How to remedy a weak brachioradialis

Had a good tip from a veteran armwrestler named Tomas F�ltsj� about how to improve backpressure.

Doing over hand curls with a barbell. Since I only have a webcam and don't have space to bring my barbell in front of the webcam, I took a dumbell to demonstrate what I mean by overhand curls. Using a dumbell might work ok. The disadvantage using a dumbell is that your elbows tend to go outwards, which is not the case with a barbell.

Here you curl the weights with a overhand grip

Starting isn't a problem anymore

Caught a cold one week before "bargarens minne" competition that the club i belong to arranged. Attended right after the recovery. That felt tough in the morning. When standing at the table and pulling, it felt allright anyways. I dont feel that the problem with my slow starts is a problem anymore. Managed to develop a good hand control to feel if the opponent manages to jerk away faster than me. The idea I use is that if the opponent does a big fast movement, i can counter it easily with a smal fast movement. You just have to make sure to back it up with good force. No medals gained, I gained something much more important : self esteem about starts, and insight about how to develop better armwrestling.
I took a right arm picture in the morning before the competition, it will need more workout for better performance o the table hehe.

Need more bracioradialis power

Recently got home from a training session, the last one right before a contest called 'bagarens minne'.
It is the club I belong to that arranges this one. I have no idea if this one will have many contestants.

We did some ordinary resistance pulls, I try to get better feeling in the arms. It seems to work better and better for each training session now. The pains that used to occur during and after the training has more or less ceased. Still today I got a slight pain while trying to do a shoulder press. There was a quick side force to stop my attack and I didnt follow it up so it ended with me having a lot of straining there. Well well I see it as a way to learn to adapt for future use hehe.

The grip training I do is modified to suit the armwrestling better. This means I don't primarily focus on closing the CoC #3 consistently at the moment. I focus on increasing the endurance on the #1 and #2 CoC. Since I have experienced that this puts better chance to more stable results in the armwrestling tournaments. I will focus on peaking the grip when I have managed to increase the wrist strength a bit. The plan for this is to be able to force people into hook with wrist force and if that fails try a good torsion force. I exercise torsion movements to with dumbells that you can attach weights on on your own. Here i attach weights only on one end of the dumbell to isolate torsion movement better. Also I use the PowerBalls as excersice more often than usual. I try to simulate wrist movements that I want to do when armwrestling to get better feel when doing them. I use both he metal PowerBall and the standard one. I gravitate using the standard powerball more often to avoid overstraining since I do practice with grippers, dumbell and armwresting, The standard PowerBall doesnt strain my arms that much as the metal can do, meaning I can do more endurance training. As of now I try to get stronger thumbs, ring and pinky fingers. By holding the powerball in certain ways you can achieve more stress on specific fingers. I will post more about this later.

Idle hands on keyboard

Been a bit not so active on the blog lately for many reasons. Luckily not the same in the armwrestling !
Took 3rd place in Smé arms open (right only), and in nationaldagsspelen I managed to take 4th and 5th place. Nationaldagsspelen was a good competition for me. It didnt feel ok before the cometition , but as soon as I was in action it was going well. It felt like the right feel started to come into the arms. Still having problems with slow starts, sometimes there were good timing and technique.

Upcoming competitions are one at the club I am belonging to in August 8th. Another one also in Gävle August 26th. I will attend both, not sure how that will turn out. I am definitely a better armwrestler now. Still anything can happen, although im still working on the starts.

What happened in the nationals ?

To answer quickly about my results , I lost my matches. There are elimination rules, meaning that you are out when you lose 2 matches. The finals can have different rules. As I suspected I was too slow in the starts and were consistently caught in losing position immediately. Anyhows I managed to give at least some resistance to the ones I wrestled. Tere was also an incident where I got a bonus match, this was because I was supposed to pull against number 189 but
by some reason number 190 came up. The judges didn't notice the mistake so we had a pull and afterwards when the secretaries was going to register the result they discovered the mistake.

At the competition I learnt more about myself psychologically than I learnt about armwrestling techniques. I was quite nervous before the first match , but after that was done, I was calmed down. I didn't know what to expect before the first match. Later on, I felt it was just a matter of trying to "survive" the starts, trying to catch the opponents quick starts.

After the competition there was a dinnerparty for the people who have been at the competition. A great dinner : pork filet with potato gratin and sallad. After eating, I went to get some autographs and chat a little bit with some people there. Armwrestling experts everywhere. Time to get hints and tips! And guess what ? Having "small hands/short fingers" like I have is not a disadvantage. While chatting, I was told that there are a guy called "Skogshuggarn" ( means lumberjack in swedish) who has small fingers but was known for his unpleasant grip.

It turned out that I have same size of fingers as Skogshuggarn. He told me about a good way to utilize the hands. I wanted to try the new ideas i have been taught, and since they had a righthanded table there, it was no problem. Now the armwrestling I could do was improved greatly. It was feeling more natural.

During the evening I was chatting and armwrestling ( I have no idea how many times I was trying to wrestle ) and making new friends. When I went to bed I had really sore arms, not from the competition but from the dinnerparty (since I pulled a lot there) !!!

I learnt a lot there, met nice people and got motivated to attend more competitions to follow up
the progress. I have changed my training a bit, doing different exsercises in a different way. I still practice grip straining, but have lowered the resistances. I have focused more to strengthen the stabilizers of the upper arms. This will reduce soreness when armwrestling I hope.

Thank you Ove ( my step dad) for driving me to Ludvika, keeping me company and supporting me. I appreciated that and I know you appreaciated to learn more about the armwrestling sport !

It has been a while since I updated the blog

I have had some technical problems with my pics from my first competition ( nationals ). Many pictures were blurry and dark. I forgot save the pics before I left the camera back to my sister. Fortunately She did save the pics on her computer. So nowI only need to ask her to send them to me.

On my way tomorrow

Got to borrow a 5Mpix camera from my sister. Hope that will do to capture the arm wrestling event (nationals). Had a talk with my stepfather about building an own arm wrestling table. Also saw a really interesting device that Robert Baraban had. I want to build such myself to, it was almost "portable" not like a gripper but will provide a very good way to fill the gap between the levels of the CoC's

This guy does grip training very seriously ! The device on the wheel is the thing I want to build

I hope I get away with this

Today I went to the club where I armwrestle, yes it wasn't a Tuesday today. I needed to get a T-shirt that have an imprint to show which club I come from. I was invited to try out some grip feat tests such as vertical bar lift, rolling thunder dead lift, one hand plate pinch and 2 handed board pinching on an 1,5" thick board. It was fun since I havent done those specific things yet, even if I train grip strength.

Here is the T-shirt captured on movie

For those who are curtious, the results were:
Vertical barlift 70 kg left and right (Here I can probably improve since I felt I had more to go if the technique is polished).
Rolling thunder 60 kg left and right (Managed to do 65 with the right but here my small hands and bad technique started to fail me, so it was a quick lift and drop. With some specific training I hope to be able to do 90 kg).
One hand plate pinch 30kg ( since i dont recall if it was 2*15 or 2*20 kg, I say 2*15) left and right (This one I really feel not really confortable with yet, I have to find out which pinching plate width would be optimal for my hands).
Two handed pinching 1,5" thick board 80 kg (This was an easy lift. I had the technique naturally there. The only problem I experienced was that my left hand pinch weren't perfect so I didn't have full contact with my fingers on the board. This lead to that I tended to drop the board on the left more easy. The thumbs didn't fail me at all, and I decided not to test how much I actually could lift. Makes it an easy 80 kg).

After those "just for fun" lifting tests, there was some low intensity armwrestling. Experimenting with wrist angles and starting grips.

I know I should have taken it easier, I'm not supposed to strain too much during the resting week. I didnt feel that the gripping tests were straining my arms too much. Let's just hope that I will get away with it !

A nice little Powerball trick

When running the powerball as active rest for the armwrestling competition. I accidently managed to do something odd with it. When attempting to switch rotation direction, the powerball seemed to get in free gear ! I decided to see if it was possible to do this on demand. Currently I manage to do it every now and then. Still the technique isn't consistently working. It don't make any harm to the powerball if you do it right.

Here is the trick captured on the webcam

After April 29th, the training will be focused to certify closing of the captains of crush #3. I hope it will be possible to do this in autumn. Strong grips and wrists aren't bad for the armwrestling. Thats why I put lot of focus on tools that can improve grip and wrist strength.

What are those grippers you are talking about ?

The captains of crush grippers (CoC) look like this :

Those are the ones I have

Notice that each gripper has a number in the ends of each handle

The numbers tells you how much resistance the gripper has. The levels that exists are :

G (60lbs), S (80lbs), T (100lbs), 1 (140lbs), 2 (195lbs), 3 (280lbs), and 4 (365lbs).

G = guide, S = sport, T = trainer

This is an example of how to close a gripper , the example here is a CoC #2 being closed :




A tip to get a more consistent exercise : Use the gripper with same orientation all the time. When you look at the spring, you will notice that one of the "legs" from the spring is straighter than the other. The handle with the straighter leg ( dogleg if I recall right ) is the one you place closest to the thumb.

There exists other brands of grippers, but the CoC are the ones I have and am familiar with.

Armwrestling and symmetry ?

Someone wondered what the rest of my arms looked like. If they are symmetric or not. Since I'm not a body builder I have no clue. They probably will work for what I aim to use them for : grip strength and armwrestling. Anyhows to please the curious ones about the arms , I post a picture I took this morning when i woke up. If its a symmetric arm or not its up to you to decide. I dont really care about that.

Perhaps not a body builder pose heheh and perhaps I should flex ?

I hope the people who want to judge the symmetry has information enough to decide for themselves now.

Reality bites

Yesterday evening, I realized that I had to update my buscard to be valid for another month. I had go to the center of the town to buy an update. When it was done, there was 50 minutes until the bus back home would go. So to chillout while waiting, I bought a milkshake and sat down waiting in the hamburger place. When I sat there, a familiar face showed up. A guy I've been talking to before while waiting for the bus another time. He had told me that he had been competing in armwrestling before. Now he isn't that active anymore. He wondered how my armwrestling was going. When he got to know I was resting , he joked a bit asking if I was tempted to pull with him. Well yes I was , still resting is resting. Anyhows I was willing to learn more, so we had a starting grab with no pulling. From there I realized that I got freaking small hands !!!

Thick but not long fingers

I mean that I might have sturdy figers, but my hands are small !!! The other guy could easily grab and put his fingers long way over my hand. While this time it was so obvious that what I can to is just grab the thumb and not so much more. Anyhows he gave me some good guidances about grabbing and starting tactics. He also told that I shouldnt worry about my hand size. Still its annoying me !!!

One week of resting awaits now

Last day to do exercise, then its time to rest. Feel pretty happy about being well in both arms. It was a struggle about getting well from the inflamation in the right arm. At least I've had 2 weeks of totally recovered state of the right arm. I will only do active rest with my NSG Powerball during the resting week. I made a trial race with the powerball this morning and this is how it turned out.

Not a super score but it was ok

Getting competition experience

I need competition experience. I found "smé arms 2006" and "Nationaldags spelen" taking place pretty soon ( May 27th and June 6th). Have signed up for "Nationaldags spelen" , still have to see if I can make to join "smé arms 2006". Its all about if its possible to travel same day, do the wrestling and then go home. As of now, it seems that I may be able to make it. I've been informed that the weight-in is the same day as the competition and not too early in the morning. "IX Color Line Open" (may 20th) would be nice to attend to, but right now I think I skip that.

"Do you really believe in that stuff?"

As you probably know from my first post, I use to travel to another place to exercise my armwrestling. Tuesdays are those days I go to do this. Yesterday when we were done. My friend drove me to the center of the town (where the bus station is). Since I felt I needed something to eat while waiting for the bus, I entered one of the few restaurants that are there. I ordered some pasta and milk to drink. While waiting, I picked up my NSD powerball to do some "cooling down" exercise with it. Armwrestling use to result in a sore arm for most newcommers. Me included, but I have found out that the NSD powerball is a perfect tool for warming up and cooling down before and after both grip training and armwrestling.
There was an old woman in the restaurant staring at me while I was revving the NSD Powerball.
-"What are you doing , what's that annoying sound ?" She watched a bit curious at the gismo.
-"It's my powerball, I'm doing my cool down workout to avoid pain in my arms from the training." I said. The woman looked at me as if I was "just another one fooled by those nonsense gismos".
-"Do you really believe in that stuff ?" She smiled at me
-"Well yeah, it's real tough stuff it you are tough. you need some feeling to get it running to."
I prepared the NSD Powerball by hooking one of my mini carbine hooks with a nylon string onto the hole where you can have the wristband. Then I revved up the speed.
-"Here have a try, tell me what you think" I gave the ball to the woman , she was not prepared of what to experience at all.
-"Hey !! It jumped away !! She said, after the ball fell out of her hand.
-"Yeah , I revved it up to a high speed to get it tougher for you to grab it. Lets try it again at a lower pace" I picked up the ball she dropped ( that was the reason I had the string), started the ball up and this time it was at a moderate speed. She immediately started to smile, and tried to figure how to match the pace and make it run on that.

Powerballs are addictive in deed, I managed to make an old woman to want to have her own NSD Powerball just by letting her using it meanwhile i ate up my pasta and waited for the bus.
If you dont know what it is like to run a powerball, you have certainly missed something really cool!



I am aware that this post is a bit funny, since it almost sounds like something else. I promise it is about the Powerball use and nothing else, even if it might not seem so.

Why I wear knit gloves ?

If you have a powerball and want an extra edge in your NSD powerballing experience. I can recommend you to wear knit gloves. Just remove the rubberband that is around the NSD Powerball and go.


The reason that I do this is because the NSD Powerball will slip more easily in your grip. This results in the need of a more firm pinching grip to hold your NSD Powerball. I use the NSD powerball without gloves to , but that tends not to work out the crush and pinching grip as much as the more slippery glove excersices. When I want to work out the palm -gloves. When I want to work out the forearms -no gloves.

April 29th -Swedish championship

Soon its time for my first real armwrestling competition ( April 29th). I have signed up for the -110 kg weightclass in the swedish championship. I have no clue how that will work out for me. I just know I need and also want more competitive experience. Lets hope that I have been able to develop at least some muscular powers that can give some resistance to the others. It feels like that I could learn to execute techniques in a way that could exploit the power more efficiently.

Running NSD Powerball with the leftie.

To avoid overtraining, exercises are now focused on doing NSD powerball workouts to maintain strength. Usually I use the powerball as a warmup and active rest tool/exercise.

Sharper picture, but the NSD Powerball is not running.

A friend told me that there are more than 200 participants this year, luckily they are spread all over the different weight classes. Imagine how it would be like if there were 200 guys competing in same weightclass and arm. That would be serious arm pain!

ET didn't phone home this time

Today when surfing, I read about tearing apart a telephone catalogue. While being slightly overtrained , I decided to try a "different" exercise. So I read a brief howto and gave it a try.
Here you can see how it turned out. I had 2 catalogues, found out that my technique of phone book ripping needs some polishing. The first try I was doing something wrong, since there was an uneven rip through. The second time I pinched much harder and almost has a crushing grip, retulting in a more wrinkled phone book and pieces of paper everywhere !

The first try , looks pretty nice

The second try got a little bit messier

How did I end up like this ?

Being a 13 year old kid , that could manage to deal with older kids and still win was the first experience of armwrestling I had. This lead to a lot of excersice in armwrestling on normal tables
during breaks in school. Anyhows when I finished the elementary school, the armrestling was forgotten for many years.



At a martial art training camp (1999 I think), a sparring parter commented my forearms were big. He also said he had problems getting out of my grip when I grabbed his wrists. This was the first time I noticed that I had big forearms and a good grip. Still I didnt think of strength training and related excersice as something that could be fun.



Somewhere in 2003 I decided to start to excercise trying to get rid of "extra baggage". This was the starting point for my strength straining. I started to try to get a bit stronger. Found out that this kind of excersice CAN be fun, it is just matters to find how it can be fun for you. During this training, I figured that most of the times I never needed any straps to hold the weights and so on. Still I was not connecting this with arm and grip strength.

The final motivation to arm training came when I was at my friends place and a guy were there having some kind of "spring" as I called it. I was informed that those were not "springs" they were heavy duty grippers, not for weak dudes. He told me stuff about it and suggested me to try one. Sure I tried, and mashed the "feather". The guys reaction was that he might have given me wrong gripper -"Hey your arent supposed to close that one !". He told me that the one he lended me was the one he was trying to close for a long time (CoC #2), and he wanted to know if I was working out with grippers and pinching plates. He convinced me that I should do that, since I havent excersiced with grippers etc I might be able to develop good power.

All the training was fun, still I felt I was missing someting. Perhaps trying to use to for something. A while I was thinking about perhaps competing in gripping contest etc. But that never happened. I moved from a small city to a little bit bigger city. For being a swedish place, its a "bigger" city. I know it might be a small town in the big world =) When I moved to this new place, I decided that I would make use of the training somehow. This was how I decided to try armwrestling. Unfortunately, there was no armwrestling club in this "big" city. I was asking around on internet, got informed that the closest club was in a small town north of the city I live in. How funny, I moved to a bigger place to get more opportunities by being closer to stuff. But the stuff I wanted was out in the country yard =)



So for now , I am going to the club every Tuesday afternoon to practice armwrestling on real tables. I got hooked on it more or less instantly. I felt this was the stuff !!! =)