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The Joe Rogan Experience.

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Check, check, check. What's happening, my man? I'm so happy. So happy to see you. Wow. What's going on? Joe, thank you so much, first of all. My pleasure.

I feel like, you know, 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, I'll tell you that. That's very weird.

Yeah, I bet. I bet. But look, I mean, you've talked to everybody on 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 Brezink. I don't know. 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.

yeah his arms don't straighten out no they don't unfortunately that's crazy yeah 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 was uh i got into club arm wrestling like arm wrestling with my when i was a kid but i got in a club arm wrestling around like 18 by the time i was 20 or so we have this champion called crazy george okay he's like a very old very decorated champion and uh 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 a silly a silly wish right so it started early like i think i was like probably like in my late 20s and it just the range started to shrink and how 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 uh bone and scar tissue just chip bones and stuff chip bones um dr pollack bless his soul at the uh ottawa hospital has extended my career till till this age you know uh yeah it can that's probably one of the worst chronic conditions that arm wrestlers get is uh 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 100 100%. Yeah. Yeah? So I was probably, it was like 2013, so like 13 years ago is when I had my first surgery. And at that point, like trying to move forward, trying to move forward.

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.

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 wrestle? No, no, no. There's lots of arm wrestlers. It's it's a style thing. 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 most of the greats anyways on everything it doesn't affect me in the sport i i actually i call it weaponized arthritis okay because there are ways you can kind of make your loss of range work for you at times really yeah because there's 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 uh you know arm bar you know does it did it help you in arm bars as well oh god no it doesn't a good jujitsu guy is still gonna he's still gonna arm

bar me no it's also the bones would just snap yeah it's just gonna snap higher yeah yeah snap in bad places yeah did you ever try hanging from like a chin-up bar to straighten it out um i've tried a lot of things i saw a video with you in uh juju mufu yeah is that how you say his name? Yeah, Juji. Juji. Juji. Juji Mufu? Yeah, Juji Mufu. Okay. John Call. Yeah, he's great. He's great. He's such a character.

But they were rolling. They were trying to do some stuff with these big metal bars to roll out your muscles. And you were in fucking agony. I was like, that is crazy to watch. You really can't straighten your arm. And 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 bars? I've tried so many things. But I, when I was young, when I was 20, I was wishing for the day that I could be like crazy George. So 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, um, that is probably the root cause of it. Um, what is the capsule made out 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. Yeah.

It'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. Like do you know about David Goggins' 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—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 it on 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 move 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 rode a stationary bike for like fucking five months like a maniac and then started running again bone on bone beautiful Love it. It's crazy. He's wild, man. See if you can find what the condition is.

It says it's called Wolf's Law, biological principle stating that bones adapt and grow thicker in denser than physical stress. Is that? I think that's it.

Yeah. And his grew 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. Yeah. So it just kept growing out. And if you see, do we have the images? of the surgery it's i know i sent it to you a long ass time yeah i mean it's showing a bunch of pictures from when he was on here so see that where he the fingerprints on his shin that's because he had so much edema 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's the 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 wedge off a piece of wood. You lower it, level it out, and then screw it in place.

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Yeah, for sure I have something similar. I've been bone on bone for probably two decades. Really? Yeah. All the cartilage is gone? Nothing. So when I went and got my surgery, doctor told me I have no, like there's nothing there but bone. He said devon maybe we can extend maybe we can give you another couple years on your on your career maybe how long ago did you say this uh that was uh like 15 years ago i'm probably no kidding i probably pulled off my best show ever six weeks ago so really how old are you i'm 51 that's amazing and and 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 you know well goggins is a perfect example of that and i guess

so are you it's like the idea that you can't do something is based on when

most people quit yeah uh pain is a interesting thing to try and master you know um it's it's information and you have to be able to 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 tendinous structures of the elbow are super super taxed in arm wrestling And the process of rehabilitation and development of these structures under great duress and trauma is difficult. And it requires a lot of time and monotony, which a lot of people aren't willing to put in.

I'm shocked at how much time grip training takes. Yeah. It takes forever. It's disgusting. I've been trying to jack 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. And I'm always tired. So, like, every time I squeeze that thing, my hands are always sore. So I'm like, shit, I've got to take some time off to see if I can get it stronger. And so I'm doing all these wrist curls. And I've got the forearm finisher from Golden Grip. And I've got these big fat things that I use for cables to rotate wrists. 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, like, how many days a week do you do grip training?

What's your guess?

Every day. Of course. Every day. Every day. And is that the way to do it? Is that the smart way to do it? Because I know you talk to 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 of 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 necessary. Grip is more like defense and added offense, but the first step is to try and tax the other person's grip. How do you do that? I think that everything—we're opening up technical arm wrestling. Open it up. Let's go. 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 is basically an attempt to get a better grip. and if i can the 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 they're they're less efficient okay yeah so it's about attacking weakness more than it is about going

where you're strong so they're the most efficient when it's palm to palm and everything's gripped

nice and tight and as soon as you get like out here you want the pressure uh interaction to be unfair to your advantage right 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 to think about pinning each other right and this is this is a very short-sighted way to think about the sport you 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 i so like proportionately in my workload if i was doing 21 sets 21 or i think i do 21 working sets typically in my workouts um one of them is

dedicated purely to grip every day all day all day so you just do them throughout the day

i i lead a very simple life at the moment so structure it like how do you do it uh 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 base it off of a week okay so i train with the 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 gotta do i'm

doing it my highest highest capacity i i have uh my my family we're all our wrestlers so my kid uh he i mean he's a pro too wow yeah he's competing this weekend that's crazy yeah it's crazy so we like we we have our own thing where we'll hit a hit a like we'll train together um but really two hard sessions uh a week and then whatever i fit in with my kids uh and then uh the rest of the days are like mindless not just the monotony level is extreme uh my wife and i i'm retired right so i have nothing but time uh and i try to make i just try and put everything into it so like it's all day man it's all day i wake up and i'm training

like all day uh 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 help

create this uh this actually machine is handed down for me from uh the best female arm wrestler ever to exist uh leanne dufresne uh johnny roberts 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 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 at 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. Swiss ball? You know, like a Swiss ball, like people do like squats on them, like the ball in the gym. People do like.

Oh, like a BOSU ball? Is that what it's called?

BOSU is like a half, right?

Oh, is that what it is?

Swiss ball is like just the big round balls that. Okay. Yeah. And you see people. Like a yoga ball. Yeah. Whatever they call them. Right. You ever jumped on a Swiss ball and done squats or anything? No. Okay.

Well. I have the half one. Yeah. That I do stuff on.

Yeah. Swiss ball is way more unstable. So it's a 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? 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 room. 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 100 repetitions. So lots of blood flow.

And when you're doing 100 repetitions, like what, 50% max weight? No. What do you weigh? Nothing. 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 basically, it all revolves around these arm wrestling practice days where it's 100 percent. This is what I want my body to maximize about. But the off days, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, 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 um what

I've found is, in my opinion, you only have so much energy. And this is something we got to really weigh in. Because if I could just smash, you know, heavy stuff all the time and take steps forward, I'd 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 specific task as good as possible. the the high rep training heals me it heals me a lot of people are like oh that's a lot of work and i'm like it's really not um 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 uh it's this is highly

debated okay but i'm proving it over and over over the years i i started doing because arm wrestling is a strength sport no doubt about it uh so right away people think oh you know heavy weight and you know high reps is dangerous because you're going to become an endurance guy and it's it's going to make you weaker um but when you go low your your work volume is tremendous okay if you're doing light 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 this is really why i do it the healing aspects the overall metabolic conditioning that you get um yeah and and the taper is a big part of it as well you know uh but yeah i'm doing all my heavy lifting specifically in the sport like i'm not i'm not doing my heavy lifting at this time in my career uh and also i'm 51 and i'm plagued with injuries so i have to be very specific i have to be very precise uh 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 what was the initial approach just lift as heavy as you can yeah lift as heavy as I can well you're

giant dude already right so you already naturally have like big bones big genetics so did you power lift like what did you 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 i even did um iron man for a bit uh but it's gotta be so hard for you yeah it's all that weight uh yeah i so i would when i say iron man apologies uh 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 So that race, a winning time is 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 Ironman are average size or even smaller. But yeah, I mean, I'm a bigger person. But yeah, I did a lot of different sports, but I've always loved arm wrestling. It's always been the one I've 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 arm wrestling with my grandmother when I was like four years old.

With 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 beat her. That's crazy. I never beat her. It's funny. Her name was LaVon. And the current super heavyweight world champion is LaVon. So I've never beat either of them. Yeah. It's a bit trippy. yeah, so I started, I started young. Um, I, I love arm wrestling because it's, uh, it's a very safe fight. Okay. Like I, I, I love fighting. Everything in my life has been about fighting and, um, arm wrestling is one of those fight sports that has super low cost. Like we don't punch each other in the head. Uh, I'll be able to walk, uh, nothing on my spine. Uh, 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 yeah what yeah that's cool right that's incredible i love it how's that possible yeah it the hand is weird like this thing here is designed for volume and it just slowly builds you know the hand is the structure is has so much connective tissues in it, so much tense.

And that's just, it takes so long to build. You know, age is an 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 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. uh 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 we are wrestling each other's garages and houses and um and it breeds a very tight family like i consider the club that i train with like they're my family like so um that's my i mean that's what sport's all about you know yeah yeah and 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 30s so very standard you know that's my buddy pork chop oh there's crazy George this is the guy okay so this guy one's crazy dude who's down there not the guy in the green shirt so these are both my good buddies and this is the guy who can't straighten his arms out 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 rule and you see Porkchop's 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's like 230 completely tremendously jacked and strong Yeah, and Porkchop is like a professional arm wrestler pulling at East versus West. Okay, that's our highest league. And Crazy George is, yeah. That's 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. How old is Crazy George in this film? He'd probably be late 60s here. Wow. 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 example. Jesus Christ. Look at that thing. That's so weird. Yeah, show that

Who the fuck has that muscle? That muscle is so weird I don't even think I have that. Where is that? That's nuts That's mine is non-existent. I was gonna interrupt. I saw it on this thumbnail and I was gonna say what is that? That's fucking crazy.

It's one of my dreams to have bodybuilders when they're, you know, IFBB just to be doing pronator poses one day, one day.

I don't even have that.

You got to first turn your thumb down.

Like that?

Yeah, and pop your wrist back. There it is. Where? See it? There it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go.

That's the one. Look at my little bitch-ass fucking little bitch-ass muscle. God, that's hilarious. That's gigantic.

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 twisting it twisting yeah it's it's it's weaponized right we get really strong and and there's a relationship between all the angles in the hand the hand is very complex right all sorts of stuff it 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 cup so there's a relationship between them so crazy george is like the master of

pro-national styles king's move is pro-nation style i over the course of my career change techniques change techniques probably my best technique is an open top roll or a king's move now yeah and and i learned a lot it's like the guy that one of my first coaches guy called troy eaton uh he he could never be george he couldn't be george we tried we tried we tried for years to figure them out so and that was back when i was like 20 right so i've been i've been studying this style for 30 years uh 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 very high level into your 50s i think uh is it this approach where you're just doing all these 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 it's a huge part of it yeah the the my my work volume probably exceeds most people in in the sport with that so metabolically and from a health perspective It keeps my tendons and ligaments really functional. And, you know, I'm just a very simple and obsessed person, and I arm wrestle at every opportunity. Don't you also have some very freaky genetics? Didn't Ryan? Yeah.

What is his last name?

Rossner. Rossner.

This guy's the best. Very interesting guy. Smartest person I know. 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 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.

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 wild.

I think that there's so many answers with genetics. I personally believe that, and 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 a information, you know, there's so much.

Well, it probably will be in the future as these all these techniques and all this new stuff comes out. CRISPR takes a bold leap toward silencing Down syndrome's extra chromosome. Wow. So scientists have taken an 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 it the most common chromosomal condition. So what is it doing here? OK, so Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School found a way to silence much of the extra chromosomes activity in the cell at once. Details of the research are published in a 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 i absorb everything i can from this guy but um i think that my genetics uh i think i'm predisposed to um endurance actually endurance 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 you know predispose me to to good but it's weird i don't know man listen to the genetic side of things i i'll sound silly if i try and talk too much about it i'll just tell you that there are 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 That's the thing. So this project that Ryan is doing, and I like to help him out a little bit. We've been looking at elite performers and with the goal to find favorable mutations. And yeah, we scanned Brian.

He's in the Bible. That guy's in the Bible. He's like, you know, David and Goliath. They're real people out there like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Brian. So his genetics are one out of every 500 million people. Isn't that something crazy along those lines? Yeah. He's he's completely a he's he's right at the peak of human performance right from a genetic standpoint. Just freakish. Free density. Yeah. Everything. Everything. And it's not just his bone density. The dude's mindset. Like there's many pieces of Brian's genetics that that make him a champion. But, yeah, he has some stuff in him that Ryan's never seen. Yeah, no, nobody, he has, and I probably shouldn't be speaking about other people's medical stuff, but I love Brian, and he can sue me if he wants. 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 the same. 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 and mine.

What does that mean?

It might be molecularly different or it might have – you're going to have to talk to Ryan.

His growth hormone is different. He'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 400 pounds.

Yeah, and he doesn't stop. He doesn't stop. but it's weird the the whole like down syndrome thing they can do stop codes 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 uh when the i guess mri 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 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 deadlift, 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 twitch muscle?

Like, they have a stop code on their fast twitch genetics.

Just naturally.

Doesn't make any sense at all. They're just born weird. Born super weird. Yet, they're capable of beating world records on the deadlift.

Wouldn't you think that deadlift is a fast twitch thing? Yeah. So I don't understand.

I don't 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. Eddie, you can sue me. Eddie Hall, I love you. I love you. Eddie's got a stop code in his jeans on fast twitch muscle makes no sense well

that doesn't make any sense it's no he moves so fast I know and he hits so fucking hard that's crazy it's crazy how is that possible I don't know I've seen that guy hit mitts and you know I know right I know is this what the Hercules no not that no something else okay oh that's myostatin that's myostatin inhibitors yeah so regulates the production of myostatin a protein that stops muscles from growing too large so with myostatin inhibitors they've done that with i'm sure you've seen those whippets yes of course so whippets are a weird dog it's a very skinny fast dog and some whippets are born with this genetic mutation that's a myostatin inhibitor and they look like the hulk it's the great show an image of that please it is the craziest that doesn't look like a real dog right that doesn't look like a real dog that's a crazy Bodybuilder dog because if you see a regular whippet you show me a regular whippet now, please. Yeah regular whippets That's a yeah, look at a regular whippet like a real fast Like almost like a greyhound looking dog and then you see the ones with the myostatin 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 genetic therapy that gives you full of statin So there's a balance between full of stat and myostatin from what I understand like the

key that turns on the cell for growth is um is folostatin and myostatin tells the cell to stop growing you're big enough right important very important yeah and so if you don't have myostatin all that that turnkey gets is folostatin so the only thing signal that you're ever getting with a myostatin deficiency is folostatin and so yeah so they offer a genetic therapy that increases your full stat they offer it to who hmm anybody anybody ready to get jacked anybody with enough money yeah yeah yeah there's 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 folostatin drops and that's why people get smaller they shrink as they get older right and folostatin just helps you maintain muscle mass yes so it's it's i think it's mostly um promoted as a anti-aging remedy but absolutely like you want to get your performance up yeah

increase they're doing so many wild things now they've got this new therapy now for people with disc degeneration i'm sure you have it i have it a lot of people have it especially anybody who does jujitsu has it your your discs just get worn out from getting cranked on and like 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 it squashes but now they've got stuff that they can inject into the disc that inflates the discs yeah and 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 ways. I always tell everybody, and I'll tell everybody again, Louis Simmons, his invention, that invention, the reverse hyper, fucking incredible. One of 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 D-cell 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, it's wild 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're 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—well, the thing with regular sports, the stuff that's pushing this stuff is performance-enhancing drugs. You know, peptides, stem cells, not really—that's not really a performance-enhancing drug, but for injuries. but testosterone all the 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 vitor balfour when he was in his prime trt balfour yeah trt vitor was the scariest fucking guy ever yeah because he was jacked up with testosterone but he was also 37 years old with a lifetime of combat sport experience a lifetime of intelligence but hadn't lost any speed hadn't lost any strength and 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 or yeah but if you could

get them on the sauce yeah right where's the limit yeah right 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 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 won any records other than the one guy in the swimming. But he wore a prohibited suit that lets you swim quicker, apparently. I don't understand. yeah but i was hoping like you're gonna see some freakish superhuman performances but i feel like if that's gonna happen that's gonna take years i don't think you would get the kind of gains that these people are hoping to get to achieve like world record super freak human performance unless you're doing that stuff for a long like you know as well as anybody that training takes forever takes to build strength to build speed to build endurance takes a long time you think you're gonna get strength in three months like you get a little stronger for sure but you're not gonna get freakish strength for fucking years it takes years years decades like juji mufu like how long has that guy been lifting weights that guy's a fucking freak yeah yeah yeah you

can't build this stuff overnight and i bet he would melt a piss cup listen i i think not a chance juji juji look at so many look at myself included you know i i care about performance this is this is what what i care about and so many people fall into the same boat look at that guy hey chance of

hell that dude's natural you know i'll tell you uh juji is probably amazing though that he can do that that kind of flexibility with that kind of mass is look at that while overhead pressing a full side split that's nuts on chairs Jean-Claude Van Damme style. Jiu-Ji started out tricking.

What does that mean?

It's a form of... That sounds like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he actually started off... Sounds like he's picking up guys. Yeah, no, no. Jiu-Ji is super cool. It's like flipping... He was on America's Got Talent? Yeah. It's like a form of acrobatics

or gymnastics right yeah well i've seen him do acrobatic 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 and uh yeah he's massive and healthy and, you know, absolutely kicking ass. Probably the most positive human being that I've met.

He seems super positive in his YouTube videos. Yeah. And we have snorted his fucking smelling thoughts. 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 mask can move like that.

So Juji is actually the inspiration for this modern, this latest way that I'm training. It was actually. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Juji 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. Two-hand 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 club just 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. You just hold him in place.

Okay.

Right, like defense work in jiu-jitsu. Exactly. Okay. Okay. But just to help out the, that guy typically, um, we'll do two arm work. Okay. To kind of flip the script for him. So somebody can hold like me with two arms and kind of let me get to red line. Yeah. So Juju and I were doing that like a year and a half ago and it was so good and 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 Juji.

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 sport-specific? Exactly. And does he arm wrestle? He does, a little bit. Juji does everything. But why did you working with him make you train differently?

Juji's a 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, Juji is a wonderful, creative, hardworking guy. And when you get a chance to train with him, it doesn't matter that his 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 Juju came over. And I normally, on days that I do table work, I do not hit the gym, okay? Because I don't want anything to kind of impact my table work. And because I only had a day with Juji, 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, you know, the singles and everything that I'd done earlier in the day had a slight effect. And I was like, I can't ever let that happen again. I need to make sure I put all my energy into this table training. And it's funny, you know, being 51 and having over 30 years competitively in the sport, I still feel like I learn. You know, I still feel like I change things from event to event. Yeah.

Well, that's a sign you're doing something fun. Yeah. That's the key. You continue to get better at it and continue to grow at it. key to 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 a recipe that i'm going to follow pretty much from event to event and this is all made by you is made by me um and i i watch everything. You know, I, I love arm wrestling, but I'm looking at sports. I'm always trying to get better. Um, 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, uh, 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, uh, 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 the 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 uh the greatest um criticism that i always receive as an athlete uh 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 uh but it's it's interesting you know cross training versus specialization uh i have a long background in in very broad training okay like i i once upon a time was a fit human being in 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 uh 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 uh 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 dead lifting and squatting is that it helps everything because your whole body just becomes stronger and it would just 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

obviously i'm not an arm wrestling 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 arm wrestling work and i'm like okay here i am if i want to beat levon um what do i do from here and i just i'm like more wrist curls you know uh look at my what does he do uh he's a bit more balanced than me he he levon lifts super heavy weights uh like stupid what does this dude looks like show me show me levon what is his last name saginashvili 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. Look at the size of this motherfucker. This this is That can't be real. Is that AI? Is that picture AI? No. That one right there. Okay, that's real. Oh my god This is real. I don't know Jamie. That might be real. He might just be pumped. Lavon is the pinnacle

Okay, we scanned him too and surprise. He's a weirdo also. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Look at the size of that motherfucker. He's in Little Rock in two days. In Little Rock, Arkansas? Yeah. Where does he live right now? Georgia. Georgia the country. There's so many weirdos that come from Georgia. Really? Yeah. Proportionately, their strength is not normal. LeVon is, he hasn't, nobody has beat this guy since 2017. He has absolutely flattened the field, okay?

He's so hairy, too. He looks like a primitive man. He looks like a science project. Look at the fucking size of that guy.

Oh, my God.

Smart guy. I bet. Very cool guy. I absolutely love LeVon. He has beaten the piss out of me at every opportunity.

He's so big.

Yeah, he is. He is so big, and he's so good. He grew up in the trenches arm wrestling. He's not one of these guys who came in. He made his way through the world championships. Yeah, he hasn't lost in 10 years. And so does he do different stuff than you do? He does. A lot of the guys have different formulas, okay? LeVon does a lot of pull-ups, really heavy ones, and he does a lot of really heavy curls. This is the base, but he does all the same. Like, we do all the same exercises, just 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 um that's what he used to look like that's crazy shout out to steroids shout out shout out to all the scientists out

there he's very young in that first photo of course you know he he slowly evolved through the world championships to what he is today um yeah it's interesting when when you see different champions and i try and learn from everybody i i watch what everybody does i i see what they're doing uh you have to also consider where your body's at okay i can't do the things i did when i was 25 physically i just can't i i i have i have like i said i've had surgeries

um but yet you can still arm wrestle yeah so so obviously you're very strong in these particular areas and it's not holding you back at all so what what is holding you back um let me say injuries

well arm wrestling is a big thing okay there's several things that you can kind of choose to focus on probably my biggest limiting factor is my elbow because i've had multiple surgeries on it i burn 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 kind of trying to attack the person's arm more uh 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 and quite honestly my hooking now my this stability is probably pretty good um i think i think that we do we all as athletes do the best thing we think we can and um i think that the work that i do is very precise like the way the levon trains and i and and please i don't like to criticize levon he's the best okay um but egotistically and arrogantly i'm going to say that my training is more precise than his okay so i'm working on very precise angles where he's a sledgehammer at times you know um like i'm working on very fine angles through my wrist uh 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 uh levon's base movements his his role his is i mean he's doing he's doing 180 kilo curl you know two hands or one hand two but that's a that's crazy but he's the amount of weight that he's wrist curling i'm never i'm never gonna get there okay i'm never gonna 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 onto like his fingertip and not let it go um 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 as strong as i can what do you weigh now today i'm probably 265 and so you're giving up

a considerable amount. Yeah, when I compete, 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. I hope when I pull him I'll be 310 or 320, you know.

And when you do that, what would you do to get that big? Would you add a bunch of weightlifting stuff?

No.

No. What would you do, just eat?

Eat. Stay in my basement, you know. Yeah, yeah.

But he's doing all this other stuff. This is why 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 wrist flexion, while it's incredible to have great legs. Like, I go to tournaments sometimes and my legs are sore. But typically, the reason why you win and lose the match is very small things in the hand and 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, apart from LeVon, it's working. This guy, he's raised the sport, and I continue to chase him. I continue to try and beat this dude you know my wife gotten close the first time the first time he tore my bicep oh whoa you know see see that tattoo uh-huh see it's a cat with 415 I used to call him a 415 pound pussy you know in the workup to the match I was teasing him and in Georgian it says LaVon was here because he ripped it second round uh so that was the first time was a wash uh the second time i pulled him uh i stopped him i stopped him round one what does that mean so a lot of times in arm wrestling get everything straight don't move go and uh 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 arm wrestled for round one, yeah, okay. So this is the last time I pulled him, which is 2024.

And when you say pulled him, it means you have a match with him. Yeah, that's right. Okay.

So everything goes to the straps.

And I'm telling you, like. So is 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 use chalk but yeah every this sport

is a strap-based sport at this point like rules are evolving in arm wrestling it used to be well in some leagues 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 um but yeah so we get to the straps and This first round is the closest I've gotten to him. And in this match, I think he might have ripped my spine apart. 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 um 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 for 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 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 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 match is over but see this is best of seven so from here he runs me over but this is the closest I've gotten okay we've practiced since then we've 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 gonna happen one more time for sure it's uh it's what keeps me in my basement it's one guy this guy the size of that motherfucker he's awesome oh he's a he's a beautiful human i i i love i love this guy he's he's the he's lifting the sport in terms of performance you know like he's Thank you. hard to deal with yeah and that's it man it just gets worse it just gets worse but uh yeah so i i can still win in like the 115 kilo division in the 105 kilo division 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 what 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 gonna do everything you can

so so even though you're a champ at your weight class is the open that open haunts you haunts me

Yeah. I've been there before. Like, so in 2008, I was actually, I won against this legendary figure of the sport, John Brzezink. He's considered the greatest of all time. John Brzezink, basically for 40 years, 40 years from the time he was like 18 to like almost 60. Okay. He went undefeated for like, basically undefeated for like 25 years. Yeah. He ain't 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 Brzezink. John Brzezink's the GOAT. 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? He's like 60, 61 or, yeah. Wow. Yeah, he's the man. This guy's the man. So you know the movie Over the Top? Mm-hmm. So Sylvester, that's actually John. The tournament was real. Really? Yeah, that was a real—the movie followed the tournament, and John is actually the guy who won it.

And John's not that big.

No, he's not. How much does John weigh? On a good day, on a great day, John's like 230. Wow. But when he was young and healthy, probably 195. So when 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 Brzezink. So John started arm wrestling when he was a kid with his dad. And he's one of the first guys. Can we see him do it?

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to.

John's one of the first guys who arm wrestling has kind of evolved in its 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. And I'm going to get better by arm wrestling by doing pecs and glutes and, you know, getting 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?

Isn't that wild?

That's crazy.

Right, so it gave...

He's not a big guy.

No, he's not. That's a former Russian champion, Zauer. Actually, no, Zauer might be Georgia. He might've been Russian at this time, but he's a, he's a Georgian. Um, yeah. Yeah. John's technique was way above everybody's way, way above. Uh, I remember coming up, like I had heard about John Brzezink for years before I ever saw him because, you know, it's pre-internet, right? John Brzezink like silently ruled the arm wrestling world for decades, you know, pre-internet, pre, pre, pre all this stuff. And yeah, and he went around the world beating all the monsters, all the, and this is who I actually got 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 heavyweights, if you call me small. Like, I'm bigger than John, but not by a lot. Not by a lot. See, Dennis Saplankov 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 lift weights. He doesn't lift weights All he does is arm wrestle. All he does is arm wrestle. No other kind of physical training at all. He's a mechanic he's a special guy listen that's incredible man the the the arm wrestling world loves and worships john brazenk he's he's the goat he's like the forefather like um 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 weight so much specialization john is kind of poster boy for

for specialization and what kind of training did he do dude he arm wrestled just arm wrestle he

would do specific things when he was arm wrestling that we keep asking the same questions about john um like we think like some people think he had like a secret setup in his basement and stuff like but everything kind of points towards um even if he's kind of kidding us and tricking us it's Certainly not a lot. He arm wrestled with his dad as a kid, okay? And, you know, they're practicing all the time. So this Iceman, 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, yeah. Johnny Walker. Johnny Walker, yeah, Iceman. 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

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Yeah, but no, John arm wrestled all, like arm wrestling is going to make you strong. Oh, imagine. Oh, you will get, 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 want something that can get you really sore arm wrestling will get you so sore that you can barely move i i've been so sore from arm wrestling matches i can't even walk i can't even get up for for days for for days like wow yeah yeah yeah unbelievable because it's something about the way the body's 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 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 So, yeah, 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 when was the last time he did it?

Last time he competed was in Dallas. He competed against a guy called Yoshi Kanai, who's the number one guy from Japan. John is way past his prime, okay? Like, when John was, like, in his 30s, he was like the LeVon, 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 wrestler. Like, if you're from Georgia or Turkey or Kazakhstan, you know. so the level started rising when did this start happening um i think that governments 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 in and 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 um 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 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 um yeah that's a big step right and that

happened around uh 2015 and do you think that's because the internet like youtube videos like popularity increases tiktok instagram that kind of shit i that was massive but it happened a bit

later um first what happened a lot of small little steps uh you know there was a documentary pulling john that came out uh there was a couple rich guys who thought arm wrestling was cool and they just started to run leagues uh robert drank with the ual uh ultimate arm wrestling league out of california i mean it went from like when i first started the sport mike google 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 um that was it uh and then with by by By 2010 or so, even before that, the PAL, we were talking about thousands of dollars, $10,000. WAL came along and we got a massive influx of money. You were talking about $20,000, okay? And then we were on ESPN, so there were sponsors, 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 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 kicking 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 is good for tiktok attention span You know, you can see a home. And then, yeah, so East vs. West came along, and now we're everything. UFC, we're like the UFC of arm wrestling now, East vs. West. All the best guys in the world all pull at East vs. West, and there's an event every seven weeks international.

So, like, what does 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 definitely don't need a side job. You definitely don't. And you're probably definitely making a healthy six figures, you know, definitely. So, yeah, so East versus West kind of raised the level. After COVID, it's not the same sport. It's not. Like, the champions now, like, 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 LeVon.

Right. Is there any drug testing?

At East versus West, there's not. Okay. So it's F1. You know, everything goes. But –

What does F1 mean?

You know, like IndyCar? Uh-huh. Everybody's got the same car. Right. F1, like innovation. Right. Innovation. WAF, government-funded, that has testing.

What is WAF?

Sorry, World Arm Wrestling Federation. So World Arm Wrestling 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 annually, different part of the world every year. That's tested.

it's such a universal thing like i remember 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 i love the sport uh i i think that it's a great sport because of its safety its longevity simplicity yeah beautiful sport but there's a lot of aspects to it it's simple but you're still learning it is so it can't 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 uh 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 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

your nutrition your sleep everything everything yeah 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 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 and I've met probably in my entire life, probably like two people who I would consider completely pure, you know, like basically like a Jesus Christ kind of person, like no sin. Okay. But, and on the other side of, I've met only like a couple of 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, um, 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 a kind of a a presentation by this by this guy mac okay he's a geneticist as well and he was talking about how life only exists in this balance between chaos and order and 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, and a white sticker, which is representative of order. And after I compete, 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 a plan so that when I move into structure, I have a new kind of plan.

So how do you structure that? Like when you say you move into chaos, like you allow yourself to not have a plan. So this is obviously very planned.

Yes. Yeah. So I will move from major, my life is structured that I'm moving, 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, LeVon, in like 16 months. It's forever. It's an eternity, you know. So I am now in this period when I can travel. I can be more open. In a way, 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. OK, 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 a it's an aid for me psychologically to remain disciplined. 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 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 wrist curls in a day you know this is the difficult you do 10 hours of wrist curls

dude i do i i'll go 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 the 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 and left i'm going back to pumpkin training, which is right-hand only. Why do they call that pumpkin training? You know about growing giant pumpkins?

No.

You know, you ever seen those fairs where they have like 800 pounds, right?

Yeah.

So what that teaches is if you want to have a giant pumpkin, you pinch off all the flowers on the vine, except for one. Oh. Yeah, my giant pumpkin. Yeah, so I've tried and put everything into the right. I put on and 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 mean you don't do wrist curls or anything with your left hand nothing nothing nothing really yeah yeah now is this a energy energy resource allocation thing yes yeah it's interesting interesting yeah is there a difference between your right and your left yeah jesus yeah so you

see and i i came up with this theory you know a little bit because of just nature okay and i see

how nature works um but uh yeah you have one giant is this one bit bigger look at the size

of the difference it's a bit it's a bit bigger it's twice as big okay and and i was balance okay i was equal i i was left hand world champion also okay i i've but but as of age i'm like how can i remain at the top of the sport i'm gonna 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 this limited less 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 um and i think that if you were to when you

Can I stop you? Yeah, yeah. We say heaps of criticism by who, and is it valid? I don't think it's valid. So who's criticizing you?

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 of things that lead me to this. Okay. The, 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 somehow there's this amazing compensation that happens. Um, another thing is we have freaks in the sport. We have, we attract some real weirdos. Okay. A guy called Oleg Zock or, uh, or Matthias Schlitty. okay and these are hell boys real life hell boys 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 oleg it's oleg or matthias they're our best examples oleg is is better like oleg oleg's a world champion what's his last name zock what a great name oh he's so cool yeah and that's the dude yeah that's the dude and i've fought him i love the size of his

fucking left arm that is 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 and i was the current world champion and the

kid almost beat me okay yeah yeah left-handed left-handed yeah um jesus christ his arm is insane. Isn't that awesome? That is so crazy. Yeah. He has the arm of a 300 pound man.

Dude. This episode is brought to you by Beneful. Dogs of the world. Lend me your ears, snoots, and little toe beans. We've been sitting and staying for boring food for too long. It's time to demand high quality ingredients fresh from the pantry. Together with Beneful Freshly Prepared Meals we can start on At 170 pounds, he was almost not even the world champion in his division. He was almost the world champion in the open. God, look at his 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 he but his right 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 we have like an even distribution across our body but i believe that his arterial spread is different i i think he's got a heavy heavy arterial flow to one side this is just your own personal theory i've heard i talked to matias 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 um 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 uh is largely determined by the circulation of that the genetic you know peace receives um and i think with guys like this it happened like in utero that is that left arm is fucking crazy yeah yeah and he got in a vicious car crash a horrible one almost killed him um and he's he rehabbed and he's and once again he's he's the world champ again in the 85 kilo division completely and he like he should be dead like he broke everything like super trauma and he's still the best uh pieced it back together again yeah pieced them back together and he's still he's still the man um but yeah but what 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 i think that it's the blood flow that really it heals it strengthens um and a lot of the thing is is um 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 Like clearly he's working that one arm more than he's working the left arm.

Excuse me, the right 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 like 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?

Yeah, with them. But I believe the reason why it's expressing that way is because of an 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? Like, does it change the expression of the arteries 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 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 has adapted over years. Yeah. And look, 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 it 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 amount that I'm doing between my right and left arm, sometimes it's equal. Sometimes 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.

Now I've just swung it back. So I go to the club and I'm basically arm wrestling everybody I can 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 percent work on the right and maybe like just 10 percent, like just, you know, just for timing and whatever on the left. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Super specialized. Yeah.

Yeah. It's insane.

I was I'm sorry. I was so worried that I was going to develop back issues, imbalance issues. Yeah. None of that ever happened.

Huh. Yeah. Guys do that from archery. They develop imbalance issues just from pulling a bow one-sided. 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 him out. 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 confuse it there's an interesting comparison in

jiu-jitsu because there's a lot of guys that have like a very strong right side attack like Eddie Bravo for instance Eddie Bravo's attack is almost always on the right side of the body 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 um so much is about you know being able to have an icebreaker you know something that stops a match or wins you the match and at a world level it's it's everything like 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 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. I know you've been on it, Magnus. Magnus. How do you say his last name? Mitbo. Mitbo. And he had that one dude who's just a super freak.

Yves Gravel.

Yes. He trains with me. Okay. That guy went right into arm wrestling and 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. That guy also has, like, enormous leg-sized forearms. Yves Gravel. See if you can find him training with Magnus because they're in Yves' basement where he does all of his training. And he's doing these, like, how many millimeters is the holes? Like 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. Like, it's like credit card. He can do pull-ups off of a credit card.

That's insane.

Yeah. How? I don't know. I don't know how he does it. It doesn't—and, like, he has, like, rounded surfaces where there is nothing to bite on. Right there. There's nothing.

So he's just chalking up his fingers and he hangs off of those? I want to 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 arm wrestling, and he's like 150 pounds. But it's 40 pounds of his forearms. 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 won it his first year after arm wrestling six weeks.

What?

Yeah. That's crazy.

And he weighs what? 160?

Like 150 pounds. Oh, my God. No, Yves Gravel is a complete weirdo. I've never in my life met somebody who can do the stuff with grip that he can do.

And it's all that training that he's doing. He's doing all this insane grip training. Yeah. Which makes me think, like, what if you did that stuff?

Yes. Let me tell you, as good as Eve is now, he's going to get even better. Okay? I can only imagine. Yeah. Nobody is touching Eve's fingers. But like I talked about earlier, so if you kind of relate it to climbing, okay? Can you show me? Show me some stuff with that guy doing things.

Well, I was trying to find that one.

But 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 powerlifting for grip.

Right.

Yeah, and he's the best at that, too.

Yeah, it's just nuts, man. Yeah, it's really nuts.

Yeah. So there is a high degree of crossover, right? Yeah. There is. but there are slight intricacies like a kind of way to think about it 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 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 gonna be so so difficult it's fun to work with them our club in Ottawa we have like super freaks now we have all these new guys with ridiculous potential we got a guy come in who's bigger than

Brian Shaw did you ask this can you show me some video there's a bunch right and I'm on not his channel too I'm like it's bouncing back in between so here's doing

fat grip one arm chin-ups did you see the uh the thomas inch you know see the thomas inch on the left yes right nobody picks up the thomas inch when they're 150 you know that's nuts yeah it's

crazy like this kind of grip is just insane oh my god that's crazy he'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-armed 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 in him he's dwarfed by this guy's 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 forearms. That's bonkers. Yeah. Yeah. Eve is a – and he's an artist too. He makes masks. Masks? Yeah. You know, like movie masks?

Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's his main job. He makes masks and he can climb anything.

yeah he's super cool guy yeah wow well just so seeing that though makes me think of a guy is 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 muscle so why wouldn't everybody do that if a guy is 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 his grip work, and his grip work is so high, and it does have a lot of crossover. It does. Would 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 Eve, and 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. He has an amazing ability to hold on to anybody, okay? And that's going to take him really, really far in the sport. uh but i think that as he's eve i've told him he he's older in terms of entry but he has world championship potential you know he's less than a year in the sport wow yeah he's been arm wrestling since like last november yeah give him give him like uh 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 wow yeah It won't take him long. Yeah, 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 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 train. 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 and if he's not feeling right he won't do the training so he'll to rest he'll abort a training session because it doesn't feel right well yeah and i and i i'm like i'm doing it no matter right right interesting yeah look at whatever i've seen it it's very detailed it's um where did he learn this from i think he's he's crazy he loves armor sorry he loves he loves climbing and i think he's just obsessed and i think he probably digests everything I think he probably studies everything about climbing and strength, and he just put it all together.

So what is he doing here?

It looks like a static wrist test. It looks like he's measuring it through a weight to see how much in a static capacity he can generate.

Wow. Yeah. Pushing isometrics for arm wrestling. Yeah. So all just wrist curling ability.

isometric yeah maximum output which is really the main strength that arm wrestlers need that locked isometric or even negative strength um and all his squeezing that's crazy yeah 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 with 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 because.

Oh, I'm sure. Because when you get a freak like that, like out of nowhere. What is he doing here?

Right. So he's working his curls, and he's adding resistance through the elastic. So you can see, this is not a climber exercise, I don't think, anymore. He's really switching, you know. To arm wrestle. I think he's got the bug. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It won't be long. It won't be long. He'll be at East versus West for a 70-kilo world title.

Well, it's such an 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-pound, 160-pound body, and you're doing these 180-pound single-arm rows. Yeah. Like where's the force coming from? Like where's the – is it tendon strength? Is it – where's the tissue, right? Like you look at Eddie Hall. You're like, okay, that makes sense that that guy could lift that much weight. massive yeah this guy's not massive 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 you'd say well it probably runs or something looks like a normal guy that's fit he 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 uh a lot of guys you know in the in the communities like strong man power lifting other strength disciplines they get immense strength through their body through their shoulders and different parts that by the time it goes through the chain through the elbow through the wrist into 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 jiu-jitsu grip is so important i never wanted to rely only on my muscles and not have a strong grip like 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 curson once who's a strength and conditioning trainer and i said what do you think is like the number one thing that fighters uh lack on he said foot strength yeah i said foot strength he goes yeah foot strength he goes once your foot strength breaks down everything breaks down your movement breaks down your power breaks down your ability to get out of the way of things the ability to close the distance yeah yeah on the grip strength what is this what did he get 160 oh that's crazy i got more than him yeah he just did it really hard too that's crazy but that makes sense i'm 200 pounds right but it's it's it's a chain and

grip is a part of the functional hand chain right you know well it's clearly he's way stronger than me with rose the the interesting thing with grip is grip is only a small part of control oh this guy uh what's that guy's name he's he's actually the best andre right what did he get he's actually the best climber in the world right now 161 same thing yeah okay that's crazy Yeah. Derek Lewis got 218. Derek Lewis, the guy who fights in the UFC, and he did it casually. Yeah. I mean, Derek's got giant paws, like catcher's mitt paws. Yeah. And he pulled 218. He got higher than anybody. And it didn't even look like he was trying.

The guy I just arm wrestled, I think, had the world record for some time. Vitaly Lillettin. What was that? I don't know what the number is, but I know he had the world record. Vitaly Lillettin. So I'm actually not big on grip. I'm not. Really? I'm not.

But most people are. There's a guy that I follow on Instagram. Jamie, pull him up. His name is Michael Eckert. And 351. Boom! Is that Vitaly? Yeah.

Oh, my God. So listen. So listen. So mine is probably like 70 pounds, but I beat him.

Wait a minute. No, no, no.

It's terrible. No, no, no. I'm crippled.

Shut the fuck up. I'm telling you. There's no way I squeeze stronger than you. Yeah, you do. That's not possible. No, you probably do. That is literally not possible.

I'm telling you. Look at the size of this guy. Yeah, he's like 6'9". Like, he's about 3. Yeah. Yeah.

That is so crazy. 154 kilograms is so bananas.

Yeah.

That's so strong. You can only do 70. That doesn't make any sense.

When I was younger, I could do, like, eight or nine reps of the number three Captain the Crush.

Wow. I have this sucker here on the table. What is it? Yeah. I don't know what this is. You tell me. Squeeze it. Tell me what you think it is.

Oh, God. 200 pounds. So this isn't a Captain the Crush. This is a... I think it is. It's not? I bought this. They just have a number on the bottom. Can't do it, Joe. I can't do it. You can't do that? Come on. One and a half, two and a half. I do that all day long. Man, you should come and arm wrestle with us. No.

I could beat people who suck.

Grip is interesting, okay? Grip is a part of control. But so much of the control through your hand has to do with the ability to control the angles. You know, can you control this way, this way, this way, this way? You know, can you spin? You know, the grip is like the final inflection point. It's the final piece to add.

Right. Yeah. Well, I understand that it's not everything. It's a thing that I've been obsessed with lately because I'm not strong at it. Grip's beautiful. So this 162 kilograms. Jeez. So find this guy, Michael Eckert, on Instagram. He's a guy that I follow, and he has all these grip strength tutorials. He's a Marine, and I guess that's him. And he can do 220, and he doesn't look like a very big guy either, but he does, like, crazy one-arm pull-ups, and he has massive forearms. But, like, look at his thing right there. There's a thing below it. You see numbers. There it is. Oh, so this is what he's lifting. This is he's doing this for chin-ups. But he has the grip strength thing. The really good one is the one that has knurled metal. It has very little play in it, and so you get a real accurate. He said it's the most accurate one of all of them. That one right there. See what it says, 119? So I think that's 119 kilograms. hand is beautiful what is that 262 so he can do 262 and he's not a very big guy so he does 100 pounds more than me and he's not a big guy I mean when you're looking at him but he does crazy like chin up stuff 256 that's fucking nuts so his it's Michael Eckert elicard no eckert e c k e r t e c k e r t so it's michael eckert uh underscore fit on instagram and uh this guy's uh turned me on to a bunch of stuff told me stuff to get and what to work out with but i just i'm blown away because i look at him and i go well you're not that big that's what's crazy like you look at his forearms are obviously very big very strong but he's not like this massive guy like who's that giant russian catholic yeah boy he's he's something real special if that guy pulled 262 i go okay that makes sense but i look at michael and i'm like he's not the biggest guy in the world but he does so much grip stuff yeah we're praying for smith to come into the sport oh my god yeah that guy's a fucking freak freakiest not just freak freakiest yeah yeah how is he alive like you gotta think there's not a lot of time on that hourglass live hard die fast

yeah yeah yeah i mean he's pushing there he is yeah but um yeah i mean all these strengths for our sport they all add together It was like, it was me. Look at his hands. Look at his fucking hands. They don't even look real.

Oh, he's so loud.

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?

Yeah, I mean. Someone was saying he was taking like some crazy thing, like 10 units of growth a day. No, I heard it was 100. 100 units?

Yeah, I heard it was like...

Well, that doesn't even make... Right. That seems like you would just grow. You would just become a giant. That's like a pituitary disorder, right? Yeah, more than. Right, because that's what you're getting. It's a lot. Gee. Well, 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 He not So it's a left size who's what's the left when he's 17? Yeah, I mean he was look at that's not a set

That's not a normal 17 year old. No clearly. Yeah, he's pretty jacked But I that makes sense like that guy on the left makes sense like I've seen guys like that. Yeah 17 no, but go to that photo again, but the guy on the right he looks like the Incredible Hulk like he looks like a 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 go to his Instagram please it's his Instagram got taken down, so it's like some

new... What? Yeah. That's right, he didn't have it

right. Why'd 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 this. I don't know. It's like Smythe Official, and it's 27 weeks ago. There's a tag, 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's some fan page. where he's doing pronation lifts.

What the fuck? What is 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 insane weight. Yeah. And just based off of that information that I see there, I already know. Click on that one that you got your, yeah.

The fucking size of this guy. Yeah.

That is 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. Like anything like what? I'd say anything, whether powerlifting, strongman. I'd be terrified if he even got to, like, blue belt.

Oh, my God. Like, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? How much does he weigh? I think, like, 340. 340 and preposterous strength. Like, strength. You know, Mark Coleman always used to say that. Strength is a skill. And there's something to 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 and understanding of leverage, positions.

Even just the base movement patterns that are really applicable. 352 lean. Jesus. He was supposed to pull. There was a proposal for him to pull one of our guys called Leonidas Arcona. What a great name. Yeah. It's a German guy. He just competed against Brian Shaw like six weeks ago. He beat Brian.

What? Yeah. Someone beat Brian Shaw in an arm wrestling match?

Leonidas, young German champion. They competed in Germany. It was a great fight.

How big is Leonidas?

Leonidas is pretty awesome.

This is Leonidas and Brian Shaw?

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. That is crazy.

Right? And nobody's got a star grip than Brian either. Brian's grip is completely wild.

Seeing someone beat Brian Shaw in anything physical seems ridiculous. It doesn't even make sense. How much does this guy weigh? 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.

This picture of me reacting.

Yeah. He's been in the sport like. Oh, my God. He's going to curl a dude.

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. Well, because Brian Shaw is 100 pounds heavier than him.

Yeah. But it's levels, you know. Right. And that's the 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 i'm 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 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 than leonitis right brian's

been arm wrestling less than two years right and lee and i has been arm wrestling five okay yeah so so there's a lot of technique to it there's a ton of technique and a lot of just repetition understanding the positions where to go what to do how to hold yeah miniature martial art interesting yeah makes sense yeah because there's some people that are not that like marcelo garcia for instance not not a physically imposing guy has the craziest squeeze like there's something about a squeeze like learning a position over and over and over again fine-tuning it that'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 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 right and the efficiency just changes very quickly and before you know it you're gassed

out i'm sure you're aware of that guy in australia tom havalon yeah he's another one he's another one

That's another one. Right.

Who's doing the 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. 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 every once in a while. Yeah, look at this 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. Is he interested? I think so.

Well, he's also crazy lean, too, which is really weird. He's a strange character. Oh, the strangest. Because, like, this is most of his images are his back. Yeah. Which 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 discreet.

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, and guys say he's not. I don't know what the deal is. 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 happily. Yeah.

Because he's almost 400 pounds. He's 6'8". Yeah. And fucking shredded. See if you can find some of the images. There are images on this page of him with his shirt off doing stuff where he's, like, walking with, you know, doing, like, farmer carries. So there's some images of him with his shirt off. Like, there he is.

Yeah, yeah. He's a Brian Shaw type. He's a Smaev type, you know, just where the baseline level of strength.

But looks more athletic than those guys. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, 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 in 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, whereas this guy looks like a super athlete. He does. You know, he looks like that image of him with his shirt off on the far right. Like, he's shredded. Yeah. He looks different.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And it seems like he's just working on his strength. he's just like constantly look at his fucking forearm muscles what the fuck is going on with the top of the forearm where it meets the bicep what the fuck is that

Tom if you're watching this come to East vs. West West buddy we love you we love you has he ever done anything yeah any arm wrestling yeah I know

he has because uh so down in Australia the the president there Phil Rasmussen um he's good friends with him and I know that they're 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 they have this amazing ability but they don't really pop You know, do you know who Eric Spato is?

No.

Eric Spato's 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 record. He was doing the world record in his basement.

Wow.

And everybody's like, yo, Eric, why don't you go and make it legit, you know? But these guys exist out there. These guys in their basements or wherever they're living, 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's amazing, man. It's fun to chase strength.

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. 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.

Is it? Well, there's levels. You know, there's levels of real fighting. I mean, look, I love UFC. It's cool, but we invented guns long ago.

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. You're using a weapon. Right. With your 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 uh adaption uh decision making um a lot of games a lot of a lot of technique a lot of adaptation uh 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 gonna in that sense do you consider football combat sport yeah

okay yeah there's two sides and you're fighting it's metaphor okay look at all this stuff uh i i love the ufc but i consider it a combat sport you know well it definitely yeah it's a combat sport 100 probably one of the best examples of but the primary example if i was going to put together like you know the ultimate like you know we were going to take out like like if we were going to go to war against another nation or whatever you know yeah for sure i'm looking at ufc guys for sure i'm looking at football guys you know um looking at whoever can get the job

done and um there's a lot of pieces to that well that's different i mean you look if they're going to war with just bodies only using your body that's one thing but you know obviously with war weapons rule above 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 drones yeah you know yeah i mean that's the you're going to get to a point soon where human beings are going to be irrelevant so when

it comes to sport arm wrestling is fall for me it falls into that combat sector you know where two people are are engaging in a fight a metaphorical fight against each other i get it yeah yeah yeah you'll you'll i mean if if it wasn't um 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 or five years they'll beat 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 gonna win

it really depends i could teach brian shaw a few things real course you could get strangled

Yeah, and Brian Shaw is an extreme example. Yeah, okay someone your size

Yeah, it's like size aside the sizes commensurate. Yeah, the person who's training. Yeah, they're gonna win every time and and small people Dominate big people all the time, right?

Cuz it's that tech

It's technical. It's skill-based.

It's also repetition, understanding the positions, understanding mistakes, 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 flowing with them.

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

Right. Well, you definitely do, and you definitely make it psychologically. I try. I try and pull all that stuff in. But you have an extensive military experience, too. Like, you started off, like, what is the Canadian version of what branch of the military you were in?

I was with a unit called JTF2 for 16 out of my 20 years.

It was great.

I'd still be there if I could, really. But it got too complicated and I had to leave. How so?

What do you mean?

Uh, it was, 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, uh, geez, it was 19, I think, um, or sorry, it was 2014 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. And, you know, I was an active JTF2 member. 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 you have to be anonymous you get on an airplane you can't have people taking pictures of you and oh right so arm wrestling because of where where i was and it was on espn and going further they're like devon you have to choose and i'm like oh my god i've been armistice i was a kid so the long and short of that is uh they offered me a year off uh 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 in arm wrestling it was uh it was complicated it was complicated yeah i'd i'd done like seven tours and um it's weird when you do a lot of tours you know um things start to gray out a little bit and 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 and you know you 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, uh, you know, help your country or whatever, or the people around you that you don't really, you're undeterred. And I think that probably sometime around that point in my career, um, maybe I was struggling slightly and that combined with the, uh, 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 uh was kind of the thing that kind of make me take kind of a stand in my life that i was gonna you know follow sport instead of war um 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 i 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 not nobody's there for the money you know i mean somebody at the beginning some people are because we're broke right but i mean once you spend like 10 years i I mean, you're probably okay. Yeah, so it starts, I mean, you play enough in that world and it starts to get confusing that maybe you're not doing the right thing.

So, uh, look, I, I loved my work. I thought it was great. Loved all the people I worked with, some best people in the world. Um, but yeah, it came to a point where there was some issues, you know, with OPSEC, not even in my career, but in others. And it kind of trickled down into unit policy and they shut down everybody's extracurricular. And yeah, they're like, Devin, you can't arm wrestle anymore. And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm a current world champion. like i am currently the open world champion and you're telling me i can't do it so i was like yeah we're gonna have to come up with some other solution they're like yeah okay years leave without pay here's your final offer so we took it and my wife and i were like oh my god so yeah so i i went from making money and i had and i didn't come we didn't have money you know uh but you were getting Yeah, I didn't buy 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 gonna have to sell a house or like I'm gonna have to do this gamble It worked out

What was that stress like dude?

How old were you at the time? Okay, that was 2014 so I'd be 39. Oh wow. Yeah, so you're already older as as an athlete yeah yeah wow yeah it was totally trippy i remember being so stressed out i was i was so it was uh it was a wal finals okay i was in the 225 pound division 20 000 bucks for first place uh right hand left hand and um and i had a great sponsor okay they were matching my pay so anything i won they doubled it and they were doing some other stuff too so but but if i lost i got nothing right so i'm i'm in the back i'm in the back in the warm-up area and i'm i'm breathing i'm getting ready i'm going against this guy ron bath in the finals and uh long time mentor of mine guys like my older brother this guy mike gould comes over to me he's like devon he's like he's like you 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 And I went out, and I just had fun and worked out. But, yeah, so I ended up doing my year's 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 you're special forces now. Why?

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, can I 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 20 years continuous 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 done yeah wow yeah and now full-time armrest for the last 10

10 years yeah what a jump at 39 yeah that had to be so fucking nerve-wracking it was i i just you

know i thought it was very selfish of me you know um i 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 whether 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 my kids you know their their university education. it's costing my kids you know um but yeah we we believed in it we went for it and uh it's all worked out it's all worked out i mean um it's been a second life for me um i still love all the guys i work with some of them are still working my god guys do like 30 year careers in the special forces it's crazy it's crazy yeah a lot of the guys that i went through it they're now in senior positions and i bump into them every once in a while and i just tell them how much i love them and how great they are and yeah i'm i live a civil simple life now it's beautiful you know like uh before life was very complicated going on tours you know special forces life is super complex you know you're it's it's difficult to balance how my wife and i made through that i have no idea i have no idea but we did but uh yeah

Now I'm at home every day. I wake up unless I'm going to some arm wrestling tournament. It's beautiful.

Well, I got to think that the discipline that came from that life transferred over to the discipline of becoming a great arm wrestler.

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 it's just like the ultimate consequences the ultimate stakes

yeah yeah yeah it's beautiful i i love the concept of soldiering i think i 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 i personally have always believed that one of the highest orders of fighters are the guys in the military you know the sf guys like it's it's it's it's pretty awesome um but uh yeah it's it's it's i try and take all those lessons and bring them into the sport and i try to um 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 i don't a lot um i it's not that uh 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 um yeah i don't make it part of my general promotion too much but everybody knows that i was you know uh it's a it's a it's a wild time in my life, you know, uh, 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 Kandahar, um, you know, working with the American forces, working with the Indige forces, you know, we, JTF does like counter-terrorism. So we're doing hits and 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 devin's scared to come to this tournament you know and i was like motherfucker i am in a goddamn war right now i'm not scared to go to nemroff cup you know but yeah that's funny yeah it was that must have been 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 is it war war is a war is a wild thing you know um the degree that it's psychologically affected me is uh 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 um and um and the lacking that i had like the the the the not being enough to, to be everything I could be in combat, uh, shaped me so much, you know? Um, you know, when you go on a tour and 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? Uh, and I was kind of the guy who was

like completely scared shitless, but I'd go anyways, you know? Um, and what I kind of learned to do, which I have a great value in is kind of the separation of, of myself. You know, I am a very different person day to day than when I compete or when I, for example, went and actually did the job, you know, I, 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 um and then you know you come back and you you know you've seen a lot of shit and you you got ptsd you wake up and 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 uh people call it a switch you know where you like all your values the person that you are is different you're not the same person when you're out in the field than you are when you're you're back on base and i created a persona that loved it that looked forward to it that lusted for it because that's what you need to be to actually perform properly when you say you created a

persona yeah what was the steps like what 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 gonna tell you to do this but like for example like I'll I'll take it a step back, and we'll talk about jumping, okay? I don't like to jump in 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, you know, 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 OK. I believe in the cause, believe in the mission. It's OK. 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, is you might act a little bit different when you're sitting at the table with your mother than 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, in 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. And you can become that. And the more time that you spend as that role, the more you roll it out, the more you build it out, the more you're comfortable with it, the more you might even look forward to doing it again, you know. um 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 there's a psychologist in the world that could explain that that's why 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 you if you're not doing that how can you what you're you it's just theory theory yeah and 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'd 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 that's what life is about. And if you're in the soldiering realm, 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 just 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 yeah yeah and now i am the bonnie blue of arm wrestling come one come all i got i get the first base with everybody i gotta ask you about this and this is a

silly thing to ask you because you said kandahar yeah have you heard of the legend of the kandahar

giant of course yeah what did you hear when well i've seen okay there's some freaks out there man there's some freaks uh so yeah i mean i've seen the youtube video i've i've heard about it from other people but legit legit okay um 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 okay mobility was my least favorite op mobility basically you get in 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 this region kind of north north of the panjway i don't remember exactly what it was called it's surrounded by mountains this big valley and we were rolling around and um and so there was a village that we were going to check out and i'm i'm like a gunner okay so i don't know everything that's going on i'm a dude on a machine gun okay but i can see everything that's happening i kind of know what we're doing all but i know that there's a meeting and what they have is they have these warlords it doesn't it's not the same kind of political system or anything that we have in like 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 of town about 500 meters and we had our our trucks about 200 meters from the meeting point our officer and a couple dudes went forward and we're looking this guy i mean he was maybe twice as big he was huge he was a massive dude like how big i i i think he was eight feet i think he was eight foot something it's embarrassing it's like devon you're crazy and he's big how and he was 200 meters away he's about 200 meters away but i can see the guys we've got we got optics um he was our officer was probably somewhere between at the bottom of his chest um great big afghan dude big beard big dude big dude and his lackeys around him were normal size great big warlord um so they're out there there's big people there's eight feet is nuts i have personally seen um people who were probably over eight feet what yeah in afghanistan no no i saw these guys up north northern canada cree um i was up in ojibugumo okay this cree village uh 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 in this hockey arena this dude i'm like that's a really big dude by the time i got there i was about me and i'm like six five i was about in his nipple what yeah big big big hands big long hands like out of the goonies like misshapen face i'm like my god i'm like like how big are you he's like just laughed at me and he's like my brother my he's like my dad's

eight foot eleven he's like like what yeah big my dad's eight foot eleven i'm telling you there's big people and 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 that guy jamie he's from that region apparently

i don't know how to say that like edward so there's just giants that live in that region

the cree are 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 them eat junk now right because they you know they grow up on

367 pounds maybe or 367 sorry they grew up two and a half 367 pounds age 33

whoa yeah i forget the name of these brothers but there there's a bunch of them yeah yeah there's some weird genetics out there you know yeah yeah and we're gonna try and swab him i'll give it to

ryan before you know it but so this guy in afghanistan was this uh one isolated incident i I just 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 a big, big human being. Far out of the standard. Yeah, and he was a warlord. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, there are big people out there. And so the Kandahar giant story, the guy is supposed to be even bigger than that. Yeah.

Yeah, I heard it. Do you 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

have electricity um 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 i 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 broad across the shoulders too he was probably twice as broad um 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 um yeah yeah it was it was shocking but uh but 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 like we didn't there was no fight there so we worked it out whatever it was but yeah there's there are anomalies and and it's 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 dick could have been in charge

so did you hear of that story the kandahar giant story so the supposedly 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 at i i believe that uh 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 like if you were gonna like if there was nothing uh what a beautiful place to start life Afghanistan is a beautiful country, so rich for agriculture. The climate is perfect. You know, with the mountains and the rivers, the seasons, it's tough to beat. You know, I would understand why people would fight so hard to have that territory. And, 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 is 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 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 uh some that i'm closer to um like what probably the most interesting story that i'm in any way kind of close to is um from that region of the world and this is a whole nother can of worms but it's um it's so weird uh it's demonic possession you know we've we had a guy a guy he was my he i worked with him very closely for super smart guy great guy awesome dude awesome soldier and uh 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 uh he uh he knew everything about everybody's life he knew all their sins what yeah he knew he knew all the sins people did even from their childhood he got taken to uh 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 uh the padre the like the priest that comes along on some military missions they uh they did a what do you call that when you cleanse the demon from what do you call exorcism they did an exorcism he he they sent him back to canada he uh he's now watched by the church he has to go and check in with the church every every every week i don't know what to tell you joe there's a lot i don't know uh but yeah and then and the crazy thing was is the priest who did the exorcism said he he knew the demon he he'd already exorcist exorcist he'd already done the exorcism like three or four times on different people yeah that demon was like popping in and out of guys yeah so all the guy joe i don't know what's going on in the world.

arm wrestler okay but this guy knew things about you no i wasn't on the tour but the unit's very small okay i 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 all the and and the guy who had it done to him i'm very close with like he comes over my he was my stall partner okay uh 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 scared him a lot yeah yeah

does he recall being able to speak different languages yeah he can remember it yeah he can

remember 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 whoa 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 and um yeah uh yeah i don't know what to tell you i don't know it wasn't me uh but i trust the story because i know the people um i know them i know i'm very i could hook you up with them you want to talk to tell you tell you all about it i don't think yeah yeah wow yeah and how long was he possessed for he was possessed i think for a couple of weeks maybe like a week or 10 days something like that wasn't super long but he was all messed up afterwards like 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 languages i don't know that's no i don't think it can 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? Isn't that wild?

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 them.

And that's an ancient. That was in Iraq. That was in Erbil. Okay, and I mean, that's an ancient, ancient part of the world. yeah so whatever's like history is long and misunderstood and um 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 gonna i'm just gonna do wrist curls in my basement for next time 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 about it.

Do you think he would come on here and tell the story?

Yep.

Really?

Sure.

Of course he would. Jeez. Of course he would. I'm nervous. You nervous, Jamie? Yeah. Are you nervous, Jamie? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mark. Yeah. He's a cool dude. Wow.

Yeah. I love him. I love him. Yeah. Great soldier. Yeah. brother you've had a pretty wild life it's been great really um ton of fun happy happy to be here um yeah it's been good it's been good well i really enjoyed this conversation man i'm glad we did it joe thank you so much and uh really like i feel like it's kind of closing the loop

for something with my brother yeah well you should we should tell everybody uh i knew your brother before I met you online and this is from your brother your brother made this candle and this candle will now sit here he 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 I'm good but thank you I appreciate it wonderful and good luck good luck beating that fucking giant dude I'm gonna need it 16 months 16 months man maybe we'll talk to you before then we'll do it again yeah cool thank you so much thanks brother alright bye everybody