this style of arm wrestling, okay? We call it an outside top roll or a king's move. And he really figured it out and very difficult, very difficult to deal with. And what is he doing? He's dropping down and lowering his body weight. Yeah, so there's many kind of main strengths in arm wrestling, okay? There's rising strength,

“there's pronational strength, there's cupping strength. And this pronational, you see this,”

like, this is like my favorite exam. Jesus Christ, look at that thing. That's so weird. Yeah, show that. Show that. Look at that. Who the fuck has that one? Right arm wrestling. That muscle is so weird, right? So that kind of thing. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's right. That's right. That's right. That mine is non-existent. I was going to interrupt. I saw it on the thumbnail and I was going to say, what is that? Yeah. Okay, you're talking crazy. It's one of my

dreams to have body builders when they're, you know, I have BB just to be doing pronator poses one day, one day. It's the one you've got to turn your thumb down. Yeah, and pop your wrist back. There it is. See it? There's a game. There you go. That's the one. That's the one. Fuck it. Yeah. Little bitch ass muscle. That's so weird. That's gigantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like different styles in arm wrestling, okay? Like they have different roots, okay? And

the king's move, top rolling in general, outside top rolling is super dependent on pronation. So it's all this. Turn it twisting it, twisting. Yeah. It's it's weaponized, right? We get really strong and there's a relationship between all the angles in the hand. The hand is very complex, right? All sorts of stuff I can do. And the main two drivers is cupping. We call it flexion and pronation. And these two interact. So when one pronates, it attacks the other

one's cupping. So there's a relationship between them. So crazy George is like the master of pronational styles. King's move is pronation style. I over the course of my career, change techniques, change techniques. Probably my best technique is an open top roll or Kings move now. Yeah, and I learned a lot. It's like the guy that one of my first coaches got called Troy Eden.

He, he could never be George. He couldn't be George. We tried, we tried, we tried for years to

figure him out. So and that was back when I was like 20, right? So I've been, I've been studying the style for 30 years. And yeah, it's, it's a combination of locks and giveaways and balancing. Arm wrestling things happen really quickly, very, very quickly, but it's a balancing act of all these different strengths. So what is it about you that's able to keep competing at a

reps all day long? Do you think that's a big part of it? Huge. Huge. Huge part of it. Because

“you're constantly forcing your muscles to work, you're constantly getting blood flow and you're”

not losing any strength. Yeah, as you get older. So huge part of it. Yeah, my work volume probably exceeds most people in the sport with that. So metabolically and from a health perspective, it keeps my tendons and legaments really functional. And you know, I'm, I'm just, I'm just a very simple and obsessed person and I just, I arm wrestle at every opportunity. Don't you also have some very freaky genetics? I didn't rhyme. Yeah. What is this last name? Ross. He's the best.

Very interesting guy. Smartest person? No. Geneticist. And he was explaining to me how unusual your

genes are. We all have unusual genes. Yeah, but you have really unusual genes.

Well, that's, that topic is so big, you know, the genetic piece. I think that what a massive piece going forward for our species, you know, the mastery of genetics. It's right at the top. I think of our highest priorities. You know, there was a thing that they were talking about last night in the green room. See if you could find this. They think they might have figured out a way to end down syndrome. They think they might have figured out a way

with genetic engineering, with CRISPR or whatever they're using, whatever modalities they're using to end down syndrome. Sure, which is why. I think that there's so many answers with genetics, you know, from, I personally believe that, you know, this is a big topic with freedom and everything

“like that, but I really believe that when you're born, you should be swabbed and it should accompany”

your health, you know, card or whatever and just as an information, you know, there's so much. Well, probably will be in the future as these all these techniques and all this new stuff comes out. CRISPR takes a bold leap towards silencing down syndrome's extra chromosome. Wow. So, scientists have taken important step towards a gene therapy that could one day turn off the genetic material that causes down syndrome. Down syndrome is a genetic condition caused by an

extra chromosome, 21, and consequently hundreds of triplicate genes that lead to developmental and neurological issues. According to Washington-based National Down Syndrome Society, one in every 640 babies in the United States is born with down syndrome that makes the most common chromosomal condition. So, what is it doing here? Okay. So, Beth Israel, Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School found a way to silence much of the extra chromosome's activity

in the cell at once. Details of the research are published in the paper in the journal

“proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wow. So, what is weird about your genes, though?”

Ryan told me, but I don't remember. He goes, you got to talk to him. Well, Ryan's actually got to talk to. I mean, I'm a high school educated guy, and I've been down to Austin several times to hang out with Ryan. I absorb everything I can from this guy. But, I think that my genetics, I think I'm predisposed to endurance, actually. I think so. I think if you take an overall look at my genetics, I think I have a lot of, you know, favorable mutations that are predisposed

me to good, but it's weird. I don't know, man. Listen, do the genetics side of things? I'll sound silly if I try and talk too much about it. I'll just tell you that there are favorable genetics for sure, you know, there's favorable mutations. And it's amazing, you know, if you could capture

all of them from everybody and, you know, put it together and you never know what you'd get Brian

Shaw. We've, we've scanned Brian. That's the thing. So this, this, this project that Ryan is doing. And I, I like to help him out a little bit. We've been, um, we've been looking at elite performers and with, with the, with the goal to find favorable mutations. And yeah, we scanned Brian. He's admirable. He's admirable. Yeah. That guy's admirable. He's like, you know, David and Goliath. Yeah. That's, they're real people out there. Yeah. Yeah. Brian. So his genetics are one out of every

500 million people. Isn't it something crazy along those lines? Yeah. He's, he's, he's completely, a, um, and then he's, he's right at the peak of human performance, right from a genetics standpoint. Just freakish. Café and his best informed, with their nine cubo, one capsule machine from Chibu. In each cubo capsule, you can find a café from the special animals. For espresso,

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Stift on Warringthest computer build, focus management, finance tab, such thing as that. Mega. But that's the top for STEM, complete. No. einfach photo from the lone steuer, beschernigung, machen und fertig. Clink, very good. It's very good. Hold your money to her. With visor steuer. Free the density. Yeah. Everything. Everything. And it's not just

this bone density that dudes mindset. Like, there's many pieces of Brian's genetics that make him a champion. But yeah, he has some stuff in

him that that Ryan's never seen. Yeah. No, nobody. No, he has. And I probably

shouldn't be speaking about other people's medical stuff, but I love Brian. And he consumed me a few months. Nobody has his growth hormone. He has a different

“type of growth hormone. What do you mean? I don't think it's the same. What?”

I don't think he has this. We're opening something so cool because you talked about the down syndrome. And there's some very interesting stuff with that. But yeah, Brian, I don't believe that Brian's growth hormone is the same as yours in mine. What does that mean? It might be molecularly different. Or it might have, you're going to have to talk to Brian. But it's

a different kind of growth hormone. He has a mutation in his growth hormone. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I mean, he's almost seven feet tall and he's four hundred pounds. Yeah, and he doesn't stop. It doesn't stop. But it's weird that the whole like down syndrome thing, they can do stop coach. Like some genes, like some mutations that you get from what I understand, there's

like a stop code on a gene. So whatever your gene is, when the, I guess, all right, lands on it and starts to do its thing. Like, there can be a stop code or something that just stops that gene from expressing. And I think that that's likely what they do with that. They'd somehow insert a stop code. But I mean, there's people out there who have like world records, like

for things like that lift that don't have fast twitch muscle, according to their genetics. So it's really weird. What do you mean they don't have fast record? Like they have a stop code on their fast twitch genetics. Just natural doesn't make any sense at all. They just born weird born super weird yet they're capable of beating world records on the deadlift.

So what do you think that deadlift is a fast twitch thing? Yeah. So

I don't understand. I don't know either. It's an amazing field.

Genetics is an amazing field. Is that a lack of understanding of what fast twitch do or is it they can compensate with the other muscles

“in some way? I don't think it's other muscles because I think that”

it would probably apply to all the musculature. So there's something that we don't understand. There's something weird going on. Adity, you consume me. Adity all. I love you. I love you. Adity's got a stop code. It is genes on fast twitch muscle. Makes no sense. Well, that doesn't make any sense. Makes no sense.

Makes no sense. Makes no sense. I know. Adity hits so fucking hard. That's crazy. It's crazy. How is that possible? I don't know. I've seen like I hit myths in your life. I know.

I know. I know. It's just what the, the hercules. No, not that.

Nothing else. No, no, no, no, no. That's my style. Yeah, that's my style. That's my style and inhibitors. Yeah. So regulates the reduction of my style and approaching the stops muscles from growing too large. So with my style and inhibitors, they've done that with, I'm sure you've seen those wippets.

Yeah, of course. So wippets are a weird dog. It's a very skinny fast dog. And some wippets are born with his genetic mutation. It's a mild statin inhibitor. And they look like the Hulk. It's the great show. Show what image of that police. It is the craziest.

It doesn't look like a real dog. Right. It doesn't look like a real dog. That's a crazy bodybuilder dog. Because if you see a regular wippet, show me a regular wippet now, please. Yeah. Regular wippets. That's a, yeah.

Look. They're going to regular wippet. They're going to real fast. Almost like a gray-ound-looking dog. And then you see the ones with the mild statin inhibitor gene. And you're like, what the hell is going on? They look like, like, the most freakish bodybuilder

of all time, but in a dog form. And some humans have that. Belgian blues also. The Belgian cows. Yes. Yeah. And they have it too. Yeah. So they offer already genetic therapy

that gives you full of statin. So there's a balance between full of statin and mild statin.

“From what I understand, like the key that turns on the cell”

for growth is, is full of statin.

You're big enough. Right.

Important. Very important. Yeah. And so if you don't have mild statin, all that that turn key gets is full of statin.

“So the only thing signal that you're ever getting”

with a mild statin deficiency is full of statin. And so yes, they offer a genetic therapy that increases your full statin. They offer it to who? Anybody ready to get generated?

Anybody with enough money? Yeah. Yeah. There's a bunch of genetic therapies that they've already created full statin is one of them. And so that would be for power lifters or football players,

or someone who just wanted to get fucking huge. I think initially it was created for longevity because as you age, your full statin drops. And that's why people get discharged from them all or they shrink as they get older.

Right. And full statin just helps you maintain muscle mass. Yes. So it's I think it's mostly promoted as an anti-aging remedy, but absolutely, you want to get your performance up? Yeah.

They're doing so many wild things now. Yeah. You got this new therapy now for people with disdegeneration. I'm sure you have it. But I have it, a lot of people have it.

Especially anybody who does GJitsu has it. Your discs just get worn out from getting cranked on.

And heavy lifters always have it.

Lower back issues. Your the disc is the soft cushion in between the spinal columns. And those those big bones push down that disc and over time and all that compression and squashes. But now they've got stuff that they can inject

into the disc that inflates the discs. Yeah. And so all these people that have been getting artificial discs and fusions and all the problems that come with that, because there's massive problems.

They're going to be able to eliminate that, which is amazing. Super cool. Oh, so super cool. And I tell everybody, if you could avoid back surgery, please avoid back surgery.

Don't fucking do it. There's a lot of different, like I always tell everybody and I'll tell everybody again, Louis Simmons, his invention, that invention, the reverse hyper. Yeah.

Fucking incredible. One of them, the greatest invention ever for people with lower back problems. I have one here in the studio. I have one at my house.

I fucking swear by that machine. It's so good. It decompresses the spine on the, on the desail. And on the uplift when you're lifting up the weights, it strengthens the muscles out.

It's like a perfect exercise for lower back issues. Yeah. Yeah.

“That's why when we look at the future in terms of performance”

and how far the age is being pushed. Like we see crazy George, but I think I'm optimistic that all the ages are just going to be pushed and pushed until you probably maybe not going to be a champion until you're 60.

That's crazy, right? That's crazy. Well, that's for arm wrestling. Well, I wonder what's going to happen with regular sports. The stuff that's pushing this stuff

is performance enhancing drugs. You know, peptides, stem cells, not really. That's how it really performance enhanced and drunk. But for injuries, but testosterone, all these different steroids, all these different things.

The thing about like combat sports in particular is that you can't use those things. They're not allowed. But when you can use them, you see these older athletes that have the mind of an older athlete,

but the body that works like a young guy. Right. My favorite example that is V2 or Belfort when he was in his prime. TRT Belfort. Yeah.

TRT V2 was the scariest fucking guy ever. Yeah. Because he was jacked up with testosterone, but he was also 37 years old. A lifetime of combat sport experience.

A lifetime of intelligence. But hadn't lost any speed, hadn't lost any strength. In fact, had like superhuman speed and strength. Because he was juicy, super juicy. But yeah.

But it makes you think like, man, what would the sport look like if that was open to everybody? Right. Yeah.

Interesting. It is interesting because there's a lot of guys that want to keep competing, but their body just doesn't respond the way it used to to training.

Because they're 37 or 38 or 39. Yeah. But if you could get them on the sauce. Yeah. Right.

Where's the limit? Yeah. And why not let them? Absolutely. Why not?

You know, I'm a big believer in tested sport. You know, I think that that's wonderful.

And I think that that'll never go away.

And I think it's it's important. But I'm also a believer in open up the gates and let everybody play.

“Well, that's why I really love this whole idea of doing the enhanced games.”

It didn't really pan out. The way everybody hoped. Nobody really wanted any records. Other than the one guy in the swimming. But he wore prohibited suit.

That let's just swim quicker apparently. I don't understand swimming. Yeah. But I was hoping, like you're going to see some freakish, superhuman performances.

But I feel like if that's going to happen,

I don't think you would get the kind of gains that these people are hoping

“to get to achieve like world records, super freq and performance.”

Unless you're doing that stuff for a lot. Like you know as well as anybody that training takes forever. Takes to build strength to build speed to build endurance. Takes a long ass time. You think you're going to get strength in three months.

Like you get a little stronger. For sure. I'm going to get freakish strength for fucking years. It takes years. Years.

Decades. Like duty move food. Like how long has that guy been lifting weights. Like guys are fucking free. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You can't build this stuff overnight. And I bet he would melt a piss cup. Listen.

I think not a chance. Judy. I look at myself included. You know, I care about performance. This is what I care about.

And so many people fall into the same boat. Look at that guy. Yeah. That dude's natural. You know, I'll tell you.

Judy is probably amazing though that you can do that.

That kind of flexibility with that kind of mass is. Look at that. While overhead pressing a full side squat of side split. That's nuts. On chairs.

Jean-Claude Van Damme style. Judy started out tricking. Okay. What's that mean? Like it's a form of the exact sounds like.

Yeah. So he actually started out sounds like he's picking up guys. Yeah. Not on duty is super cool. It's like flipping.

He was on America's Got Talent. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a form of like acrobatics, more gymnastics. Right.

Yeah. Well, I've seen him do acrobatics stuff and it's really nuts. Right.

Like his physical ability.

Like it defies what you expect from a guy with that kind of mass. Right. Yeah. So he's a combined like almost gymnast and bodybuilder. And he's probably better now than ever.

“And he's, I mean, I think Judy's in his 40s.”

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. He's massive and healthy and, you know, absolutely kicking ass. Probably the most positive human being that I've met.

We've seen super positive. Yeah. And his YouTube videos. Yeah. And we have snorted his fucking smell shots.

It's strong. He's got the best stuff. He does. We've snorted his stuff about 100 times on this show. Yeah.

Actually. Look at him doing flips. Yeah. That's crazy that a guy with that kind of mass can move like that. Judy is actually the inspiration for this modern, this latest way that I'm training.

It was actually really. Yeah. Judy came up to my place probably about a year and a half ago. And we were just redlining in our two hand work. Okay.

And it was so good to him work. Yeah. So, okay. So, I would be considered like the senior guy in my club. Okay.

So, and we have this kind of rule in the clubs to make things work properly. Senior holds junior works. Okay. So, the senior is kind of staying with you floating with you. And the junior is able to control their intensity.

So, the guy who would normally win the match doesn't win. He just holding it. Yeah. Okay. Right.

Like defense work in jiu-jitsu. Exactly. Okay. But just to help out that guy typically will do two arm work. Okay.

To kind of flip the script form. So, somebody can hold like me with two arms and kind of let me get to redline. Yeah. So, Judy and I were doing that like a year and a half ago. And it was so good.

It was so much fun. I was like, what am I doing? You know, having anything kind of cut into this. And that's when I stopped doing heavy lifting. It was as a result of training with jiu-jitsu. So, this two arm work of just holding and just work on that.

You feel is more important than all the lifting and all the other stuff. Yeah. Because it's sports specific. Exactly. And does he arm wrestle?

He does. A little bit. Judy does everything.

“But why did you work in with him make you train differently?”

Jiu-jitsu special guy. I think that just you don't have to be the best in your field. If you have a certain energy or certain thing with you. Jiu-jitsu is a wonderful creative hard-working guy. And when you get a chance to train with them.

It doesn't matter that it's skill level. It's just his level of energy is so good that when we work together it helps me. I don't know. I don't know how it happened. But he unlocked this understanding of the priority of that training for me.

I've always done it. But never. How did he unlock it? I'm not getting it. I think that our training session.

Okay. So what happened was Jiu-jitsu came over. And I normally on days that I do table work. I do not hit the gym. Okay.

And because I only had a day with Jiu-jitsu I wanted to show him how I was training.

“And at the time I was training very heavy.”

I was training very heavy so we did this circuit. I showed him all my latest exercises that I was prioritizing. And then we went to the club that night. And we had this awesome two-arm work. But I felt as though the singles and everything that I've done earlier in the day.

How to slide a fact. And I was like, I can't ever let that happen again. I need to put, make sure I put all my energy into this table table training. And it's funny, you know, being 51 and having over 30 years competitively in the sport. I still feel like I learned.

You know, I still feel like I changed things from event to event. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's the sign you're doing something fun. Yeah, right?

That's the key. Continue to get better at it and continue to grow at it. Keep life. So just the one training session with him changed your perspective on that. Because you just weren't performing as well.

That was a tipping point. That was a tipping point for me. So I generally have a protocol, like a training kind of balance recipe that I'm going to follow. Pretty much from event to event. And this is all made by you.

Is made by me. And I watch everything, you know. I love arm wrestling, but I'm looking at sports.

I'm always trying to get better.

So yeah, it's my protocol that I come up with. And then I'll tweak it based off of my results. Okay, so if I'm doing good, not much changes.

“If if if I don't do as good as I think I should do or there's like something, I'll tweak it from event to event.”

And yeah, and that night was the night that I decided I need to get rid of heavy weights because this is so good. This training is so good when done properly. And that's a key when done properly. Like two arm work can suck. Like if you do two arm work wrong, it can hurt you, it can set you back.

But when done properly, it's the best training that there can be. Yeah, specifically, super specific. And do you do stuff that's not specific for arm wrestling just for overall body strength? Like do you feel like there's a balance to be achieved? This is the greatest criticism that I always receive as an athlete is because I don't really.

Just on a wrestling stuff, I go for walks. That's it. I'm terrible. Really? No lunges? No, I'm trying a little bit to work it back in in some minimal way. But it's it's interesting, you know, cross training versus specialization. I have a long background in in very broad training.

Okay, like I once upon a time was a fit human being and many aspects.

But I really care about being a champ, you know. And I could probably be a healthier guy and be able to run and squat and deadlift. Or I can be a little bit of a cripple and be pulling for world title shots is the way I kind of look at it and I chose that. Wow, I should do more squats. Well, my only thought would be that if you conditioned and strengthened your overall body, it would just help your overall strength.

Yeah. I mean, that is the thought about deadlifting and squatting is that it helps everything because your whole body just becomes stronger. And it would just not naturally like your base, everything, your core, everything would just be much more. Your foundation would be stronger. I hear you. But I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know either. Okay.

Everything. I'm playing with everything.

“This is constantly what pretty much every reasonable person tells me.”

And I just am like, I get to a point where I do my own lesson work and I'm like, okay, here I am. If I want to beat Levant, what do I do from here? And I just am like, more risk curls. You know. Okay.

My is he do? He's a bit more balanced than me. He, he, Levant lifts super heavy weights like stupid. What does his dude look like? Show me.

Show me Levant. What is his last name? Sagamish really. Whoa. This is the pinnacle of our sport.

Okay. This is the guy. How big is this dude? He gets about 420. Yeah.

Oh, my God. I love this guy. This size is more the fucker. This. This.

Yeah. That can't be real. No. That's real. That's real.

Oh, my. This is real. This is real. I don't know Jamie. Really.

You might just be pumped. Levant is the pinnacle. Okay. We scanned him too. And surprised.

He's a weirdo. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Look at the size of that motherfucker.

He's in Lillarock in two days. In Lillarock, Arkansas. Yeah. Where's he live right now? Georgia.

Georgia the country. There's so many weirdos that come from Georgia.

Yeah.

“Proportionally, their strength is not normal.”

Levant is he hasn't nobody has beat this guy since 2017.

He is absolutely flattened the field. He's so hairy too. Oh. He looks like a primitive man. He looks like a science project.

Look at the size of that guy. Oh, my god. Smart guy. Very cool guy. I absolutely love Levant.

He has beaten the piss out of me at every opportunity. Yeah. He's so big. Yeah. He is.

He is so big. And he's so good. He's like he grew up in the trenches arm wrestling. Okay. He didn't.

He's not one of these guys who came in. You know, he made his way through the world championships. Yeah. He hasn't lost in 10 years. And so he does he do different stuff than you do?

He does. A lot of the guys have different formulas. Okay. One does a lot of pull-ups. Really heavy ones.

And he does a lot of really heavy curls. Hmm. This is the base. But he does all the same. Like we do all the same exercises.

Just different, different formulas. Now when you hear the best guy is doing things different than you. Yeah. What keeps you from doing what he does. So we are all different.

Right. That's what he used to look like. Yeah. Shout out to Sarah. Shout out to all the scientists out there.

He's very young in that first photo, of course.

You know, he slowly evolved through the world championships to what he is today. Yeah. It's interesting when you see different champions. And I try and learn from everybody. I watch what everybody does.

I see what they're doing.

“You have to also consider where your body is at.”

Okay. I can't do the things I did when I was 25. Physical. I just can't. I have, like I said, I've had surgeries.

But yet you can still arm wrestle. Yeah. So obviously you're very strong in these particular areas. And it's not holding you back at all. So what is holding you back?

I'm going to say injuries. Well, arm wrestling is a big thing. Okay. There's several things you can kind of choose to focus on. Probably my biggest limiting factor is my elbow.

Because I had multiple surgeries on it. I burned it out. Like at the beginning of my career, I was more of a hook style arm wrestler. That's where like the primary kind of drive in the sport is the flexion of the wrist and you're moving forward with your shoulder and you're trying to attack the person's arm more.

But over time, my elbow just got broke down to the point where you know, I just don't have a lot of stability. Now, I continue to work on it and quite honestly, my hooking now, this stability is probably pretty good.

“I think that we do we all as athletes do the best thing we think we can.”

And I think that the work that I do is very precise. Like the way the Levant trains and please, I don't like to criticize Levant, he's the best. Okay. But egotistically and arrogantly, I'm going to say that my training is more precise in his. Okay. So I'm working on very precise angles where he's a sledgehammer at times.

You know, like I'm working on very fine angles through my wrist. You know, a lot of pronation in my style, a lot of hand control, a lot of table time. Like I'm doing a lot of skill-based training. Levant's base movements, his roll, his, I mean, he's doing, he's doing a 180 kilo curl. You know, two hands are one hand too, but that's a, that's crazy.

The amount of weight that he's wrist curling, I'm never going to get there.

Okay. I'm never going to catch him there. Okay. I need to catch him through something smaller. Like I need to be able to, like a pit bull, like somehow nip on to, like his finger tip and not let it go. Because you're never going to be as big as him, probably not. But do you think that it would benefit you at all to add size to get?

I, I try it for every single prep that I do. I'm trying, in the super heavyweight division, I'm trying to get his being a star on his account. What do you weigh now? Today, I'm probably 265. And so you're giving up a considerable amount of weight. Yeah, when I compete, I can, I can get up to 300.

Okay. When I'm competing. And hopefully by the time I face him again, I'll be my biggest ever.

You know, and when you do that, what would you do to get that big? Would you add a bunch of weightlifting stuff? No.

“What would you do to eat? Stay in my basement, you know?”

Yeah. But he's doing all this other stuff. This is what I'm confused. Like, have you tried adding all those chin ups and all the different things that he does? I am very far down the road. I'm very, very far down the road.

I've been doing this for like 32 years, competitively. I've gone through so many systems.

While it is incredible to have a great row, while it is incredible to have a great,

a great wrist flexion. Well, it's incredible to have great legs. Like, I go to tournaments sometimes in my legs or soar. But typically, the reason why you win and lose the match is very small things in the hand in the wrist. Like, this is typically the failure point.

So I just try and put everything into the most valuable pieces that I think is actually going to determine my victory. And look at a part from Levant, it's working. You know, this guy has raised the sport, you know? And I continue to chase him.

I continue to try and beat this dude. You know, my wife got in close. (sighs) The first time, the first time he tore my bison. Oh, whoa!

You know, see that tattoo? Uh-huh. See, it's a cat with four or fifteen.

“I used to call him a four or fifteen pound pussy.”

You know, in the work up to the match, I was teasing him. And in George and it says Levant was here.

Because he ripped it, second round.

So that was, the first time was a wash. The second time I pulled him, I stopped him. I stopped him round one. What does that mean? So a lot of times when I'm wrestling, get everything straight.

Don't move, go. And to stop a match means there's no movement. So no one's winning. Nobody's winning. And you don't just keep going to the death.

Oh yeah, you do. Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, but I got, like, if you look up the second time that I wrestled for round one, yeah, okay. So this is the last time I pulled him, which is 2024.

And when you say, "Pold him," it means you match with him. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So everything goes to straps. And I tell you, like, so that what happens when the match doesn't work out

and the hands slip away from each other. Straps straps. Do you guys put powder in your hands or anything? Yeah. You was chalk.

But yeah, every, this sport is a strap based sport at this point. Like rules are evolving and arm wrestling. It used to be, well, in some league, still you get a foul. If you, if there's a slip, somebody's intentionally did it. Or it's a neutral slip and then they go to the straps.

But yeah, so we get to the straps.

And this first round is the closest of gotten to him.

“And in this match, I think he might have ripped my spine apart.”

Like, yeah, I couldn't walk properly for like four months. Really? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm top rolling, I get into his wrist.

And I'm just like, I'm in shock. I'm like, I can't believe it. So I kind of, I think I had the opportunity here to do a little bit more like to seize the initiative. But I was in such shock that I got him to this point. You know, I'm just, and then here we go.

His wrist is starting to go. And so that's a flopper's press. And I get a foul. Okay. First, see my shoulder goes below the table.

Uh-huh. This is called decline humorous. And it's, and it's a foul. You can't, you can't do that. So you start from scratch.

Well, I'm actually on my second foul. So that's a loss because I was being too much of an idiot in the setup and they gave me a foul. And then from here on, he just, he just runs me. So it's a loss, what do you mean? So in arm wrestling, if you get two fouls.

Uh-huh. It's a loss. So the match is over. But see, this is best of seven. So from here, he runs me over.

But this is the closest of gotten. Okay. We've practiced since then. We've, we've gone on to, I'll probably practice with him this weekend. Um, but I'm slated to pull this monster again.

It's going to happen one more time. For sure. It's, uh, it's what keeps me in my basement. It's one guy. This guy.

Oh, size that motherfucker. He's awesome. Uh, he's a, he's a beautiful human. I love, I love this guy. He's, he's lifting the sport in terms of performance.

You know, like, he's so hard to deal with. Yeah. And that's it, man. It just gets worse. It just gets worse.

But, uh, yeah.

I think I've got those ones pretty much wrapped up.

“It's, but, but it's the open man to be the best.”

Yeah, regardless of weight, um, that's so much weight to give up. I know, but you're giving up 135 pounds. Yeah. But it's so cool to try. You know, it's so cool to try.

And what he does is he cleans my life up. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't do all this. Really? No. No, I'd be happy being the champ.

You know, but when you're not the champ, you're not happy. And you're going to do everything you can. So, so even though you're a champ at your weight class, this is the open that open. Haunts you. Haunts me.

Yeah. I've been there before. Like so in 2008, I was actually, I, I won against this legendary figure. The sport, John Bosnak. He's considered the greatest of all time.

John Bosnak basically for 40 years, 40 years from the time he was like 18 to like almost 60.

Okay. He, he went undefeated for like basically undefeated for like 25 years. Yeah. In American. This guy, this guy super cool, okay. Different era. And you'll see the difference, okay.

So you'll see that this sport has changed. Can we pull him up? John Bosnak. John Bosnak's to go. Yeah.

Yeah, he'll be there this weekend too. And is he still competing? John is not really competing, but he's just so tied into the sport.

“I think it's inevitable that he comes back.”

But how old is he's like 61. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, he's the man. This guy's the man.

So you know the movie over the top? Hmm. So Silvester. That's actually John. The tournament was real.

Yeah. Yeah. That was a real. The movie followed the tournament. And John is actually the guy you wanted.

And John's on that bit. No. He's not. On a good day on a great day. John's like 230.

But but when he was young and healthy. Probably 195. Like someone he was winning. When he like he went like. He went like 25 years around 210 pounds.

Beating every single person on the planet. How? He's awesome. He's awesome. John Bosnak.

“So John started arm wrestling when he was a kid with his dad.”

And he's one of the first guys.

John's one of the first guys who arm wrestling is kind of evolved in. It's respectedness. Okay. As a sport. I think if you went back like 40 years.

And you talk about arm wrestling. People would be like. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Let's go arm wrestle like.

And I'm going to get better by arm wrestling by doing pex and glutes. And you know get my whole body strong. And John was kind of one of the first guys who was like. I'm an arm wrestler. I practice arm wrestling.

I go to tournaments. I don't need to lift weights. Okay. So he started young. The dude's thumb is probably like bigger than mine.

And he's like, you know, six foot one, six foot two. So he's to a certain degree built for it. But masterful technician. So he doesn't lift weights. No.

So all he did was arm wrestle to train for arm wrestling. And that wild. That's crazy. So it gave us not a big gun. It's not.

That's a former Russian champion. Zauer actually knows. Zauer might be Georgian. He might have been Russian at this time. But he's a Georgian.

Yeah. Yeah. John's technique was way above everybody's way way above. I remember coming up. Like I had heard about John Brzeink for years before I ever saw him.

Because, you know, it's a pre-internet, right? John Brzeink like silently ruled the arm wrestling world for decades. You know, pre-internet, pre-allist stuff. And yeah. And he went around the world beating all the monsters, all the.

And this is who I actually got the the world title from. So I beat John in 2008 for the world title. And it looks very different now, you know, like so before. So I was probably the last of the small super heavy weights. If you call me small, like I'm bigger and John, but not by a lot, not by a lot.

Is it Dennis to plank off on the left? That guy's a really famous arm wrestler. He was one of the guys who really raised the level. So that guy had a strength level. Dennis, he came in and he won the world title without really doing anything.

Yeah. I can't believe he doesn't live weights. He doesn't lift weights. All he does is arm wrestling. All he does is arm wrestling.

No other kind of physical training at all. He's a mechanic. He's a special guy. Listen, it's incredible. Yeah.

He's he's the goat.

He's like the forefather.

Like I remember when I was coming up. I read everything this dude wrote. He is the one of the reasons why we all kind of respect table time. Don't need weights so much. Specialization.

John is kind of poster boy for specialization. And what kind of training did he do? He arm wrestle. Just arm wrestle. He would do specific things when he was arm wrestling.

We keep asking the same questions about John.

“Like we think like some people think he had like a secret set up in his basement and stuff.”

But everything kind of points towards even if he's kind of kidding us and tricking us. It's certainly not a lot. He arm wrestle with his dad as a kid. Okay. And you know they're practicing all the time.

So this ice man. Okay.

That's the guy who John beat to become kind of the best.

Okay. This guy is like the guy before John. So he was the original king of arm wrestling. He is Johnny Walker. Johnny Walker.

Yeah. Ice man. And he was the best for a long time. But John eventually beat him. You know, you see that's John is like a kid.

Right. John's probably like 17 there. Wow. Yeah. But no, John arm wrestle.

Like arm wrestling is going to make you strong. Oh, imagine. Oh, you will get that. And that's a lot of reason why we get guys into the sport who are in the strength field. Like if you're a strong man, if you're powerlifting, you try arm wrestling.

You'll be so sore. You'll be like, oh my god. Because people look for that, right? Like people don't think that can get you really sore. Arm wrestling will get you so sore that you can barely move.

I've been so sore from arm wrestling matches. I can't even walk. I can't even get up for days for days. Like yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Unbelievable. Because it's something about the way the body is designed. Like we are actually probably designed to resist things from happening. More than we are to make things happen.

So we're very, very strong to stop things from happening. And arm wrestling is what, that's the strength we really hone in on. Right? Because we're locking. We get into these locked positions.

And then we're trying to open the other person up. And this process of being ripped open is super taxing. Super super taxing. So yeah, it's John, John ruled the arm wrestling world for like 25 years. He's still around.

Yeah. I'll get to talk to him tomorrow. Yeah.

“And so do you think he thinks about competing again?”

Of course he does. Of course he does. But it wasn't, it was the last time he did it. Last time he competed was in Dallas. He competed against a guy called Yoshi.

Who's the number one guy from Japan. John is way past his prime. Like John, John, when John was like in his 30s, he was like the Levant. But 210 pounds. Nobody could beat him.

It took a while. But the thing is arm wrestling got cool, you know, to a degree where we were on ESPN. Governments started to recognize it. So if you were from the right country, you know, you could be a pro arm wrestling. Like if you're from Georgia or Turkey or Kazakhstan.

You know, so the level started rising. When did this start happening? I think that government started to recognize it. I'm going to guess here that a lot of them started to do it around the turn of the millennia. Okay, probably they started around then.

But it takes a long time for the it all to like get it. And some countries are still switching over.

“I think Sweden just got recognized like I think within the last year or so.”

But once a country recognizes it as a sport, it's a massive influx of cash and support. So that'll raise the level. But what happened was we got there was all these leagues. Like there was the PAL in Europe. There was the WAL in North America.

And it got the sport to a point where if you were the best, you could probably quit your job. Okay. And that was a huge step forward because, you know, Yeah, that's a big step right and that happened around 2015. And do you think that's because the internet like YouTube videos like popularity increases,

TikTok, Instagram, that kind of shit. That was massive, but that happened a bit later.

First, what happened a lot of small little steps.

You know, there was a documentary pulling John the came out. There was a couple rich guys who thought arm wrestling was cool. And they just started to run leagues. Robert drank with the UAL.

I mean, it went from like when I first started to sport,

“my cool classic, if we won 500 bucks, it was the greatest day of our life.”

You know, it was so cool. We won 500 bucks. Like, you know, that was it. And then, by 2010 or so, even before that, the PL, we were talking with thousands of dollars, ten thousand dollars.

WAL came along, we got a massive influx of money. You're talking with twenty thousand dollars. Okay. And then we're on ESPNs, the responses. Okay. So you could get some sponsor money. If you were the best, you could barely make it.

You could barely make it. And then, and then COVID happened. And COVID burnt down everything, burnt down all the leagues, which were kind of fractioning the sport, right? We had the best guys from Europe competing together.

Best guys from North America. When all the leagues burnt down from the ashes.

And a lot of people, and that's when TikTok and YouTube really started ticking.

Because everybody was locked in their house and somehow arm wrestling got found. And our views went through the roof. People started to follow arm wrestling's good for TikTok attention span. You can see it all right.

“And then, yeah. So ESPNs' West came along.”

And now we're everything. We're like the UFC of Arm wrestling now. ESPNs' West. All the best guys in the world. All Polities versus West. And there's an event every seven weeks international.

So what is a top guy make to win a tournament now? You know, it's tricky when we talk about money. But you will make, like if you're a top arm wrestler now, you're definitely, you definitely don't need an aside job. You definitely don't.

And you're probably definitely making a healthy, healthy six figures. You know, definitely. So, yeah. So ESPNs' West kind of raised the level. After COVID, it's not the same sport. It's not like the champions now.

It's tough. It's tough to win a world. Way harder to win a world title now than it was 10 or 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. Now we have Levant.

Is there any drug testing? At ESPNs' West there's not, okay. So it's F1, you know, everything goes. But what does F1 mean? You know, like Indie Car?

Uh-huh. Everybody's got the same car. Right. F1, like innovation. Right.

Uh-huh. Waff. Government funded. That has testing. What is Waff?

Oh, sorry. Worldising Federation. So worldising Federation is kind of like the base of the sport. Okay. It's a world level.

So every country kind of plugs into it. They have state or provincial. Then they have national. They have, like, Europeans or North Americans. And then they have a world championships.

And you'll be different part of the world every year. That's testing. It's such a universal thing. Like our member arm wrestling kids in high school. You know, everybody knows how to arm wrestle.

It's always been around.

It's always been a thing.

So it's really interesting to think that it's becoming more popular now than ever. It is. It's wonderful. I love the sport. Uh-huh.

I think that it's a great sport because of its safety. It's longevity. It's simplicity. Yeah. Beautiful sport.

But there's a lot of aspects to it. It's simple, but you're still learning. And so it can be that simple. Like anything, you know, the more you dive into something, the more it opens. Yeah.

Yeah. At the level that I'm at now, you know, I continue to learn subtleties on a technical level. But it overflows more now into more vague and kind of like lifestyle principles.

“Uh, and I feel like that's how I get my big gains now is, uh, you know, is the way I live my life.”

Like the sport, you know, kind of cleans up my whole life. Yeah. Because you want to perform well. That's it. And so you're just so dedicated that like you're on top of your nutrition.

You sleep, everything. Everything. Yeah. Somewhere between a balance between chaos and order, perfect performance is found. Yeah.

The balance between chaos and order is interesting because you kind of, to become great. You kind of have to have some chaos. You, it's so essential. Yeah. Chaos is a huge talk to me about that.

Oh, this is, this is, this is, I love this one. This is so good. Um, this is one of my latest learning points that I've taken into account. Uh, and it's massively affected my planning. Um, the way I, the way I plan events.

Uh, so I have met many people in my life.

You know, like basically like a Jesus Christ kind of person like no sin.

Okay. But, uh, and on the other side of, of met only like a couple people who I thought were generally pure evil. Or, you know, uh, but I think most people are somewhere in the middle. Okay. And they need that balance in their life, you know.

“Um, and I think that you need to, if you're talking about performance on a single date,”

this balance of what you are needs to be structured. Um, so I think that actually in the fight, like when you're actually fighting, a lot of people, I think perform best in chaos. Okay. So when you get into the stage, you have to be completely wild.

Uh, no rules like you need to be completely unhinged. Um, but leading up to it, you need to structure.

You need to really become very ordered.

And the more you can bring order into your life, the better. Um, I went to, um, kind of a presentation by this, by this guy Mack. Okay. So Jeanette assists as well. And he was talking about how life only exists in this balance between chaos and order.

And from that, I, I brought that into my training by making sticker charts. So when I was young, my mom used to motivate me through sticker charts. So when I did a good job, she'd give me a sticker and I loved it.

“So I have brought this concept into my training where, uh, there's only two stickers.”

There's, there's a blue sticker, which is, uh, you didn't quite make it. It's representative chaos. And, uh, and a white sticker, which is representative order. And after I compete, I, I, I purposefully move into chaos.

And it's not as though like, oh, I'm in chaos and I let everything catch on fire.

I just, I don't need structure. I can go wherever, I can learn new things. I can try new things. I can open up my mind to whatever I want. Nothing's required.

But really, I'm trying to gather data, put together plans so that when I move into structure, I have a new kind of plan. Um, so how do you structure that? Oh, yeah. When, when you say you move into chaos, so you allow yourself to not have a plan.

Yeah. So, this is obviously very planned. Yes. Yeah.

“So, I will move from major, my life is structured that I move, uh, my, it's in blocks.”

Okay. So, I move from major event to major event. I am now at the very beginning of probably the longest block that I've ever had in my life. I'm going to face that guy, Levant, in like 16 months. Whatever.

It's an eternity. You know? So, I am now in this period when I can travel, I can, I can just, I can be more open. Um, in a way, it, it helps get me there. You know, I am trying to come up with what I think is the perfect blend.

So, that when I lock into my basement, I'm being super accurate. But I do believe that if you just try and be good every day, if you try and live a certain way every day, it creeps into your life, I need like a finish line. Okay. Like if I know, I only have to be like this for four months or five months.

I can make it. You know, if I'm like, I have to be like this for my whole life. Everything creeps in, it falls apart. But it's, it's an aid for me psychologically to remain disciplined. And it's, and it's a way for me to fit chaos into my life where it satisfies me as a human being.

And I get to have fun, and I get to go outside of my box. But, um, that's the hardest thing to be a world champion at 51 is to put all your energy into something so simple. This is the most difficult piece. Is the psychological dedication to do 10 hours of risk growth in a day. You know, this is the difficulty.

You do 10 hours of risk growth today. I do. I'll go to, I'll get up in the morning. And my wife, Jody, will help me. Okay. We'll have food.

And I'm doing like, and, and that's a thing. So right now, I'm coming up with the formula for the next one. But I was doing 14, uh, seven times two. Uh, because I was doing right in the left. I'm going back to pumpkin training, which is right hand only.

I call that pumpkin training. You know about growing giant pumpkins? No. You know, those, you know, you're ever seeing those fairs where they have like a, You know how to, right?

Yeah. So what that, tell, what that teaches is if you want to have a giant pumpkin,

Except for one. Oh, yeah. My giant pumpkin. Yeah. So I've tried and put everything into the right. I put all, and this is, so this is specialization.

So I've done this project for like, I did it for like six years before. So when you're saying, you put everything in the right.

“I mean, you don't do the risk crawls or anything with your left hand?”

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Really. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, this is an energy resource.

I always wish I like this.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Interesting. Yeah.

This is a difference for your right and your left. Yeah. So you see, and I came up with this theory, you know, a little bit because of just nature. Okay.

And I see how nature works. Um, but, um, yeah, you have one giant pumpkin. It's a big, big, big, big, big, big. Look at the size of the difference. It's a bit, it's a bit bigger.

It's twice as big. Okay. And I was balanced. Okay. I was equal.

I was left hand world champion also. Okay. I've, but, but as of age, I'm like,

how can I remain at the top of the sport?

I'm going to have to cut things, you know? But why does training your left arm take away from your right arm? I think we only have so much energy. I think there's like a finite amount of energy that we have. And if I tell my body that my energy goes here,

more of it will go there and more development will happen. I don't think it's like, I have the limited list amount of energy where I can be like a proportionate bodybuilder and be a world champion. I think that to be at the very top,

“you need to be very specialized and very focused.”

That's, that's what I believe. This comes, like, a lot of people criticize me for this. Okay. I get, I get heaps of criticism. And, and I, I'm very well aware of it.

And I think that, if you were this, can I stop you? Yeah, yes. We say heaps of criticism by who, and is it valid? I don't think it's valid.

Okay. I think that most of the criticism comes from more junior players. Okay. I think that most senior arm wrestlers, most guys who are like on my level,

they understand it and to a certain degree we all do it. Okay. I'm just an extreme example, but a lot of guys do it. Okay. A lot of guys do this in the sport.

There's a couple things that lead me to this. Okay. The, the pumpkin is just a fun metaphor. Okay. But, um, when you get hurt in the one side,

I think that a lot of people notice that some others

this amazing compensation that happens.

Um, another thing is we have freaks in the sport. We have, we attract some real weirdos. Okay. I call it ol' exac, or, uh, or Matthias Schlitti. Okay.

And these are hellboys. Real life hellboys. Okay. So they have like one arm that is crazy jacked. I've seen this one cat.

He's a small dude. Yeah. And he has one arm that's like a leg. Yeah. What is his name?

Probably ol' leg. It's ol' leg or Matthias. There are best examples. Ol' leg is, is better, like ol' leg. Ol' leg's world champion.

What's his last name? Zock. We're a great name. Oh, he's so cool. What a great name.

Yeah, and he's the dude. Yeah, let's do it. And I've fought him. I've fought the size of his fucking left arm. That is insanity.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I actually pulled this guy at the UAL many years ago. And he was like 165 pounds. And I was, I was the current world champion.

And the kid almost beat me. Okay. Yeah. Left handed. Left handed.

Yeah. Jesus Christ's arm is insane. In that awesome. That is so crazy. Yeah.

He has the arm of a 300 pound man. At 170 pounds, he was almost not even the world champion in his division. He was almost the world champion in the open. Okay. Look at this left arm and it's crazy.

And what's extra crazy about it is the insertion points. It's not just that he's hypertrophied and blown up. Like the insertion points are different. He's like the angles of his musculature. The development like it's wild.

And how is that genetic? Is that built? He was born like that to a certain degree. But his wide arm looks normal. Normal.

So how is it so different on his left arm? So it's my theory. Okay. That he has a bit of a blood flow disorder. Okay.

“I believe that so the arterial spread in the body.”

For most of us is all the same. And we have like an even distribution across our body. But I believe that his arterial spread is different. I think he's got a heavy arterial flow to one side. This is just your own personal theory.

Matias is another guy with this disorder.

He was the one who kind of led me to believe that this is what was going on with him. And so this made me believe that there was so much value in blood flow alone when it comes to the expression of what you are.

“Like I think anything that just gets more blood flow enhances.”

Yeah, the expression of the human being is largely determined by the circulation of that the genetic piece receives. And I think with guys like this, it happened like in utero. That alarm is fucking crazy. Yeah.

And he got in a vicious car crash. Horrible one. Almost killed him. And he rehabbed. And once again, he's the world champ again in the 85 kilo division.

Completely like he should be dead like he broke everything. Like super trauma and he's still the best piece to back together. Yeah, piece to back together and still he's still the man.

But yeah, but what he taught me and what other people taught me is the value.

And I believe it's all theories. Okay. I could be wrong on everything. But I think that it's the blood flow that really it heals. It strengthens.

And a lot of the thing is the heart isn't strong enough to feed all the structures. And that's where movement comes in. So that's why I train this way. Increase circulation. Yeah.

Wow. So. But I still don't understand like clearly he's working that one arm more than he's working the left arm. Yeah, I think to a certain degree.

“But because of the way he was yeah, this is Matthias, right?”

Same deal. Yeah. And he's and he's like German German national champion kind of level. Yeah. And like it's just it's hard to compete with.

Right. But how much of that is just work with the right side over and over and over again. And how much of it is you think a genetic component. With these guys, it's a lot of genetic. Really.

That with them, but I believe the reason why it's expressing that way is because of our arterial spread. Okay. And talking to Matthias, he's the one that led me to believe that initially. Is that arterial spread influenced by work?

Does it change the expression of the arteries in the in the muscles? I think you can influence blood flow. For sure. Like I think if you are repeatedly working one region very heavily. Your your circulatory system is going to adapt.

Like my endurance capabilities on my right and my left are completely different. And that's from years of doing this. And so I have to think that, you know, it's not just a cellular thing. It's got to be the blood flow. It's got to be everything that's adapted over years.

Yeah. And look at I really care about being the best. And all the information that I have makes me, I'm doing it again. Like I laid off for a couple of years. But I've started to do it again as I do my final prep one more time.

“When you say do it again, what are you doing differently?”

I'll go back to so my work capacity work. Work amount that I'm doing between my right and left arm. It's sometimes it's equal. Sometimes is what I do with the right is what I do with the left. Sometimes when I go to the club, I'll do right arm, I'll do left arm.

And now I've just swung it back.

So I go to the club and I'm basically arm wrestling everybody.

I can't right hand until people are kind of bored. And then I'll do some left hand work. But the right is the priority. And the same thing when I do my homework in the basement. I'm doing like 85 to 90% work on the right.

And maybe like just 10%. Just for timing and whatever on the left. Yeah. Yeah. Super specialized.

Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. I was I'm sorry. I was so worried like that I was going to develop like back issues in balance issues.

Yeah. Not that ever happened. Huh. Yeah. Guys do that from archery.

They develop in balance issues just from pulling a bow once I did. Like my friend Evan, he got a left handed bow just so he could practice left handed as well. Because he felt like it would balance amount. Right. I think balance is overrated.

Really. Yeah. I think balance is a nice concept for like some imaginary world that you live in. But if I live in a world where I'm trying to win a world title right handed, then I need to let my body know that this is what I'm getting ready for.

And not confusing. There's an interesting comparison in jujitsu because there's a lot of guys that have like a very strong right side attack. Like Eddie Bravo for instance.

Obviously he has a black belt level attack on the left but his right side attack is where he puts

all his energy to. And his philosophy was along those same lines. If you just develop this one side like so lethal. Yeah.

“I think that so much is about being able to have a nice breaker.”

Something that stops a match or wins you the match. And at a world level it's everything. If you can if you can bring something from a 99 to 100. You know, but it takes 15 points off your left. That's a trade that a lot of people are willing to make.

You know, if I can do anything to push my right, a level up. If it let makes me, you know, wither away in my left. Good trade. One of the things that I watched that I thought was really interesting. I've been watching a lot of these rock climbers and their ridiculous grip strength.

Yeah. A lot of these guys. There's that cat that has a YouTube channel, and I know you've been on it. Magnus. Magnus.

How do you say it's last time? Maintball. Maintball. And he had that one dude who's just a super freak. You've got that.

Yes. He trains with me. Okay.

That guy went right into arm wrestling.

It was fucking people up right away. Which is crazy. Which makes me think that maybe that kind of specialized training is like a cheat code. It's close. It's close.

Yeah. He also has like enormous leg-sized forums. Eve Gravel. So you can find him training with Magnus because they're in Eve's basement where he does all was training.

“And he's doing these, like how many millimeters is this whole two?”

Okay. So he's doing two millimeter holes with his fingers. Where he's hanging. Yeah. I'm telling you, it makes no sense.

He's such a freak. It makes zero sense. Like Magnus is super stud. Okay. Magnus is like world level climber.

Eve, when it comes to the strength component of climbing, it doesn't even make strength. I don't even understand how anybody could even do it. It's like credit card. He can do pull-ups off of the credit card. That's insane.

Yeah. How? I don't know. I don't know how he does it. And like he has like rounded surfaces where there is nothing to buy up.

Right there. There's nothing. So he's just chalking up his fingers and he hangs off of those. I don't see that. There's nothing there.

I don't know how he does it. There's nothing to bite. There's nothing. And he's pulling up off. I can't even understand how he does it.

So he came into the arm wrestling and he's like 150 pounds. And but it's 40 pounds of his hormones. So we have a tournament in Ottawa where we both live. It's called the Ottawa Open. And it attracts the strongest dudes in the region.

To win the Ottawa Open is really tough. He wanted his first year after our wrestling six weeks. What? Yeah. It's completely crazy.

No no. And he weighs what? 150 pounds. Oh my god. No.

Eva Valle is a complete weirdo.

I've never in my life met somebody who can do the stuff with

Script that he can do. And it's all that training that he's doing. He's doing all this insane grip training. Yeah. What do you think?

Like, what if you did that? Yeah. Yes. Let me tell you. As good as Eva's now, he's getting better.

Okay. I can only imagine. Yeah. Nobody is touching Eva's fingers. But like I talked about earlier.

So if you kind of related to climbing. Okay.

“Can you show me some stuff with that guy doing things?”

Well, I'm just trying to find that one. But it just show me some of the other freakish things he does. Because he could pick up things from the ground that nobody could pick up. Yeah. He does grip competition, too.

So that's another world that's closely tied to arm wrestling is the grip Championships. Right. Where they're just, it's like power lifting for grip. Right.

Yeah. And he's the best of that, too. Yeah. It's just nuts. Yeah.

It's really nuts. Yeah. So there is a high degree of crossover. Right. There is.

But there are slight intricacies. Like a kind of way to think about in climbing. If you have a great grip, you are able to climb the wall. Okay. But in actual arm wrestling, you actually don't want to be the climber.

You want to be the wall. Right. You want to make it hard for the other person's grip. You don't necessarily, he's capable of climbing any wall. Okay.

But once he figures out how to be the wall instead, he's going to be so, so difficult. As fun to work with them, our club and Ottawa, we have like super freaks now. We have all these new guys with ridiculous potential. We got a guy coming, who's bigger and Brian Shaw. Did you ask this?

Can you show me some videos? Yeah. He's just doing anything. There's a bunch. Right.

And I'm on not as channeled to him. It's bouncing back and between. So here's doing fact grip and arm chin ups.

You know, see the Thomas inch in the left?

Yes. That's crazy. Like this kind of grip is just insane. Oh my God, that's crazy. It's pinch gripping.

Yeah. And that guy Magnus is strong as shit too. Like I saw a video of him training with Eddie Hall. Crazy strong. And he's doing these one arm rows with like 180 pounds on each side.

And I'm like, that is bananas because he's not a big guy. No, but he's ridiculously strong as well. And that, when I'm in him, he's dwarfed by this guy. Strength. Yeah, which is crazy.

Yeah. Eve is considered the strongest climber in the world.

“And did you ask him when he started this and how he got that strong?”

I've talked to Eve a lot about his training. He's so detailed.

Like the way he trains is very interesting.

Very progressive, very science-based. Look at those forms. That's bonkers. Yeah. Yeah.

Eve is a, and he's an artist too. He makes masks. Yeah. You know like movie, movie masks? Oh, wow.

That's his main job. He makes masks. And he can climb anything. Yeah. It's super cool guy.

Yeah. Wow. So seeing that though makes me think of a guy as that small. And he has that kind of grip strength that that has to be a massive factor. It is.

In your ability to arm wrestle. So why wouldn't everybody do that? He's 150 pounds that he could do that shit. And he's doing it with two arms. I mean, both of his arms are super jacked.

There are levels of specialization. Right.

“Do you think it's maybe too late for you to do what he's doing?”

Because he's been doing this for decades and decades? I believe that he is so good at all its grip work. And his grip work is so high and it does have a lot of crossover. It does. What I want, that strength, yes, of course.

I just think that the motions that I'm doing are actually even more dangerous for the sport of arm wrestling. Like if I was to advise, even I do. I talk to Eve like every week. I tell Eve, you know, the way he's going to progress his game is by probably doing these

more precise movements to become the wall, you know, to become the thing that's hard to hold on to. Right.

He has an amazing ability to hold on to anybody.

And that's going to take him really, really far in the sport. But I think that as he's Eve, I've told him, he's older in terms of entry, but he has World Championship potential, you know. He's less than a year in the sport. Yeah, he's been arm wrestling since like last November.

Yeah, give him like give him like a year or two or three. And he's going to be knocking on the North American, like, you know, top pro level. Yeah, we'll take him long. Yeah, he's he's a freak for one and he's super smart. And arm wrestling is a very nice crossover for climbers because so many of the strengths are similar.

Really similar. And when you say so, he's very scientific about his training. What does he do? The thing that struck me when I spoke to him about his training is he kind of does testing. I found that very, very different from the way I trained.

So before he does his workout, he does these tests like with his grip. And he like says how easy or hard they are. And if he's not feeling right, he won't do the training. So he'll continue to rest. He'll abort a training session because it doesn't feel right.

Wow. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm doing it on my mind. Right. Interesting.

Yeah, look at whatever, I've seen it. It's very detailed. And where did he learn this from? I think he's, he's crazy. He loves arm wrestling.

He loves climbing. And I think he's just obsessed.

“And I think he probably digests everything.”

I probably, I think he's probably studies everything about climbing and strength. And he just put it all together. So what is he doing here? It really looks like a static wrist test. Looks like he's measuring it through a way to see how much in a static capacity.

If he can generate. Yeah. Yeah. Push his wrist. Yeah.

Yeah. So all just wrist curling. Isometric. Yeah. Maximum output.

Which is really the main strength that arm wrestlers need. That locked isometric or even negative strength. And all his squeeze and it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

He's very special. That is crazy. Yeah. So that's the thing. He's got all these charts.

And so he's doing this all himself because there's probably no one that could teach him this stuff.

Because he's probably at the top of the food chain when this. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

He's a gift to have come around. We love that. We love that. We've kind of got him. Oh, I'm sure about his when you get a freak like that.

Like out of nowhere. What is he doing here? All right. So he's working his curls and he's adding resistance through the elastic. So you can see he's this is not a climber exercise.

I don't think anymore. He's really switching, you know. Timer. I think I think he's got the bug. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. It won't be long. It won't be long.

He'll be at ease first as well as first 70 kilo world title.

Well, it's such a enormous advantage to have these fucking gigantic forearms and insane strength. Yeah. And it's just so weird that you could get these guys that are so physically small, that are so damn strong.

“Like when Magnus was doing rows, you're like, where's the force coming from?”

You have 150 pounds, 160 pound body. And you're doing these 180 pound single arm rows. Yeah. Like where's the force coming from? Where's it?

Is it a tendon strength? Is it where's the tissue? Right? Like you look at Eddie Hall. You're like, okay, they make sense that that guy could lift that much weight.

Massive. Yeah. This guy's not massive. Right. If you saw him in a t-shirt, you wouldn't even unless you looked at his forearms.

You wouldn't even think he was strong. Yeah. You'd say, well, I probably runs or something. Looks like a normal guy that's spit. It doesn't look like a guy who can do 180 pound, one arm rows.

So what? What is that? How do you do that? Where's it coming from? Yeah.

I think that for, I think that arm wrestlers, climbers, a lot of athletes, fighters too. They start to recognize the value of the hand. You know, a lot of guys, you know, in the communities like strong man, power lifting, other strength disciplines, they get immense strength through their body, into their shoulders and different parts that by the time it goes through the chain, through the elbow, through the wrist,

through the fingers, only a small portion of that is able to get managed. Right. I see that with guys when they work out with straps. I've never used straps. Right.

“Because to me with Jesus, grip is so important.”

I never wanted to rely only on my muscles and not have a strong grip.

It didn't make any sense to me. In so many functional things, the hand is the shortcoming. Or the feet. Or the feet. Yeah.

I talked to Nick Kerson once who's a strength and conditioning trainer. And I said, what do you think is the number one thing that fighters lack on. He said, foot strength. Yeah. I said, foot strength.

Yeah. Foot strength. Once it foot strength breaks down, everything breaks down. You move and breaks down. Your power breaks down.

Your ability to get out of the way of things. The ability to close the distance. Yeah. Yeah. You're on the grip strength.

What does it get? 160. That's crazy. I got more than him. Yeah.

That's crazy. But that makes sense. I'm 200 pounds, right?

But it's a chain and grip is a part of the functional hand chain.

Right. You know?

“But it's clearly, he's way stronger than me with rows.”

The interesting thing with grip is grip is only a small part of control. All this got it. What's that guy's name? He's actually the better. Andre, right?

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262. So he could do 262. And he's not a very big guy.

“So he does a hundred pounds more than me.”

And he's not a big guy. Yeah. I mean, you're looking at him. But he does crazy like chin up stuff. To 56.

That's fucking nuts. So his it's Michael Eckert. Elecart. No, Eckert. E-C-K-E-R-T.

E-C-K-E-R-T. So it's Michael Eckert under score fit on Instagram. And this guy's turned me on to a bunch of stuff. Told me stuff to get and what to work out with. I'm blown away because I look at him and I go,

You're not that big. That's what's crazy. Like you look at his forms are obviously very big. Yeah. Very strong.

But he's not like this massive guy. Like who's that giant Russian captain? Smile. Yeah. Boy.

He's. He's. That guy pulled 262. I go, okay. That makes sense.

But I look at Michael and I'm like this is not the biggest guy in the world. But he does so much grip stuff stuff. Yeah. We're praying for smile. I have to come into the sport.

Oh my god. Yeah. He's a fucking freak freakiest. Not just freak freakiest. Yeah.

How's he alive?

“Like you got to think there's not a lot of time on that hourglass.”

Live hard, die fast. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's pushing. There he is.

Yeah. But yeah. I mean, all these strengths for our sport. They'll add together. Yeah.

He's talking hands. They don't even look real. Oh, he's. And he's open about all the sauce that he's on. He's on everything.

I mean, someone who was in here that was explaining how much growth hormone he takes. I heard he debunked that. Oh, really? I saw a video where he said it wasn't true. But I have no idea that he wasn't taking that much.

Someone was saying he was taking over like 100 or something. Some crazy thing, like 10 units of growth a day. No, I heard it was 100. 100 units? Yeah.

That seems like he would just grow. He'll just become a giant. That's like a battalion disorder. Yeah. More than.

Right. Because that's what you're getting. He. Well, it's clearly he's done a bunch of stuff though. I mean, if you see him when he was younger, he looked like a normal athlete.

I never saw him normal. I mean, I've been following him for probably like six or seven years. Yeah.

“I mean, I think the first time I saw him.”

He was doing chin-ups with like 250 pounds strapped to him. You know.

I think that's the first time I saw him.

Yeah. He not normal. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a left size.

What's the left? When he's 17? Yeah. I mean, he was looking. That's not a set.

That's not a normal 17 year old. No. Clearly. Yeah. He's pretty jacked.

But that makes sense. Like that guy on the left makes sense. Like I've seen guys like that. Yeah. That's not a 17.

But go to that photo again.

“But the guy on the right, he looks like the incredible Hulk.”

Like he looks like a superhero. Like it doesn't look like a real human being. Like the size of his forearms. The size of his biceps. That doesn't look like a regular human being.

It looks like a complete freak of nature or science. And he's training for arm wrestling. I could only imagine. So he's like, if you follow his insta or whatever, he's doing the arm wrestling lifts like the pronation.

And his lifting is already at a level of like world. You go to his Instagram, please. His Instagram got taken down. So it's like some nit. Yeah, that's right, he didn't have it.

Why did he get taken down? I don't know. I don't know. But I heard it was taken down. But he does have a new one whether it's his or it's a fan one.

I know I just saw it yesterday. Why would they take down his Instagram? Yeah, the only one I could find is his. I don't know. It's like my other official and it's 27 weeks ago.

Yeah, and that's all there.

But no, there is there. I know because I saw it like yesterday. Oh, so it's gone. The page is gone. There is some fan page where he's doing pronation lifts.

What the fuck? There's wrong. Why would they take this guy's Instagram down? Because he's inspiring people to turn into monsters. Do you think that's what it is?

I don't know. I don't know. There. This is what I'm talking about. See now, this is a much more normal like for arm wrestling.

This is actually more functional than anything through the grip. I think. So this is all pronation. That's pronation. Turning the wrist.

Lifting in same way. Yeah, and just based off of that information that I see there, I already know. Click on that one that you got your, yeah. Look at size of this guy.

Yeah. That it's so crazy. Explosive jumps. Yeah. And the crazy thing about him is he's not competing in anything.

Right.

“But I think that this is a guy who's just going to show up,”

whether it's in anything. He gets to pick and he's probably going to show up at like a world level. Okay. Anything like what? Besides.

I'd say anything, whether power lifting. Right. Strong man. I'd be terrified if he even got to like blue belt. Oh my god.

Like what are you going to do? How much is he way? I think like 340, 340, and preposterous strength. Like, yeah. A strength.

You know, Mark Coleman always used to say that strength is a skill.

And there's something to do that. Because if you are that strong, there's only so much you could do with that guy's body. Yeah. Especially if he developed actual skills, an understanding of leverage positions. Yeah.

Even just the base movement patterns that are really difficult to lead. Jesus. He was supposed to pull. There was a proposal for him to pull one of our guys called Leonidas Hakona. He was a great name.

Yeah. So German guy, he just competed against Brian Shaw, like six weeks ago. He beat Brian. What? Yeah.

“Someone beat Brian Shaw in arm wrestling match.”

Leonidas, young German champion. They competed in Germany. It was a great fight. How big is Leonidas? Leonidas is pretty awesome.

Okay. Leonidas. Leonidas and Brian Shaw. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. That is crazy. Yeah. Right. And Brian's grip is completely wild.

Seeing someone beat Brian Shaw in anything physical seems ridiculous. It doesn't even make sense. How much is this guy way? He's like 285 when he's in good shape. But again, stupid strength.

He's like a bodybuilder slash arm wrestler. He's not a picture of me reacting. Yeah. He's been in the sport. Oh my god.

He's got a curl to do. Yeah. Crazy strength. Oh my god. He's massive.

Massive. I just can't believe that he beat Brian Shaw. That is nuts. And that's where skill comes in. Because Brian Shaw is 100 pounds heavier than him.

Yeah. But it's levels, you know. Right. And that's a thing like arm wrestling has enough technique to it. It's not just how strong you are.

Look at you can look at me. Okay. I'm not on any of these guys' levels. They're all stronger than me. But on the number two in the world in the open division.

Everybody in the top 50 is stronger than me. You know. But there's a high degree. That's a great picture. Wow.

That is crazy. The size difference is so massive. But I'll tell you. Brian probably has a higher potential in the United States. Brian's been arm wrestling less than two years.

Right. And the United's been arm wrestling five. Okay. Yeah. So there's a lot of technique to us.

This is kind of technique. But I'll just repetition understanding the positions where to go, what to do, how to hold. Yeah. Minature martial art. Interesting.

Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Because there's some people that are not that like Marcelo Garcia, for instance. Not physically imposing guy has the craziest squeeze.

Like learning a position over and over and over again.

Fine tuning it.

“How's what's interesting about power in general?”

It's like the repetition of movement creates more power. Yeah. And some of it is genetic. But some of it is also just fine tuning that motion to just this like perfect chain of energy from the floor to the strike. And it's and it's two of us.

You know, and it's that interaction. Right. It's what you're doing. What I'm doing. And the more you're doing it, the more you understand what to do and when to do it and what's happening and how to counter it and when to push.

When to pull, when to hit the gas. And somebody's leading the dance and someone's following. And the efficiency just changes very quickly and before you know what your gas do. I'm sure you're aware of that guy in Australia. Tom Howell.

Yeah. He's another one. He's another one. Right. Who's doing this stuff in his backyard with a fucking shirt on and jeans and work boots.

Yeah.

And all the images, most of them are just his back.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. He's another one.

He's another one of these strength giants that lives out there that everybody kind of wants to pull in. I message Tom. Everyone's the one who likes guy. Like dude, when are you coming in arm wrestling? When are you coming in?

And what do you say? Yeah. I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. What is he interested?

I think so. Well, he's also crazy lean too, which is really weird. Yeah. He's a strange character. Oh, the strangest.

Because like this is most of his images or his back. Yeah. I don't understand why he's doing that. Well, I had the theory that he was an SF guy. You know, I had the theory that he belongs to some organization that requires him to be discrete.

But there are photos of him. Yeah, not many. But there's plenty where you could see his face. Yes.

“But he doesn't go around broadcasting it too much, does he?”

I don't know. Look, I don't know what he is. I've asked him, guys, say he's not. I don't know what to deal with. But for whatever reason, and he could, right?

This is a guy who could probably, again, go to any one of the strength disciplines and compete. Yeah. Because he's almost 400 pounds. He's six foot eight. Yeah.

And fucking sure. I did. See if he could find some of the images. There are images on this page of him with a shirt off doing stuff where he's like walking with. You know, doing like farmer carries.

There's some images of him with a shirt off. Yeah. Like there he is. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. He's a he's a Brian Shaw type. He's a he's a smile type. You know, just where the baseline level of strength. But looks more athletic than those guys. Do you know what I'm saying? Oh, like it's it's he's not as massive.

He's massive, but he looks massive in a more mobile way. Do you know what I'm saying? I do, but you know, Brian Shaw one strong man. And like, there's a lot of athleticism and strong man. Oh, for sure. I'm not saying there's not.

I mean, but Brian Shaw looks like an ape. He looks like a giant ape. Where is this guy looks like a super athlete. He does. He looks like like that image of him with the shirt off in the far right.

Like he's shredded. Yeah. It looks different. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And he it seems like he's just working on his strength. He's just like constantly. Yeah. Look at his fucking forearm muscles.

“Yeah. What the fuck is going on with the top of the forearm where it meets the bison?”

What the fuck is that? Tom, if you're watching this, come to ease versus Westbody. We love you. We love you. Has he ever done anything?

Yeah. Any arm wrestling? Yeah. I know he has. Because so down in Australia, the president there, Phil Rasmussen,

he's good friends with him. And I know that there are arm wrestling a little bit. But yeah, there's something with him where he doesn't kind of. He doesn't want to kind of show up. I think I don't know what it is with some of these people.

Where they have this amazing ability, but they don't really pop.

You know, you know who Eric Spadaw is? No. Eric Spadaw is a guy out of Vegas, former number one in the world bench guy. Okay. Like he broke the world record for bench. Okay.

But he didn't go to a powerlifting meet until he could break the record. He didn't even show up. He just showed up and he beat the world. He was he was doing the world record in his basement. And everybody's like, you know, Eric, why don't you go and make it legit.

You know, but these guys exist out there. These guys in their basements or, you know, wherever they're living. And they, and they, for whatever reason, they don't show up until they're the best. Yeah, Eric, this guy. Yeah, and he's an amazing arm wrestler too.

Same theory though, like it was hard to get him into competition. But I personally know that he's like one of the strongest arm wrestlers. But he doesn't compete. Doesn't compete. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, strength is amazing, man.

It's not everything in your sport though, which is interesting.

Yeah. Strength combat. So we're a combat sport that relies heavily on strength. Yeah. It's interesting you consider it a combat sport.

It's 100% combat sport. Why so? Because it's not applicable to real fighting. So why do you call it a combat sport? I mean, real fighting is hard to define anyways.

I mean, is it? Wow. There's levels. You know, there's levels of real fighting. I mean, what we look at, I love USC.

It's cool, but we invented guns long ago. You know, of course, but that's not a sport. I mean, it is a sport in terms of like being able to shoot accurately and stuff like that.

But you're using an external device using a weapon.

Right. But you're physical body combat sports.

“Why would you consider arm wrestling to be a combat sport?”

Well, because it's between two people and there's so much interplay. And, you know, there's not the rigidity of a lot of sports that measure strength. Okay. It's very much adjustment, adaption, decision-making, a lot of games, a lot of technique, a lot of adaptation. You can be super strong, but if you can't adapt, if you can't think, if you can't speak, if you can't play.

Right. Yeah, you're going to. But in that sense, do you consider football combat sport? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. There's two sides and you're fighting. Yeah. It's metaphor. Okay.

Look at all this stuff. I love the USC, but I consider it a combat sport. You know? Well, definitely. Yes, a combat sport.

100% probably one of the best examples of. If I was going to put together like, you know, the ultimate, like, you know, we're going to take out, like, like, if we're going to go to war against another nation or whatever. You know, yeah, for sure I'm looking at USC. You guys for sure I'm looking to football guys, you know, looking at whoever can get the job done. And there's a lot of pieces to that.

Well, that's different. I mean, you're like, if they're going to war with just bots, only using your body, that's one thing. But, you know, obviously with war, weapons, weapons of all, absolutely. Yeah.

“I think that that's where we're at these days.”

So, well, now we're with thumbs because now it's basically drawn.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the, you're going to get to a point soon where human beings are going to be a role of it. So, when it comes to sport, arm wrestling is false. For me, it falls into that combat sector, you know, where two people are engaging in a,

a fight, a metaphorical fight against each other. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if it wasn't a combat sport, then the stronger guy would normally win.

And they normally does. But as soon as you, I can get, like, if I could get like a guy who's been practicing arm wrestling for like four, five years, they'll be to anybody. Anybody that's not practicing. It's the same thing as like a jujitsu guy. If you, if you give a jujitsu guy like four or five years on the mat, and you get Brian Shaw, or like some giant, come in, who's going to win. It really depends.

I could teach Brian Shaw a few things. Of course he could get strangle. Yeah. And Brian Shaw is an extreme example. Yeah.

Okay. Someone, your size? Yeah. Yeah. It's like size to side of the size is commensurate.

Yeah. The person is trained. Yeah. They're going to win every time. And in small people, dominate big people all the time.

Right. Because it's that technical skill base. It's just, it's also repetition, understanding the positions, understanding the mistakes, understanding knowing where to be and what to do, how to flow, how to move with someone. So you're not just going strength for strength against them.

You're, you're flowing with them.

“I think I think of it as a combat sport as well because I try and make it that way.”

Right. Yeah. Well, you definitely do and you definitely make it like psychologically. I try. Yeah. I try and pull all that stuff in. Well, you have an extensive military experience, too.

Like you started off, like when, what, what is the Canadian version of what you, what, what branch the military you were in? I was with a unit called JTF2 for the 16 out of my 20 years. Yeah. It was great.

I'd still be there if I could really. But it got too complicated and I had to leave. But yeah. Yeah. What do you mean?

You know, I don't want to say it was entirely one thing or another. But it really probably had a lot to do with arm wrestling and the visibility of arm wrestling. Like, I've been arm wrestling my whole life. But, geez, it was 19. Oh, sorry.

19 was 2000 and 14. And we were on ESPN at the time. And up to that point, I was not declared military in the public eye. Like, I was a farmer as far as everybody was concerned. You know, I tried to play the operational security as well as I could.

But there were a lot of concerns about the growth of arm wrestling for me and my, you know, exposure.

“And, you know, part of being an operator is, you know, you have to be anonymous.”

You get on an airplane. You can't have people taking pictures of you. Oh, right. Right. So arm wrestling because it weren't where I was.

And it was on ESPN and going further. They're like, "Do you have to choose?" And I'm like, "Oh, my God. I've been arm wrestling since I was a kid." So the long and short of that is, they offer me a year off.

No pay. I took it. I took it. I took the year off. And we were, I was gathering apples and eating sardines.

And sending my kids to school with dried apples.

And me and my wife were like, "Oh, my God. Are we crazy?" Like, "Are we crazy?" Just so you try to make it an arm wrestling. It was complicated.

It's complicated. Yeah, I'd done like seven tours. And it's weird when you do a lot of tours. You know, things start to grey out a little bit. I don't know.

Everything is about mission in life, right? Like everything. Like if you don't have a good mission, your life is going to fall to shit. And as soon as you start to question any kind of that,

you know, you play in that realm long enough. Most guys start to at the beginning. I mean, you're just either so patriotic or, you know, just so down to, you know, help your country or whatever. The people around you that you don't really, you're undeterred.

And I think that probably some time around that point in my career. Maybe I was struggling slightly. And that combined with the them telling me that I wasn't able to do something

“that was like the only thing I did, you know, when I left work,”

was kind of the thing that kind of make me take kind of a stand in my life that I was going to, you know, follow sport instead of war. Sports beautiful. Sports very clearly building civilization. And war, you know, the further you go,

and it just gets to a level of murk where you're not sure. So yeah, so why say you're not sure you're not sure if you should be doing what you're doing, you're not sure if the mission should be happening. Yeah, because I think most people join the military and stay in the military because they genuinely believe that they're benefiting mankind or civilization

to some degree. It's a big part of it. Nobody's there for the money. You know, I mean, at the beginning, some people are because we're broke, right? But I mean, once you spend like 10 years, I mean, you're probably okay.

And yeah, so it's start, I mean, you play enough in that world and it starts to get confusing that you're maybe you're not doing the right thing. So I look at it. I loved my work. I thought it was great.

I loved all the people I worked with. Some of the best people in the world.

“But yeah, I came to a point where there was some issues, you know,”

with Opsack, not even in my career, but in others and it kind of trickled down into you in a policy and they shut down everybody's extra curricular. And yeah, they're like, no, no, you can't, I'm wrestling anymore. And I'm like, oh my god, I'm a current world champion. I'm currently the open world champion.

And you're telling me I can't do it. So I was like, yeah, we're going to have to come up with some other solution. They're like, yeah, okay, years leave without pay. Here's your final offer. So I took it in my life and I were like, oh my god.

So yeah, so I went from making money. And I didn't count. We didn't have money, you know. But you were getting by. Yeah, again, by. But it meant that on that year, I like had to win.

It was no longer like my hobby. It was like, if I don't win, like, my kids are like, not, I'm going to have to sell a house or like, I'm going to have to do this gamble. It worked out.

Yeah, what was that stress line? Dude, I will be at the time. Okay, that was 2014, so I'd be 39. Oh, wow. Yeah, so you're already older as I actually. Yeah, yeah, wow.

Yeah, it was totally trippy. I remember being so stressed out. I was, so it was a, it was a WAL finals. Okay, I was in the 225 pound division.

20,000 bucks for the first place.

Right hand left hand. And I had a great sponsor. Okay, there were matching my pace. Anything I won, they doubled it, and they were doing some other stuff to sell, but if I lost that, nothing.

Oh, right. So I'm in the back. I'm in the back in the warm-up area. And I'm breathing, I'm getting ready. I'm going against this guy, Ron Bath, and the finals.

guy, my gold comes over to me.

He's like, do I have anything? He's like used to run the practice when you were 18. He's like, you're just here because you love it. Don't worry about it. Just go and have fun, and I'm like, okay, you're right.

You're right. I went out and I just had fun and worked out. But yeah, so I ended up, I ended up doing my years leave without pay. As soon as I was taking my leave, they're like, we want you to declare.

Like, we want you to tell people that your special force is now. So I'm going to have to be. Why did they want you to do that? Because they pushed me into recruiting. Yeah.

So when I got back, I tried again.

“I think they'd already made up their mind.”

When I got back, I'm like, yeah, I kind of have my old job back. And they're like, you're going to keep arm wrestling. And I'm like, well, you know. And they're like, okay, you're going to recruiting. And I was on.

So at that point, I was on my 19th year. Okay. And you only in the Canadian forces at that time. Now, I think you need 25. But it 20 years continue a service.

And you get like a base pension. So I did my 19th to 20th year. I went around Canada. And I told people how great the JTF was. And that was it.

That was my career. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, enough full time arm wrestling for the last 10 years. Yeah.

What a jump at 39. Yeah.

“That had to be so fucking nerve wracking.”

It was. I just, you know, I thought it was very selfish of me. You know. I thought that I was being very irresponsible.

I thought, you know, because I really believed in soldiering. I did. And, you know, to leave it, you know, made me question very much what I was doing

the right thing with my life. And, and then on a family level. I was like, I'm being, am I being irresponsible? Chasing this, you know, thing that I love to do.

And it's costing my kids, you know, they're university education. It's costing my kids, you know. But yeah, we, we, we believed in it. We went for it.

And it's all worked out. It's all worked out.

I mean, it's been a second life for me.

I still love all the guys I work with. Some of them are still working. My God. Guys do like 30 year careers and especially forces. It's crazy.

Yeah, a lot of the guys that I went through with they're now in senior positions. And I bump into them every once in a while. I just tell them how much I love them and how great they are. And yeah, I live a simple life now.

It's beautiful, you know, like before life was very complicated

“going on tours, you know, special forces life is super complex.”

You know, it's, it's difficult to balance. How my wife and I made it through that. I have no idea. I have no idea, but we did. But yeah, now now I'm at home every day.

I wake up and I'm, you know, going to some armresting tournament. It's beautiful. Well, I got to think that the discipline that came from that life transferred over the discipline of becoming a great armrest. I think I'm still learning today from my career.

I'm still digesting some of the greatest days and some of the stuff that I did. I'm still integrating it into my life. Yeah, it's a great teacher. Well, you can't bail. No, you can't.

You can't. The ultimate consequence is the ultimate stakes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. I love the concept of soldiering.

I think I have it as one of the highest things that you can do. Like, there's being a mother and there's being a fighter.

You know, and I personally have always believed that one of the highest orders of fighters

are the guys in the military. You know, that's, I've got. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty awesome. But yeah, it's, it's, I try and take all those lessons and bring them into the sport. And I try to, well, I try and let that chapter of my life, you know, feed and inspire me today.

Do you talk much about your tours? I don't a lot. I, it's not that, you know, anything matters at this point. I mean, it's all, like, it's all in the past. And, you know, there's nothing that I could really say now that influences too much.

But, yeah, I don't make it part of my general promotion too much. But everybody knows that I was, you know. So, it's a, it's a wild time in my life, you know, it's a huge chapter, you know, the military stuff, the tours that I did. You know, we, we did a lot of work in Afghanistan. So, you know, the highlight of my career is working in Canada,

you know, working with the American forces, working with the endage forces.

So we're doing hits, doing hits at night, you know, going out and various kinds.

But, yeah, it was always funny to me.

People would, because people didn't know I was, you know, widely. I mean, oh, I'm definitely scared to come to this tournament, you know. And I was like, what a fucking life. I am in a goddamn war right now. I'm not scared to go to Nemraf Cup, you know.

But, yeah, that's funny. Yeah, that was a bit hilarious. It was so funny for me. I'm like, you have no idea how scared I am right now what I'm doing. You know.

Because it war is a, war is a wild thing, you know. The degree that it's psychologically affected me is, it's been, it's been me.

“You know, I think that a lot of who I am was shaped by combat, you know.”

By the fear and, and the lacking that I had, like, the, the, the, the not being enough to, to be everything I could be in combat, shaped me so much, you know. You know, when you go on a tour, there's different people, there's different dudes, okay. I know some dudes who really don't get scared. They really don't, like, they're like, so down for it.

Like, they can't wait to go on the next mission, you know. And I was kind of the guy who was, like, completely scared-shellist, but I'd go anyways, you know. And what I kind of learned to do, which I have a great value in, is kind of the separation of myself. You know, I am a very different person day-to-day than when I compete. Well, when I, for example, went and actually did the job, you know, I would completely transform my character.

And this is something that I learned, the first tour was hard.

You know, you're a regular dude with a regular brain and a regular mindset doing this terrifying thing. And then, you know, you come back and, you know, you've seen a lot of shit and you got PTSD, you wake up in your heart's going. And it's like an injury. And you can let an injury kill you, or you can heal and develop some kind of resilience to it. And I think that I, to some degree, did that by learning how to become a different person.

People call it a switch, you know, where you, like, all your values, the person you are is different. You're not the same person when you're out in the field, then you are when you're, you're back on base. And I created a persona that loved, that looked forward to it, that lasted for it.

“Because that's what you need to be to actually perform properly.”

When you say it created a persona, what was the steps? Like, how did you do that? Well, I think that one of the things is to really wrap your mind. I think the first step is to wrap your mind about the worst possible outcomes with any fear. And I don't know if a psychologist is going to tell you to do this. But, like, for example, like, I'll take it a step back and we'll talk about jumping.

Okay? I don't like to jump at airplanes. Okay? Didn't really, you know, it's kind of scary. So I had a certain fear there. Okay? Now I got over it. I've got hundreds of jumps. But what I did was I used to watch parachute fails over and over and over and over and over. And I just kind of desensitized myself to it and kind of became okay with it. And I think to a certain degree, I did the same thing with the overall concept of worst case scenario with the war. You know, kind of accepted that I'm going to die. It's okay. I believe in the cause, believe in the mission. It's okay.

So now I have to solve how to actually, how do I get to the best performance state to do that? And you have to love what you do. You got to love what you do. So you have to find a way to love the violence.

“You have to find a way to love the aggression. You have to find a way to, and I think it's inside all of us.”

I think that the person that you are is, you know, who you've kind of created for a certain circumstance.

But the truth is, you might act a little bit different when you're sitting at the table with your mother,

then when you're sitting at the table with your best friend, to when you're going out and doing a hit on the front lines. You know, and it's a different psychology that's going to perform best, you know, and each of those. And it's learning that you are not necessarily one thing. You are whatever you want to be, you know, and you can change that. You can, and you can become that. And the more time that you spend as that role,

You know, I certainly rolled that psychology into my arm wrestling. What's interesting, you say, I don't know if a psychologist would tell you to do that. I don't think a psychologist would have the ability to understand what that experience even is. There's one thing about theory and about books and about learning in school.

“There's a giant difference between that and application in a real world scenario where you might lose your life and you have to take a life.”

That's, I don't think this is a psychologist in the world that could explain that.

So I'm always very hesitant about even sports psychologists or fight psychologists that like teach people how to prepare for fighting.

You could probably give a fighter some tools, but for you to actually tell them what needs to be done. If you're not doing that, how can you? It's just theory. Yeah, and there's a giant difference between theory and application where you are trying to keep your fucking brain together in the craziest thing a human being can do. Yeah, parachute down and gun people down. Like what is fucking crazier on earth than that? I say nothing.

Well, look, I used to have that attitude as well, but I've changed my attitude when it comes to that. I think that it's about excellence and mastery. I think that's what life is about. And if you're in the soldiering round, yeah, that's excellence and mastery in that field. But I think wherever you are, if you're a businessman, if you're an artist, if you're a farmer, there's levels. You can be a farmer that has weeds and doesn't get up at the crack of dawn or whatever.

And then you can be a completely psychotic farmer that does, and I think that you're on that level. Yeah. You're on that level of mastery.

“And I think that that is what life is really about.”

Is finding that thing that you're comfortable doing and becoming a master at it. Yeah. And now I am the Bonnie Blue of Arm wrestling. Come on, come on.

I got the first space with everybody.

I got to ask you about this, and this is a silly thing to ask you, because you said, can to hard. Have you heard of the legend of the can to hard giant? Of course. What did you hear? Well, I've seen.

There's some freaks out there, man. There's some freaks. Well, yeah, I mean, I've seen the YouTube video.

“I've heard about it from other people, but legit, legit, okay?”

Hard for me because I was far away, okay? I was probably about 200 meters away. We were doing a mobility exercise, okay? Mobility, I hate mobility. Mobility was my least favorite op.

Mobility basically, you get a bunch of trucks, and you kind of roll out, and you kind of look for a fight.

Okay? So we were doing like a two week mobility in this region, a kind of north, north of the Panjuei. I don't remember exactly what it was called. There's this surrounded by mountains, this big valley. And we were rolling around, and so there was a village that we were going to check out.

And I'm like a gunner, okay? So I don't know everything that's going on. I'm going to do it on a machine gun. Okay? But I can see everything that's happened, and I kind of know what we're doing.

But I know that there's a meeting. And what they have is they have these warlords. It's not the same kind of political system or anything that we have in North America. Kind of the baddest dude in the region becomes in charge. Okay? So we were meeting with one of the local warlords.

And so the town was like 500 meters away. They drove out from the town about 500 meters, and we had our trucks about 200 meters from the meeting point. Our officer and a couple dudes went forward and we're looking. Oh, this guy. I mean, he was maybe twice as big. He was huge. He was massive dude. Like how big.

I think he was a feet. I think he was a foot something. It's embarrassing. It's like that one year crazy and he's big. How in he was 200 meters away?

He was about 200 meters away, but I can see the guys. We've got optics. He was our officer was probably somewhere, but at the bottom of his chest. Great big, I can't do it. Big, beard, big dude, big dude.

And his lackeys around him were normal sized, great, big warlord.

There's big feet is nuts.

I have personally seen people who were probably over a feet. What? Yeah, I have cash. No, no, I saw these guys up north, Northern Canada. Creep.

I was up in Odubumu.

“I remember walking up I'm there for arm wrestling.”

We're having an arm wrestling tournament. And I'm looking up. We're walking up the stairs and it's walking me on this dude. I'm like, that's a really big dude. But time I got there.

I was about me and I'm like 65. I was about in his nipple. Why'd he say that? Big, big, big hands. Big long hands.

Like out of the goonies, like misshapen face. I'm like my god. I'm like, how big are he who's just laughed at me? And he's like my dad's eight foot 11. He's like, what?

Yeah, big. My dad's eight foot 11. I'm telling you, there's big people. And people don't know about him. Guinness doesn't know about him.

They live up in the woods. There's big people out there. And not all of them got Jamie. He's from that region apparently. I don't know how to say that.

Edward, well, pre. So there's just clients that live in that region. There's a bit the career very big people. And the thing is, is when they get to eat what they're supposed to eat.

The problem is so many of me junk now.

Right? Because they, you know, they grow up on the pound. Or 367, sorry. They grow up. He could two and a half, three hundred and sixty seven pounds.

H 33. Whoa. Yeah, I forget the name of these brothers. But there's a bunch of them. Yeah.

Yeah, there's some weird genetics out there. You know? Yeah. Yeah. We're going to try and swam.

I'll give it the Ryan before you know it. But so this guy in Afghanistan was just one isolated incident. I saw one. Yeah. I just saw the one.

And he had to be eight feet tall. He is big. He's big. Yeah. He's big, big human being.

Far out of the standard. Yeah. And he was a warlord. Wow. Yeah.

They're big, they're big people out there.

And so the can-to-hard giant story, the guys, supposed to be even bigger than that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't believe it.

I do. Yeah. I do. There's freaks out there. There are.

But this guy supposedly had like six fingers and six toes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I believe that stuff.

“I just, I mean, I think that we get so used to normal people”

and every once in a while there's a weirdo. And these people are not being studied. There's no one there. Like that region of the country is extremely remote. Extremely.

Extremely. Like they don't, it's like going back to like the 15th century. Like there's, there's motorcycles and some people have gas. I mean, but they don't have electricity. Yeah.

There's not even really roads. Yeah. And there was this one guy who was a warlord that was eight feet tall. I saw him. You saw him.

Yeah. From a distance. But I mean, there's no way he was any shorter. Like he was huge. He was a massive.

And he was brought across the shoulders too. He was probably twice as broad. Massive massive human. Yeah. What was that like?

Just seeing something like that. It's wild man. Yeah. You know. It's, it's neat.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was shocking. But it, you know, it's neat how they structure their leadership. That's the guy in charge.

The most massive. I hope he was a nice guy. Probably wasn't. I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, he seemed reasonable. Like we didn't get in the fight. Right. Like we didn't, there was no fight there. Wow.

So we worked it out whatever it was. But yeah. There's, there are anomalies. And it's neat. It's kind of cool that he made it to a leadership position.

So he must have been a smart guy too. And he must have been a good guy. Because I don't think a deck could have been in charge. So did you hear of that story? The Candahar giant story.

So supposedly what happened is it's American military guys encountered this guy in the mountains. Yeah. That was just absolutely enormous. They said he was like 12 feet tall. Yeah.

Well, what happened with the Nephilim? You know? Right. That's the thing. Well, that was, the thing is like supposedly they had six fingers and six toes as well.

“Look, I believe that things come to visit and sometimes things get left behind.”

And who knows? Who knows? You know? There's a good chance that he's maybe just a little bit closer to all that. Or somehow a recessive and a recessive somehow found their ways together.

And there you go. And somehow there's a surviving population of these people still in the world that are undiscovered. It's a beautiful part of the world that region, perfect climate, super fertile.

Afghanistan's beautiful country, so rich for agriculture. The climate is perfect.

“You know, with the mountains and the rivers, the seasons, it's tough to be.”

You know? I would understand why people would fight so hard to have that territory. And then, you know, if you were a giant 12 feet tall and you could live anywhere you wanted. You know, in a valley where the rivers fed your land, I could pick there. Yeah.

Did you hear that story when you were over there? That story's famous. Yeah. And I asked around.

I've never met anybody who was involved in that op.

I haven't. But it seems like a story that has something to it because there's too many people telling that story. There's only only one story like that. There are a lot of stories. There's more stories like that?

There are. I should say there's only one story like that online that people repeat over and over again. This one encounter. There are fascinating stories out there. Some that I'm closer to.

Like what? Probably the most interesting story that I'm in any way kind of close to is from that region of the world. And this is a whole and other can of worms. But it's so weird. It's demonic possession.

We had a guy. He was mine. He worked with him very closely for a super smart guy. Great guy. Awesome.

Awesome soldier. And yeah, I mean, he got possessed by a demon.

He started speaking in tongues.

He knew everything about everybody. He could speak different languages. He knew everything about everybody's life. He knew all their sins. He knew all the sins people did even from their childhood.

But he got taken to the medical through the medical system before they knew it. He was out of the medical system and he was with the pottery. The priest that comes along on some military missions.

“They did what do you call that when you cleanse the demon from what do you call access to them?”

They didn't access them. He sent them back to Canada. He's now watched by the church. He has to go and check him with the church every week. I don't know what's tell you, Joe.

There's a lot. I don't know. But yeah. And the crazy thing was is the priest who did the access to them said he knew the demon. He'd already done the accesses him three or four times.

He did different people. Yeah, because that demon was like popping it out of the guys. Yeah.

So I don't know what's going on in the world.

I'm an arm wrestling. But this guy knew things about you. No. I wasn't on the tour. But the unit's very small.

All the guys who were there, I have very close personal relationships with. And there's no reason for me not to trust him. And this is the, and the guy who had it done to him. I'm very close with like he comes out of my, he was my stall partner. Okay.

And I see him. When you say had it done to the guy who was possessed. Yes. You knew him. I know him very well.

And what did he say about it? Yeah. He doesn't like it very much. Yeah. He's, it's scared him a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. He does. He recall being able to speak different languages. Yeah.

He can remember it. Yeah. He can't speak those languages anymore. No. It was like he was aware of everything happening.

But he was like he was a visitor. He was like there for the ride. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Apparently he, when it started, it started to like, it started. He was freezing. He was locking up. And then he was locking. And then he started speaking in tongues.

And then he was like fully. Joe. It's, it's, it's weird stuff out there, man.

“There's a lot of things that we don't understand, right?”

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to, I wasn't me. But I trust the story because I know the people.

I know them. I know them. I could hook you up with them. You want to talk to tell you. I'm not telling you all about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

How long was he possessed for? He was possessed. I think for a couple of weeks. Maybe like a week or ten days. Something like that.

It wasn't super long. But he was all messed up afterwards. He got, like, he was done working after that. Really? He retired.

Medical. Wow. Yep. But psychologically, like it wasn't like he had a schizophrenic break. So whatever it was he came back from.

I don't know that schizophrenia can explain the language. No. I don't know. No.

But what I'm saying is they didn't diagnose him as having.

No. The diagnosis was he had to go to church. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Literally.

Yeah. Right. That's so crazy. That's one of the craziest ones that I've seen personally.

“Have you heard of other experiences like that where people have been possessed?”

That's it. We would think that if a demon was going to visit someone, war would be the place to visit him. And that's an ancient. That was an Iraq. That was an Erbil.

Okay.

I mean, that's an ancient, ancient part of the world.

Yeah. So whatever's like history is long and misunderstood and something's going on. Something's going on. I can't explain it. And I've kind of just been like, I'm kind of like, at this point in my life, I'm like, whatever.

I know I don't know everything. I'm just going to, I'm just going to do risk rolls in my basement. Yeah, he's awesome. Martin, if you're watching, come over. Let's party.

Yeah. I love this guy. Does he talk about it? A little bit. A little bit.

I'm so curious.

“If you think he would come on here and tell a story?”

Yep. Really? Sure. Of course he would. I'm nervous.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. He's cool dude. Wow. I love him. I love him.

Yeah. Great soldier. Yeah.

Brother, you've had a pretty wild life.

It's been great. Really? Um, kind of fun. Happy, happy to be here. Um, yeah.

It's been good. It's been good.

“Well, I really enjoyed this conversation, man.”

Glad we did it. Joe, thank you so much. And really, like, I feel like it's kind of closed in the loop for something with my brother. Yeah. Well, we should tell everybody.

Uh, I knew your brother, uh, before I met you online, and this is from your brother. Your brother made this candle. And this candle now sit here. He, uh, is no longer with us. But the candle will remain.

Thank you so much for your time, Joe. My pleasure, brother. Anytime you want to get into arm wrestling, come on over. We'll get your grip strength working for you. No, no, no, I'm good.

But thank you. I appreciate it. Wonderful. And good luck. Yeah.

I need to. I'm going to need 16 months. 16 months, man. Maybe we'll talk to you before then. Yeah, again.

Yeah, cool. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks, brother.