The following is a long question. It really only pertains to people that want to be very strong…although the principle could apply to those that just want to be decently strong too.
PJ asks:
As trusted to you before I’m interested in all things from the Golden Era (Sandow,Sass,Atom, Jowett, Burns etc) through to today’s elder statesman Decide Rutgers, Slim The Hammer Man….
In subscribing to your newsletter and getting courses from all over including, card tearing (managed this but no as good as Adam Glass yet ha ha!), wrench bending (even Dennis’s course is too advanced for me), iron and nails and grips (John Brookfield) I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be an intrinsic mental factor (the governor perhaps??) which is attenuated through your hypnosis tracks….
I believe this is the accepted truth where mind and muscle connect…
I’ve come round to my question in a very laborious way! Sorry!
The grip and arm wrestling seem to be factors in “radiating”all over strength through nervous activation… Could you recommend or provide a training course dedicated to arm wrestling from beginner up to where Dennis R got to?
I appreciate a lot of this (wrench, nails, grips) is covered elsewhere but rarely do you see an approach dedicated to arm wrestling… Surely if one can excel here with the super strengthening and growth of the lower forearm and hands then the rest of the body will follow?
Adam Glass seems to have married these disciplines well (I’m not sure about his arm wrestling) and I’ve watched his progress in grip, pinch grip, arm lifting, handstands etc and it appears the”spill over”is massive….I watch all your progress too so you’re both EPIC….
Anyway not sure anyone else will be keen but it’s what I’m looking for!
The way I see it if I can improve the ability to use my hands and be strong enough for all the special hand feats the rest will follow if training correctly I’ll improve across the board in my journey….I believe them tendon/ligament strength in the forearm from arm wrestling (or the training alone) is a big plus!
To be honest, I don’t have a recommended place for you to go that covers arm wrestling.
I’m not much of an arm wrestler myself. I haven’t really trained for it, and have covered it a whopping two times in all my years on the blog.
The last time I arm wrestled might have been covered in this post from 2013!
Obviously, arm wrestling worked great for Dennis Rogers. For those reading this not familiar with the man, he was mentor to me in strongman training, in a lineage from Slim the Hammerman to The Mighty Atom.
It certainly is A route to incredible strength.
But it is not the ONLY route.
What is important about it is hand strength. In other words, if you want to become ridiculously strong you need to spend some significant time and effort on making the fingers, hands and wrists become much stronger.
Yes, these help you to radiate the strength inward towards the rest of the body, and vice versa, learning how to generate power in the body and apply it out to the extremities.
The hands take up a lot of the processing space of our neurology. This may be why this is so important as it allows our mind-muscle connection to build. (And also why mental training can help so much in this area too!)
Personally, since I didn’t arm wrestle, I instead devoted myself to working mostly on the feats of strength themselves.
Nail bending, card tearing, phonebook tearing, etc. Along with this was some more basic grip work like pinching and grippers. And of course, this was in addition to training the rest of my body.
All these feats and many more are covered inside of Feats of Strength: How to Train and Perform like an Oldtime Strongman that I did along with Bud Jeffries.