If you have watched professional arm wrestlers compete you will notice many have enormous hands. Did they develop these giant hands through training or were they a gift from God? Let’s find out!
How do arm wrestlers get big hands?
Arm wrestlers get big hands mostly through genetics and naturally having large bones. Arm wrestlers further increase the size of their hands through taking large doses of growth hormone and weight training to increase the size of their hand muscles.
The size of someone’s hand is directly correlated with their height. That is why when you watch super heavy weight arm wrestlers with many standing 6ft3 and taller, there are a lot large hands on display.
An arm wrestler’s hand size is mostly impacted by the size of their bones. This comes down to pure genetics. Some people just naturally have large and dense bones. This results in them having very large and thick hands.
Now while the size of an arm wrestler’s hand is mostly caused by genetics there are some tricks that pullers use to further develop their hands. The first one is taking large doses of GH. If an arm wrestler takes 8ius or more of GH daily for a prolonged period of time this will cause their hands to substantially grow.
GH has been linked to cancers and other medical conditions so it is advised to avoid taking it at all. Also GH is not body part specific so when you take a high dose all different parts of your body will grow including your head, nose, ears, and feet. Prolonged GH abuse can permanently alter your appearance and usually not for the better.
The other way arm wrestlers grow their hand is through rigorous weight training and diet. The hand has 30 different muscles, if you perform weight training exercises you can increase the size of these muscles and grow your hand. Weight training will only be able to increase your hand size moderately.
Does hand size matter in arm wrestling?
Hand size is incredibly important in arm wrestling as it allows you to manipulate your opponent’s hand and create additional leverage. The best arm wrestlers such as Denis Cyplenkov and Levan Saginashvili are known for having giant hands.
The two most common techniques used in arm wrestling are the top roll and the hook. Both of these techniques give you control over your opponent’s hand and allow you to create huge amounts of leverage, making it easy to pin your opponent. Your ability to perform these techniques effectively is strongly correlated to the size of your hand.
In the top roll you are trying move up your opponent’s hand while simultaneously opening their grip. It is much easier to open up and slide up an opponent’s hand if it is small.
This is because a smaller hand is not only weaker but doesn’t have the size to enclose a larger hand. In an extreme example a very small hand would still be almost completely open when trying to wrap around a much larger hand.
In the hook you are trying to move around your opponent’s hand by curling your wrist. The larger your hand the easy it is to move around your opponent’s hand and completely surround it.
Think of how a baseball mitt effortlessly wraps around a baseball. This is what it is like to arm wrestle against opponents with much smaller hands.
By effectively hooking your opponent you can easily move their hand away from their body and close to yours. This allows you generate huge amounts of power while limiting the resistance your opponent can muster.
Also hooking makes it much easier to bend your opponent’s wrist backwards which severely weakens their arm, increasing your likelihood of scoring a pin.
Can you bend your wrist in arm wrestling?
At the beginning of an arm wrestling match your wrist can not bend. However, once the match begins you are free to bend your wrist. An effective technique known as the hook involves bending your wrist towards your opponent.
The rules in arm wrestling are explicitly clear, prior to the match starting both athletes must have their wrists straight. Once the match starts the athletes can bend their wrists.
During an arm wrestling match you should never allow your wrist to bend backwards. Once an athlete has control of your wrist you are likely to lose very soon after. With a bent wrist you can not generate power or leverage as the structure of your arm is broken.
It is advised arm wrestlers maintain a straight wrist until they have the opportunity to control their opponent’s arm. Once they start getting control of their opponent’s arm they should curl their wrist around their opponent’s arm to secure the advantageous position.
Does body weight matter in arm wrestling?
Body weight without a doubt matters in arm wrestling. Athletes compete in weight classes because larger athletes can generate more power than smaller athletes and also have much larger arms and hands.
Let’s look at the size of the 10 best arm wrestlers of all time to show you how important size is:
- John Brzenk – 6ft1 and 225 pounds
- Denis Cyplenkov – 6ft1 and 308 pounds
- Andrey Puskar – 6ft4 and 276 pounds
- Levon Saginashvili – 6ft3.5 and 375 pounds
- Alexey Voyevoda – 6ft4 and 232 pounds
- Devon Larratt – 6ft5 and 278 pounds
- Vitaly Laletin – 6ft7 and 250 pounds
- Travis Bagent – 6ft3 and 265 pounds
- Gary Goodridge – 6ft3 and 230 pounds
- Cleav Dean – 6ft7 and 465 pounds
As you can see the best arm wrestlers of all time are all huge men who completely dwarf the average man. If you aren’t well over 6ft and 220 pounds your chance of competing with these monsters is practically zero.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, you will have to forget your dreams of growing your hands to the size of your favorite arm wrestler. The size of an arm wrestler’s hands comes down to genetics. However, they do further increase their hand by megadosing GH and by developing the muscles in their hands.
If you have small hands you should consider another sport because hand size plays a big role in arm wrestling. All of the best arm wrestlers are known for their hand size as it helps them perform the two fundamental techniques, the top roll and hook.