I have been arm wrestling for the last two years, and it is my opinion it is a sport everybody should try. Arm wrestling is a sport that trains your back and arms, and is easy to start doing, and has a large community around it.
One of arm wrestling’s biggest benefits, in my opinion, is the strength you build doing it. When you are arm wrestling, you build strength both training for and participating in matches.
Arm wrestling works out your lats, triceps, biceps, brachialis, forearms, and hands in a way that normal gym workouts will not do. I also think that the competitive aspect of arm wrestling makes training much easier. There is always someone stronger than you, and it is that drive, the pursuit to beat that person, where I have seen most of my improvement.
The other nice thing about arm wrestling is the availability. You can arm wrestle almost anywhere. I have arm wrestled on the ground, on my knee, on school tables, on cafeteria tables, and on chairs. The beauty of arm wrestling is that you can do it anywhere, easily.
I have been on vacation in Gatlinburg, and I still arm wrestled someone by just asking the first strong person who walked by.
Arm wrestling today has more of a community than ever. If you want to get into arm wrestling all you have to do is look up “how do I get started arm wrestling?” on YouTube and you will find hundreds of in-depth instructions on the sport and how to start, and when you are ready to start arm wrestling even more, the sport has grown to where you can just look up arm wrestling club events, hop in your car, and go arm wrestling.
The biggest concern I hear when I talk to people about arm wrestling is that they don’t want to injure themselves. For many people, the first image that pops into their head is that of someone snapping their arm in half. I won’t sugarcoat it; it does happen, but not nearly as often as people think.
I have personally arm wrestled many people who put themselves in dangerous positions, and seen many people arm wrestling each other the exact way to break your arm, but I have never seen an arm break. What is generally misunderstood about arm breaks is how they occur and what is happening.
So, to start with, the injury you tend to see and that people think of is called a spiral fracture of the humerus bone. This is the bone that runs down your arm under your bicep, and it takes the brunt of the torquing pressure while you are arm wrestling. This bone can indeed break relatively easily, but only when your other muscles aren’t supporting it. When people think of arm wrestling, they generally think that you are just supposed to push directly to the side, but this is not true. The fastest way to break your arm is just pushing to the side without allowing your other muscles to help, plus you are way stronger when using your muscles. To do this, you just have to pull towards your side instead of pushing sideways. This can help to prevent injury and increase your strength when arm wrestling.
It is because of these reasons that I think you should give arm wrestling a try. It is easy to get into, builds a lot of strength, and while there are some risks, there are in almost any contact sport.
I have been trying to start an arm wrestling club for several months. I would encourage anyone who has something they enjoy or something that the school needs to also advocate for a club. All you need is a teacher sponsor and a presentation to convince the school board.