As an organized sport, arm wrestling began in 1952 by founder Bill Soberane, who teamed up with Dave Devoto to bring the sport to light when they formed World’s Wrist Wrestling Championships, Inc…a huge success. The article will cover ways a guy or girl can train for an organized competition, or just the typical Thanksgiving, kitchen table game. Although technique is very important to winning an arm wrestling match, that can be the subject of another article. This will only cover the strength training and conditioning that will be required behind the techniques.

Hand and Finger Exercise: The hands play an important role in becoming a top-tier arm wrestler. Bigger hands have a distinct advantage, as control over the opponent’s hand position through strength and leverage can put you on top of a match. Manual tweezers are the tool of choice for this important training. Most people have seen them, or even played with them. The most common ones provide a resistance of around 10 to 50 pounds…baby stuff! You want to go with heavy calipers in the 100 to 300 pound range. If you can close the 200-pound clamp, you can crush someone’s hand with a handshake, and only a handful of people in the world can close a 300-pound clamp.

Wrist and Forearm Exercises: A fatigued forearm has lost many a match. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to increase strength and endurance in this muscle group. Most exercises that strengthen the forearm will also work to increase strength in the wrists. Wrist strength is important along with hand strength to control the position of the opponent’s hand and gain a leverage advantage. The best exercises are wrist curls and lever raises. We’ll also dive into a simple exercise called towel pull-ups. These three should get your wrist and forearms in pretty good shape.

Shoulders, biceps and triceps – There are countless exercises that will target these muscle groups and they are probably already part of your weekly workout. Add towel lifting exercises to your routine to target areas to strengthen, particularly for arm wrestling. A towel pull-up is just like an ordinary pull-up, but it’s done by placing a towel over the pull-up bar and grabbing the ends like a pair of cows.

Now as you do your pullups, you’ll strengthen your grip as your shoulders, lats, and upper arms come into play.

Always remember to give your muscle groups enough time to recover after a strenuous workout. Overworking a muscle can cause injury and put you out of the game. The great thing about some of the exercises described in this article is that they can be done outside of the gym. Even on the sofa while watching TV. Especially the hand grip exercises. They can even be done while driving. Be sure to balance the workout by doing “opposite exercises”, for example, to counter the handgrip exercise, try this: Make a fist, and then, while digging your fingers into your palms for some resistance, wiggle your fingers direct… keep doing it. See how quickly the tops of your forearms burn.