Guides, instructions on sport are scarce

The body of texts dealing with arm-wrestling is thin.

2009’s Pulling John is a 76-minute documentary that divides narrative between then-retired champion John Brzenk, West Virginian Travis Bagent, and a Russian from Sochi named Alexey Voevoda, as they prepare for the Zloty Tur arm-wrestling championship in Warsaw.

It is a wonderful look at champion pullers, a narrower look at their training - though in one scene Voevoda is at a table grappling with a fellow Russian while two others aid the first by pulling a leather strap looped around Voevoda’s pulling hand - and virtually no examination at all of the technique and history of arm-wrestling.

In one sequence, documentarians play clips from the 1987 movie Over the Top and explain that producers shot the climactic scenes around a real-life arm-wrestling tournament in California that Brzenk won. “That movie brought so much worldwide attention to the sport. I thought that arm wrestling would finally be put on the map, but it didn’t work out that way,” he says.

Now former journalist and competitive arm wrestler James Retarides has written an electronic book, Strong Arm Tactics, in which he takes a look at the training and technique of the modern sport.

“The truth is that there is not enough empirical evidence to support a specific training [regimen] forarm-wrestling so I guess you are just going to have to either put this book down or trust me,” he says on the very first page.

The lack of textual consideration of the sport is curious given the focused training that champion arm wrestlers undergo and the arduous psychology involved in a “pull.”

“There [are] times in every match I think about quitting. Then, if I’m thinking about quitting, he’s definitely thinking about quitting, and that’s why I won’t ever quit,” says Michael “Monster Mike” Todd of Cabot, current left- and right-handed super heavyweight champion in the Ultimate Armwrestling League.

“A lot of success on the arm-wrestling table can be attributed to psychological factors, namely self-efficacy, the belief that you are capable,” writes Retarides.

“In any one-on-one sport, confidence in your training and technique and the ability to refrain from believing the other person is better are central to your success. In the same way that sports teams respond to a more confident coach, individuals respond most positively on the field of athletic play if they are confident in their team and most importantly, in themselves … On the arm-wrestling table, you are the only man on the team and often will not have a coach. Therefore, you must have a high level of self-efficacy and determination.”