Encounters with Giants and Unexplained Phenomena

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day . Check. What's happening, my man? I'm so happy So happy to see you. Wow. What's going on? Joan, thank you so much. First of all, pleasure. That's very uncomfortable position to be in, I'll tell you that. It's very weird. Yeah, I bet. I bet. But look it, I mean you've talked to everybody on the planet, and uh I think I'm honored to be your first arm wrestler. Well, if I'm gonna have an arm wrestler, it has to be the goat. Oh highly debated, highly debated, but uh I'll take it. You're in the conversation, I'm gonna there's a couple of us, I think. Um John Brzeck. I don't know how how close do you follow arm wrestling? Very little. Yeah. I follow you. Well I'm I'm most fascinated by the fact that you can't extend your arm. Yeah. His arms don't straighten out. No, they don't, unfortunately. That didn't work. Yeah. It didn't work when I was trying to fight Thor either. It kind of limited the extension. But when did that start happening? So I was uh I got into club arm wrestling. I arm wrestling with my when I was a kid, but I got into club arm wrestling around like eighteen. By the time I was twenty or so, uh we have this champion called Crazy George. Okay. He's like a very old, very decorated champion. And um he famously at the time for me, he couldn't straighten his elbows. And I was like, oh man, I can't wait till my elbows don't straighten. Like a silly a silly wish, right? So it started early, like I think I was like probably like in my late twenties and it just the the range started to shrink. And but how what is that from? It's just pressure mostly. Like just the constant pressure on the elbow joint causes, you know, osteophytes potentially like and it doesn't happen to all the arm wrestlers. Have you got an MRI on it? I've had three surgeries. To straighten them out? To remove uh bone and scar tissue. Just chip bones and stuff? Chip bones. Dr. Pollock bless his soul at the uh Ottawa Hospital has extended my career till till this age. You know. Yeah, it can that's probably one of the worst chronic conditions that armresters get is uh you know, if the if the bone growth gets bad enough it can start to constrict your nerves or blood flow, and that's when it becomes a problem. Has that happened to you? Yeah? Yeah. I So I was what, I was probably um it was like two thousand thirteen, so like thirteen years ago is when I had my first surgery. And at that point, like trying to move forward, trying to move forward and put pull it out as broad as you can go. That's that's it? That's it, buddy. That's it. Wow. Yeah. The left is a little more than the right, it looks like. Probably a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And I've had two surgeries on the right, one on the left. But in my mind, you know, it's a small price to pay , you know. Like I'm I'm as all in in arm wrestling as you can possibly be. And this is our cost of admission for some of us. Mm you know and Does does that happen to every arm wrestler? No. No? No. There's lots of arm wrestlers. It's it's a style thing, it's a it's a genetic predisposition. It's I rolled the dice wrong one day and had a bad match. You know, I think what happens is um it's really it's the pressure, it's the bones over time, if you're and then it's if you're a dummy and you know, keep on doing it when you should probably rest, that probably doesn't help and I'm I'm guilty, you know. So most of the greats Anyways, I 'm everything it it doesn't affect me in the sport. I I actually I call it weaponized arthrit is. Okay . Because there are ways you can kind of make your loss of range work for you at times. Really? Yeah, because there's like right, you know, like if you're doing an arm bar, okay, like your body resists with the ligaments and the tendons. So that starts higher for me. And I think that there's a muscular strength component that kicks in as well right at the end of the range to protect you. So I just have a higher uh you know arm bar, you know. Does it did it help you in arm bars as well? Oh god, no, it doesn't. A good jujitsu guy is still gonna he's still gonna arm bar me. No. But it's also the bones would just snap. Yeah, it's just gonna snap higher. Yeah, snap in bad places. Yeah. Did you ever try hanging from like a chin up bar to straighten it out? Um I've tried a lot of things. I saw a video with you in uh Juju Mufu. Yeah. Is that how you say his name? Yeah, Juju. Juju. Juju Mufu. Yeah, Juju Mufu. Okay. John Call. Yeah, he's great. He's great. He he's he's such a character. But they were rolling, they were trying to like do some stuff with like these big metal bars to roll out your muscles . And you were in fucking agony. Yeah. I was like, that is crazy to watch like you really can't straighten your arm. And when they were trying, you were screaming. Yeah. Yeah, it's terrible. Uh I've kinda just accepted it. Did you ever try to hang? I've tried so many things. But I when I was young, when I was twenty, I was wishing for the day that I could be like crazy George. It's it's interesting, you know, like I'm not if I was like all about straightening my arm, I could probably still do it. Because the bone is actually removed. Now it's uh a sheath, there's like a capsule that surrounds a joint um that is probably the root cause of it. Um what is the capsule made out of? I believe it's uh was it fascia, uh just connective strain So everything is just sort of condensed to hold the joint together? I think so. Wow. Yeah. It's kind of a unique study. If you were like a physiologist, you're studying human anat omy, you would say, okay, like what is possible? Yeah. You know, like do you know about David Goggins' knees? I know David Goggins, I don't know about his knees. His knees are so great, he's bone on b one. Yeah. With both knees. And he went to the doctor and the doctor said, I don't know how you can walk with these knees. Forget about run thousands of miles. So his knees had the it's it's what is it called, Jamie? It's like wolf something? It's like there's a condition when you're bone on bone for so long where the bone actually spreads out. And the doctor said I'd heard about this in theory. I've never seen it on an actual human being where his knee, the bone had grown out so weird that his knees were moving at like odd angles, so they had a saw his tibia and move his knee down. So he's still bone on bone, but now he has a flat surface. And so they cut it and then screwed it into place. And then he just rode a stationary bike for like fucking five months like a maniac and then started running again. Bone on bone. Beautiful. Love it. It's crazy. He's wild man. See if you can f see if you can find what the condition is. It says it's called Wolf's Law, biological principles stating that I think that's it. Yeah. And his grew thicker and like kind of mushroomed out at the top of the knee. Because there's nothing there. There's no and it's just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Yeah. So it just kept growing out. And if you see see d do we have the images of the surgery? It's I know I sent it to you a long ass time. Yeah, I mean it's it's showing a bunch of pictures from when he was on here. So see that where he the fingerprints on his shin? That's because he had so much edema on his leg that he could squeeze it and put his that's after the surgery. Awesome. Yeah but look at the actual yeah, look at that, the photo of what the knee looks like. That's not him. That's not him. Where's that's the that's like an image of what it looked like. Okay, so they saw it and then they screw it down in place. They saw it slightly, you know, like a w edge off a piece of wood. 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Yeah, for sure I have something similar. I've been bone on bone for uh probably two decades. Really? Yeah. All the cartilage is gone. Nothing. So when when I went in got my surgery. Uh doctor told me I have no like there's there's nothing there but bone. He said, Devin , maybe we can extend maybe we can give you another couple years on your on your career. Maybe how long ago did you say this? Really? How old are you? I'm fifty-one. That's amazing. And and and I have another shot at the world title. I'm still number one in the divisions, uh so you know, I'm I'm lucky. But I think it's all it's the doctors will say something, but it's just not true. You can you can do anything, you know. Well Goggins is a perfect example of that, and I guess so are you. It's like the idea that you can't do something is based on when most people quit. Yeah. Pain is a interesting thing to try and master, you know? Um it's it's information and you have to be able to live with it and work with it. But it's it's it's good. It's good to have this pain because it's kind of a guide on where you need to get better. Um you know, the tendons and the tendonous structures of the elbow are super, super taxed in arm wrestling. And the process of rehabilitation and development of these structures under great duress and trauma i is is difficult and it requires a lot of time and monotony, which a lot of people aren't willing to put in. I'm shocked at how much time grip training takes. Yeah. It takes forever. I've I've been trying to jack my my the those grip strength things, the strongest I ever got to is 164. And I'm like, I want to get to 200. I feel like in my lifetime I can get to 200. I can't get past 164. And the thing is, like, I keep lifting weights with my arms, I keep, and I'm always tired. So like every time I squeeze that thing, um my hands are always sore, so I'm like shit, I gotta take some time off to see if I can get it stronger. And so I'm doing all these wrist curls and I've got the forearm finisher from Golden Grip, and I've got these big fat things that I use for vr for cables to rotate wrists and my hands got bigger, I'm definitely stronger, but it's like I don't know when to lay off of it and when to put like how many days a week do you do grip training? What's your guess? Every day. Of course. Every day. Every day. And is that the way to do it? Is that the smart way to do it? Uh I know you talk to a lot of those rock climber guys and they have the craziest grip strength. Yeah. One of the things that I'll just say right away is a lot of people associate grip with arm wrestling and 100%. It's it's m of massive importance. But the real technical nuance of the sport is to try and make the other person hold on to you. Right? So it's not necessarily grip is more like defense and added offense, but the first step is to try and tax the other person's grip. But how do you do that? I think that everything there's we are opening up like technical arm wrestling. Okay. Open it up. Let's go. Okay. So I think in from my position , the opening move in arm wrestling is a concept called ris ing. Like you know the movie Over the Top? Mm-hmm. Okay, this is the opening step of the sport. And what it is is basically an attempt to get a better grip. And if I can the the concept of making the other opponent hold on to you, that's the first step in technical supremacy. Okay? If you can make the other person hold on to you. you If can touch their fingers, if you can get their fingers activated and they're holding on to you, that's they're m they're they're less efficient. Okay. Yeah. So it's about attacking weakness more than it is about So they're the most efficient when it's palm to palm and everything's gripped nice and tight. As soon as you get like out here. Right. Right. Like if if we were to arm wrestle, you would want to put the pressure in my fingertips. Like with like almost like a hammer type motion. Mm-hmm. Right. So you're basically it's almost like a curl. It's it's more complicated, but that's like the first way to start to think about it. Like people think about arm wrestling and think about pinning each other. Right. And this is this is a very short-sighted way to think about the sport. You you think about pulling the match close to you. This this concept of rising is this upwards, spinning, slipping motion where the end result is you have a better grip. And anything that they try and do, it's gonna go through the weakest system they have, which is their fingertips. Yeah. So it is great to have an awesome grip. Really . I I so like proportionately in my workload, if I was doing twenty-one sets.enty Tw-one or I think I do twenty-one working sets typically in my workouts. Um one of them is dedicated purely to grip. Every day. All day. All day. So you just do them throughout the day. I I lead a very simple life at the moment. So structure it. Like how do you do it? Uh my structure right now, and I think that I'm probably one of the most dedicated armrests in the world in time in in terms of like what I do with my life and how much energy I give the sport is I I base it off of a week. Okay, so I train with the club probably twice a week. This changes, but typically I'm going twice a week, and these are my hardest days. And I go in there and I just completely red line and max out in the sport. Okay, all the the exactly what I gotta do. I'm doing at my highest, highest capacity. I I have uh my my family, we're all our wrestlers, so my kid. Uh he I mean he's a pro too. He's yeah, he's competing this weekend. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. So we like we we have our own thing where we'll hit a hit a m like we'll train together. Um but really two hard sessions uh a week and then whatever I fit in with my kids uh and then uh the rest of the days are like mindless not just the monotony level is extreme. Uh my wife and I, I'm retired, right? So I have nothing but time . Uh and I try to make I just try and put everything into it. So like it's all day, man. It's all day. I wake up and I'm training like all day. Uh so these machines, like this is some of the shit that you have. Now is this a machine that's specifically designed for arm wrestling? Dis did this exist or did you go did you help create this? Uh this actually machine is handed down for me from uh the best female arm wrestler ever to exist, uh Leanne Dufrain, uh Johnny Roberts. So this is like a very standard arm wrestling equipment. It's basically an arm wrestling table with a cable system. And this is super old , okay? This this table you're looking at here, that's like 40 year old table. And it's it's still working. But yeah, you can buy pulley system on a table. And that's really like this is basically all I do. I work on a off of a table differ,ent angles, different pressures that all just replicate the pressures in arm wrestling. So you have a fat grip, looks like a PVC tube, and then you're using that to work your fingertips and roll your wrist We call that a multi spinner. And what's interesting about it is you see it's a single point attachment. Mm-hmm. So it's a little bit like Swiss ball for the wrist. So it's it's a Swiss ball? You know, like a Swiss ball, like uh people do like squats on 'em, like the ball in the gym, people do like Oh like a bosu ball? Is that what it's like? Bosu's like a half, right? Oh, is that what it is? Swiss ball is like just the big round balls that you see people Whatever they call them. Right. You ever jumped on a Swiss ball and done squats or anything? No. Okay. Well I have the fa the half ones. Yeah, Swiss ball is way more unstable. So it's a similar concept where it's it's very unstable through the wrist. Uh and there's different wraps, but there's like a fewes base mov in arm wrestling, probably top rolling, hooking, and pressing. And you just do shit like this all day. All day. And this is in my taper, okay? I know. It's crazy. Uh' thats the hardest part. This is in your what room? This is in my basement. Oh your basement. Yeah. And what you see here, this was actually my final workout um before I pulled the Russian champion, Vitalia Letin, like six, seven weeks ago. Um so I've tapered. Normally all these movements you see, I'm doing like a hundred repetitions. So lots of blood flow. And when you're doing a hundred repetitions at like a what 50% max weight? Like w what do you what do you weight? Nothing. Nothing. Like twenty pounds, something like? Yeah. Really? Is that the key? I'm a bit I experiment a lot, okay? I've done so many different systems. But this is what I've come up with that I think is best. So I b basically it all revolves around these arm wrestling practice days where um it's hundred percent this is what I want my body to maximize about. But the off days, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the it's all day just doing blood flow, just increasing the amount of blood that flows through the fascia , flows through these chains in in arm resting motions. And the hundred is i all all I'm trying to do is increase my circulation, especially through my connective structures. And movement is so essential Why that over why is that more beneficial than like hard strength training, like s small uh reps, like low numbers of reps but high weight? So super debatable, okay, and I've done all of it. Mm-hmm. Um what I've found is in my opinion, you only have so much energy, and this is something we gotta really weigh in, because if I could just smash, you know, heavy stuff all the time and take steps forward, I do it. But um I I've found that you don't want to detract from the thing that you're really, really trying to do. So anything that takes away from your ability to do that, I think you should look at cutting. The best part of my training is on the table. So anything that kind of messes with that, I don't want to do it. I've done a lot of systems where I'm lifting heavy, but the thing is is they take energy, they take resources, and what I really want to do is prepare my body so I can do that specific task as as good as possible. The the high rep training heals me. It heals me. A lot of people are like, oh that's a lot of work and I'm like, it's really not. Um it's just it's a form of healing almost. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Just the blood flow and the consistent movement and high repetitions. Yes. Um it's h this is highly debated, okay? But I'm proving it over and over over the years. I I I started doing because arm wrestling's a strength sport. No doubt about it. Uh so So right away people think, oh, you know, heavyweight and you know high reps is dangerous because you're gonna become an endurance guy and it's it's gonna make you weaker. Um but when you go low your work volume is tremendous. Okay, if you're doing light lightweight all day long, I mean the amount of total weight that you're lifting becomes astronomical. And I think that that adaptation over long periods is wonderful and you can't get the blood flow through the connective structures without movement. So this is this is really why I do it. The healing aspects, the overall I'm doing all my heavy lifting specifically in the sport . Like I'm I'm not I'm not doing my heavy lifting at this time in my career. Uh and and also Joe, I'm fifty one. And I'm plagued with injuries. So I have to be very specific. I have to be very precise. Uh yeah, this is the best formula I've come up with. And when you were younger, did you approach it differently? I have made so many mistakes. What was the initial approach? Just lift as heavy as you can? Yeah, lift as heavy as I can. Well you're a giant dude already, right? So you already naturally have like big bones, big genetics. So did you power lift? Like what did you d what'd you do uh initially? I was a a judo guy, I was a basketball guy . Um I was a military guy. So I did a lot of different stuff. I was very cross trained. I even I even did um Ironman for a bit. Uh but it's gotta be so hard for you. Yeah. What's the difference? Military Ironman, you're doing it with a backpack, you're portaging a canoe, you're paddling, you're running with the backpack. So that race, you know, a winning time is, you know, probably anything under six hours, like five and a half to six hours. So it's long duration, but it's slightly heavier. So I'm still big, even for that. Like most champions, most guys who win the Iron Man are, you know, average size or even smaller. But uh yeah, the size I mean I'm a bigger person . But yeah, I I did a lot of different sports, but I've I've always loved arm wrestling. It's always been the one I've come back to. It's you know what is it about it? I I think that there's a lot of things about it . You know, for me personally, it was my first sport. Like I started arm wrestling with my grandmother when I was like four years old. With your grandmother? Yeah. Really? Never underestimate the power uh of a grandmother. Yeah . Yeah. Yeah. Um I was a rowdy little kid and, you know, in a in a with a German mother who didn't let me do too much crazy stuff around the house. And my grandmother used to come over and it was a reward system. She'd tell me to do chores and uh the result was uh I got to arm wrestle with her . Yeah. I never beat her. That's crazy. I never beat her. Uh it's it's funny. Um her name was Lavon . Um and the current super heavyweight world champion is Lavon. Uh so I've never beat either of 'em. Yeah, yeah. Uh but yeah, so I started I started young. Um I I love arm wrestling because it's uh it's a very safe fight. Okay. Like I I I I love fight ing. Everything in my life has been about fighting. And um arm wrestling is one of those fight sports that has super low cost. Like we don't punch each other in the head. Uh I'll be able to walk. Uh nothing So it's low cost. You can do it your whole life. Like we have we've had world champions in the open division who were almost seventy. What? Yeah. What? Yeah, that's cool, right? That's incredible. I love it. How's that possible? Yeah, it's the hand is weird. Like this thing here is designed for volume and it just slow ly builds. You know, the hand is the structure is has so much connective tissues in it, so much tendon, and that's just it takes so long to build, you know, age is an advantage in a lot of ways 'cause you just have more time to get further in arm wrestling. Yeah, I'm fifty-one, I'm telling you, I I probably competed at the highest level and I I believe I can still go further. Uh it's non typical, you know. It's non typical. And I the the thing that I love most about it the very most is is the family and the bonds. Uh arm rest and clubs are special places. It's very blue-collar. Open doors, man. There's there's not a lot of money associated with the sport in terms of membership fees. Um and it it breeds a very tight family. Like I consider the club that I train with, like they're my family. Like so um that's my f I mean that's what sport's all about, you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, and and arm wrestling is very conducive to that. So when you say it's non-typical that you could compete at this level th at this age, what what how old are like most of the top guys? I'd say that you hit your probably peak typically when you are low thirties. So very standard, you know. Oh, that's my buddy pork chop. Oh, there's Crazy George. This is the guy, okay? So this guy 's crazy George. The dude who's down there, uh, not the guy in the green shirt. So these are both my good buddies. And this is the guy who can't straighten his arms out? Uh he can't, no. He's super locked up, okay. But so he's doing this move called a king's move or outside top rule. And you see Pork Chop's wrist is bent back. I I love Porky. I train with Porky twice a week. Um but yeah, Crazy George. And Crazy George is like a hundred and sixty pounds. And Porky . Yeah, and Porky's like two thirty, completely tremendously jacked and strong. Yeah, and Pork Chop is like a professional arm wrestler pulling at East versus West, okay? That's our highest league. And Crazy George is Yeah, yeah, it's completely incredible. Yeah. This is actually the time period of Crazy George's downfall. Okay. So how old is Crazy George in this film? He'd probably be late sixties here. Okay? Wow. Yeah. He's a absolute legend to me in sport. Like technically, so this guy, he spent the first like twenty years in the sport, two up, two down. Okay, go to tournament, double elimination. He's and that's the Canadian champ. These guys are all champions that you see him arm wrestling with. And he invented basically he didn't invent it, but there were very few people doing this style of arm wrestling. Okay? We call it an outside top roll or a king's move. And he really figured it out and uh very difficult. Very difficult to deal with. And what is he doing? He's dropping down and lowering his body weight. Yeah. So there's many kind of main strengths in arm wrestling. Okay? There's uh rising strength, there's pronational strength, there's cupping strength, and this pronational see this this like like is my favorite example. Jesus Christ, look at that thing. That's so weird. Show that. Show that. Look at that look at that mu who the fuck has that muscle? Armrest. That muscle's so weird. Right? So that turned out. I don't even think I have that. Where is that? Yeah, it's right there. That's nuts. Right. That's mine is non-existent. I was gonna interrupt. I saw it on this thumbnail and I was gonna say, what is that? Yeah. It's fucking crazy. It's one of my dreams to have bodybuilders when they're you know I have BB just to be doing pronator poses one day, one day. It's the twenty you gotta first turn turn your thumb down. Like that and uh pop your wrist back. There it is. See it? There it is. There you go. This little little bitch ass the one. Fucking little bitch ass muscle. That's gigantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like different styles in arm wrestling, okay, like they have different roots. Okay . And the Kings move, top rolling in general, outside top rolling, is super dependent on pronation. So it's all this. Tur twisting it. Twisting. Yeah. It's it's it's weaponized, right? We get really strong to and and there's a relationship between all the angles in the hand. The hand is very complex, right? All sorts of stuff it can do. And the main two drivers, cupping, we call it, flexion, and pronation. And these two interact. So when one pron ates, it attacks the other one's cup. So there's a relationship between them. So Crazy George is like the master of pronational styles. King's move is pronation style. I, over the course of my career, change techniques, change techniques. Probably my best technique is a open top roll or a king's move now. Yeah. And and I learned a lot. It's like the guy that one of my first coaches, guy called Troy Eaton, uh , he he could never beat George. He couldn't beat George. We tried, we tried, we tried for years to figure him out. So, and that was back when I was like 20, right? So I've been I've been studying this style for 30 years. Uh and yeah, it's it's a combination of locks and giveaways and balancing. Arm wrestling things happen really quickly. Very, very quickly. But it's a balancing act of of all these different strengths. So what is it about you that's able to keep competing at a very high level into your fifties I think uh Is it this approach where you're just doing all these reps all day long? Do you think that's a big part of it? Huge. Huge. Huge part of it. Because you're constantly forcing your muscles to work, you're constantly getting blood flow and you're not losing any strength. Yeah. As you get older. Yeah. sport with that. So metabolically and from a health perspective, it keeps my tendons and ligaments really functional. And you know, I'm I'm just I'm just a very simple and obsessed person and I just I I arm wrestle at every opportunity. Don't you also have some very freaky genetics? Like didn't Ryan Yeah w what is his last name? Rosner. He's Rosner. This guy's the best. Very interesting guy. Smartest person I know. Geneticist. And uh he was explaining to me how unusual your genes are. We all have unusual genes. Yeah, but you have really unusual genes. Uh well there that's that topic is so big, you know, the genetic uh piece. I think that what a massive piece going forward for our species, you know. Um the mastery of genetics, uh it's right at the top , I think, of our highest priorities. You know, there was a thing that they were talking about last night in the green room. See if you could find this. They think they might have figured out a way to end down syndrome. They think they might have figured out a way with genetic engineering, with CRISPR or whatever they're using, whatever modalities they're using, to end down syndrome. Sure. Which is wild. I think that there's so many answers with genetic s, you know, from I I personally believe that uh and you know this is a big topic with freedom and everything like that, but I I I really believe that when you're born you should be swabbed and it should accompany your health, you know, card or whatever and just as a information. You know, there's so much. Well it probably will be in the future. As these all these techniques and all this new stuff comes out. CRISPR takes a bold leap towards sil encing Down syndrome's extra chromosome. Wow. So scientists have taken an important step towards a gene therapy that could one day turn off the genetic material that causes Down syndrome. Down syndrome is a genetic condition caused by an extra chromosome twenty-one and consequently hundreds of triplicate genes that lead to developmental and neurological issues. According to Washington based National Down syndrome society. One in every six hundred and forty babies in the United States is born with Down syndrome. That makes it the most common chromosomal condition . So they're so what is it doing here? Um Beth Israel Deacon ist Medical Center and Harvard Medical School found a way to silence much of the extra chromosomes activity in the cell at once. Details of the research are published in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Well Ryan's actually gotta talk to. I mean I'm a high school educated guy and I I've been down to Austin several times to hang out with Ryan. I I absorb everything I can from this guy. But um I think that my genetics uh I think I'm predisposed to um endurance Aaron Powell Endurance. I think so. I think if you take an overall look at my genetics, I think I have a lot of, you know, favorable mutations that are, you know, predispose me to good. But it's weird. I don't know, man. Listen, the genetic side of things, I I I'll sound silly if I try and talk too much about it. I'll just tell you that there are there are favorable genetics for sure. You know, there's favorable And it's amazing, you know, if you could capture all of them from everybody and you know, put it together and you never know what you'd get Brian Shaw. We've we've scanned Brian. That's the thing. So this this this project that Ryan is doing and I I like to help him out a little bit. Um we've been looking at elite performers and with the with the goal to find favorable mutations. And yeah, we scanned Brian. Yeah. That guy's in the Bible. He's like, you know, David and Goliath. Yeah. That's they're real people out there like that. Yeah, yeah. Brian. So his genetics are one out of every five hundred million people. Isn't it something crazy along those lines? Yeah. He's he's completely a um an he's he's right at the peak of human performance, right from a genetic standpoint. Just freakish . Hotels.com is the place you go to book hundreds of thousands of hotels. It's exactly what it sounds like. Just like Save Your Way from Hotels.com is exactly what it sounds like. Choose to save now with an instant discount or bank that discount as rewards for later. Your trip, your call. Save your way exclusively at hotels.com. It's all in the name. Bone density. Yeah. Everything. Everything. And it's not just this bone density, the dude's mindset. Like there's many pieces of Brian's genetics that that make him a champion. Um but yeah , he has some stuff in him that w that Ryan's never seen. Yeah. No, nobody no b he has and I probably shouldn't be speaking about other people's medical stuff, but I love Brian and he he can sue me if he wants. Uh nobody has his uh growth hormone. He has a different type of growth hormone. What do you mean? I don't think it's the same. What? I don't think he has the s we're opening something so cool 'cause you talked about the the Down syndrome and there's some very interesting stuff with that. But uh yeah Brian I don't believe that uh Brian's growth hormone is the same as yours and mine. What does that mean? It might be molecular ly different or it might have uh you're gonna have to talk to Ryan. Is it different kind of growth hormone? He has a mutation in his growth hormone. Well that makes sense.. Yeah, it does I mean he's almost seven feet tall and he's four hundred pounds. Yeah, and and he and he doesn't stop . He doesn't stop. But it's weird the the whole like Down syndrome thing. They can do stop codes, like some genes, like some mutations that you get, from what I understand, there's like a stop code on a gene. So whatever your gene is, uh when the I guess MNRA lands on it and starts to do its thing, like there can be a stop code or something that just stops that gene from expressing. And I think that that's likely what they'd they'd do with that. They'd somehow insert a stopcode. But I mean there's people out there who have like world records like for things like deadli ft that don't have fast twitch muscle according to their genetics. So it's really weird. What do you mean they don't have fast twitch muscle? Like they have a stop code on their fast twitch genetics. Just natural. Doesn't make any sense at all. They're just born weird. Born super weird. Yeah, they're capable of beating world records on the deadlift. So wouldn't you think that deadlift is a fast Twitch thing? Yeah. So I don't understand. I don't either. Um it's an amazing field. Genetics is an amazing field. Is that a lack of understanding of what m fast twitch do? Or is it they can compensate with the other muscles in some way? I don't think it's other muscles, because I think that it would probably apply to all the musculature. So there's something that we don't understand. There's something weird going on. Uh Eddie, you can sue me. Eddie Hall, I I love love you. you. Uh Eddie's got a stop code. In his genes. On fast switch muscle. Makes no sense. Well that doesn't make any sense. Makes no sense he moves so fast. I know. And he hits so fucking hard. That''ss c crarazy. It zy. How is that possible? I've seen that guy hit mitts and you're like, Jesus Christ. I know. Is this what the the Hercules mean? Not that something else? No. Oh, that's myostatin. That's myostatin inhibitors. Yeah. So it regulates the production of myostatin, a protein that stops muscles from growing too large. So with myostatin inhibitors, they've done that with I'm sure you've seen those whippets that have it. Of course. So whippets are a weird dog. It's a very skinny, fast dog, and some whippets are born with this genetic mutation that's a myostatin inhibitor and they look like the Hulk. It's the cra show show an image of that, please. It is the craziest thing. Because if you see a regular Whippet, show me a regular Whippet now please. Yeah. Regular Whippets that's a yeah, look look at a regular whippet, like a real fast look almost like a greyhound looking dog. And then you see the ones with the myostatin inhibitor gene and you're like, what the hell is going on? They look like like the most freakish bodybuilder of all time, but in a dog form. And some humans have that. Belgian blues also. The Belgian uh cows. Yes. Yeah. And they have it too. Yeah. So they offer already genetic genetic therapy that gives you folostatin . So there's a balance between folostatin and myostatin. From what I understand, like the key that turns on the cell for for growth is um is folostatin. And myostatin tells the cell to stop growing, you're big enough. Right. Important. Very important. And so if you don't have myostatin, all that that turnkey gets is folostatin. So the only thing signal that you're ever getting with a myostatin deficiency is folostatin. And so yeah, so they offer a genetic therapy that increases your full stat. They offer it to who? Hmm. Anybody, anybody to get jacked. Anybody with enough money rhymes with peptide. Yeah there's there's a bunch of genetic therapies that they've already created. Folostatin is one of them. And so that would be for power lifters or football players or someone who just wanted to get fucking huge? I think initially it was created for longevity. Because as you age, your folostatin drops. And that's why people get s smaller, they shrink as they get older. Right. And folostatin just helps you maintain muscle mass. Yes. So it's it's I think it's most ly um promoted as an anti-aging remedy, but absolutely like you want to get your performance up? Yeah, increase. They're doing so many wild things now. They've got this new therapy now for people with disc degeneration. I'm sure you have it, I have it, a lot of people have it. Uh especially anybody who does jujitsu has it. Your your discs just get worn out from getting cranked on and like heavy lifters always have it, lower back issues. Your the disc is the soft cushion in between the spinal columns and those those big bones push down that disc and over time and all that compression it squashes. But now they've got stuff that they can inject into the disc that inflates the discs. Yeah. And so all these people that have been getting artificial discs and fusions and all the problems that come with that, because there's massive problems.' Therey gonna be able to eliminate that, which is amazing. Super cool. Oh, so super cool. And I tell everybody, if you could avoid back surgery, please avoid back surgery. Don't fucking do it. There's a lot of different ways like I always tell everybody and I'll tell everybody again, Louis Simmons, his invention, that that invention, the reverse hyper, fucking incredible. One of them the greatest invention ever for people with lower back problems. I have one here in the studio. I have one at my house. I fucking swear by that machine. It's so good. It decompresses the spine on the on the D cell and on the uplift when you're lifting up the weights. It it strengthens the muscles out. It's like a perfect exercise for lower back issues. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild when we look at the future uh in terms of performance and how far the age is being pushed. Like we see crazy Jordan That's crazy. Right. That's crazy. Uh well that's for arm wrestling. Well I wonder what's gonna happen with regul well the thing with with regular sports, the stuff that's pushing this stuff is performance enhancing drugs. You know, peptides, stem cells, not really that's not really performance dancing drunk, but for injuries. But testosterone, all the all these different steroids, all these different things. The thing about like combat sports in particular is that you can't use those things. They're not allowed. But when you can use them, you see these older athletes that have the mind of an older athlete but the body that works like a young guy. Right. My favorite example that is Vitor Belfort when he was in his prime. T RR TT Balfour. Yeah. TRT Vitor was the scariest fucking guy ever. Yeah. Because he was jacked up with testosterone, but he was also 37 years old with a lifetime of combat sport experience, lifetime of intelligence, but had n't lost any speed, hadn't lost any strength, and in fact had like superhuman speed and strength. Because he was juicy. Super juicy. But but it makes you think: like, man, what would the sport look like if that was open to everybody? Right. Yeah. Interesting. It is interesting because there's a lot of guys that want to keep competing, but their body just doesn't respond the way it used to to training because they're thirty-seven or thirty-eight or thirty nine or but if you could get them on the sauce. Yeah. Right? Where's the limit? Yeah. Right. And why not let them? Absolutely. Why not? You know, I I I'm a big believer in tested sport, you know. I think that that's wonderful. Uh and I think that that'll never go away and I think it's it's important. But I I'm also a believer in open up the gates and let everybody play. Well that's why I really love this whole idea of doing the enhanced games. It didn't really pan out the way everybody hoped. Nobody really won any records other than the one guy in the swimming, but he wore a prohibited suit that lets you swim quicker, apparently. I don't understand swimming. Yeah. But I was hoping like you're gonna see some freakish superhuman performances. But I feel like if that's gonna happen, that's gonna take years. I don't think you would get the kind of gains that these people are hoping to get to achieve like world records, super freak human performance unless you're doing that stuff for a long like you know as well as anybody that training takes forever. It takes to build strength, to build speed, to build endurance. It takes a long ass time. You think you're gonna get strength in three months. Like you get a little stronger. For sure. But you're not gonna get freakish strength for fucking years. It takes years . Years. Decades. Like Juju Mufu. Like how long has that guy been lifting weights? That guy's a fucking freak. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't build this stuff overnight. And I bet he would melt a piss cup. Whoo. Listen, I I think not a chance. Juju Juju look at so many look at myself included, you know, I I care about performance. This is this is what what I care about. And so many people fall into the same boat. Look at that guy. Dang, chance of hell that dude's natural. You know, I'll tell you. Uh Juji is probably amazing though that he can do that. That kind of flexibility with that kind of mass is look at that. While overhead pressing a full side squat of side split that's nuts on chairs, Jean-Claude Van Damme style. Juji started out tricking. Okay. What does that mean? Uh like it's a full- cause that sounds like Sounds like he's picking up guys. Yeah, no no, Juju is super cool. Uh it's like flipping Oh he was on America's Got Talent? Yeah. Oh wow. It's like a form of uh uh like acrobatics or gymnastics. Right. Yeah. Well I've seen him do acrobatics stuff and it's really nuts. Right. Like his physical ability, like it b defies what you expect from a guy with that kind of mass. Right. Yeah. So he's a com combined like almost gymnast and bodybuilder. Mm. And he's probably better now than ever. And he's I mean, I think Juji's in his forties. Wow. Yeah. And uh yeah, he's massive and healthy and you know, absolutely kicking ass. Probably the most positive human being that I've met. Well he seems super positive in his YouTube videos. Yeah. And we have snorted his fucking smelling sauce like a strong. He's got the best stuff. He does. We've snorted his stuff about a hundred times on this show . Yeah, actually look at him doing flips. That's crazy that a guy with that kind of mask can move like that. Juju is actually the inspiration for this modern uh this this latest way that I'm training. It was actually Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Juju came up to my place uh probably about a year and a half ago, and we were just redlining in our two-hand work. Okay? And it was so good. Two hand work? Yeah, so okay, so I would be considered like the senior guy in in my club. Okay, so and we have this kind of rule in the in the club just to make things work properly. Senior holds, junior works. Okay, so so the senior is kind of staying with you, floating with you, and the junior is able to control their intensity. So the guy who would normally win the match doesn't win. He just holding him in place. Okay. Right. Like defense work in jujitsu. Exactly. Okay. Okay. But just to help out the that guy typically um will do two arm work, okay, to kind of flip the script for him so somebody can hold like me with two arms and kind of let me get to red line. Yeah. So Juju and I were doing that like a year and a half ago and it was so good and it was so much fun. I was like, what am I doing , you know, having anything kind of cut into this? And that's when I stopped doing heavy lifting. It was it was as a result of training with Juju. So this two arm work of just holding and just work on Yeah. Exactly. And does he arm wrestle? He does. A little bit. Juju does everything. But why did it you working with him make you Juju's a special guy. Um I think that just you don't have to be the best in your field. If you have a certain energy or certain thing with you, Juju is a wonderful , creative, hardworking guy and when you get a chance to train with him, it doesn't matter that his skill level, it's just his level of energy is so good that when we work together it it helps me. Um I don't know how it happened, but he unlocked this understanding of the priority of that training for me. I've always done it, but never- Well how did he un unlock it? I'm not getting it. Trevor Burrus I think that our training session uh I okay, so what happened was Juju came over and I normally on days that I do table work , I do not hit the gym. Okay, because I don't want anything to kind of impact my my my tablework. And because I only had a day with Juju, I wanted to show him how I was training. And at the time I was training very heavy. I was training very heavy so, we did this circuit. I showed them all my latest exercises that I was prioritizing. And then we went to the club that night. And we had this awesome two arm work, but I felt as though, you know, the singles and everything that I'd done earlier in the day had a slight effect and I was like, I can't ever let that happen again. I I need to put make sure I put all my energy into this table table training. And it's funny, you know, being fifty-one and having over thirty years competitively in the sport, I still feel like I learn. You know, I still feel like I change things from from event to event. Mm. Yeah. Well that's a sign you're doing something fun. Yeah. Right? Key to life. So just the one training session with him changed your perspective on that because you just weren't performing as well? That was a tipping point. That was a tipping point for me. So I generally have a protocol, like a training kind of balance, a recipe that I'm gonna follow pretty much from event to event. And this is all made by you? Is made by me. Um and I I watch everything, you know. I I love arm wrestling, but I'm looking at sports. I'm always trying to get better. Um so yeah, it's my protocol that I come up with, and then I'll tweak it based off of my results. Okay, so if I'm doing good, not much changes. If if uh if I don't do as good as I think I should do, or there's like something, I'll tweak it from event to event. And yeah, and that night uh was the night that I decided I need to get rid of heavy weights because this is so good. This training is so good when done properly. And that's the key when done properly. Like two arm work can suck. Like if you do two arm work wrong it can hurt you, it can set you back . But when done properly, it's the best training that there can be. Super specific. And do you do stuff that's not specific for arm wrestling, just for overall body strength? Like do you feel like there's a balance to be achieved? This is uh the greatest um criticism that I always receive as an athlete, uh is because I don't really. Just arm wrestling stuff. I I go for walks. That's it? Terrible. Really? No lunges? No leg al. I'm trying a little bit to work it back in in some minimal way. Uh but it's it's interesting, you know, cross-training versus specialization. Uh I have a long background in in very broad training. Okay. Like I I once upon a time was a fit human being in many aspects, but I really care about being a champ, you know? And I could probably be a healthier guy and be able to run and squat and deadlift. Uh or I can be a little bit of a cripple and be pulling for world title shots is the way I kind of look at it and I chose that. Uh I should do more squats. Well my only thought would be that if you conditioned and strengthened your overall body , it would just help your overall strength. Yeah. I mean, that is the thought about deadlifting and squatting, is that it helps everything. Yeah. Because your whole body just becomes stronger. And it would just natur nat likeally like your base , everything, your core, everything would just be much more your foundation would be stronger. I I hear ya. But I don't know. I don't I'm not obviously I'm not an arm wrestler. I don't know either. Okay. Everything I'm I'm playing with everything. This is constantly what pretty much every reasonable person tells me. And I just am like I get to a point where I do my arm wrestling work and I'm like o,kay here I, am . If I wanna beat Lavon , um, what do I do from here? And I just am like, more wrist curls . You know? Uh look at my what does he do? Uh he's a bit more balanced than me. He he Lavon lifts super heavy weights, uh like stupid. What does this dude look like? Show me show me Lavon. What is his last name? Saganus Philippe. Whoa. This is the pinnacle of our sport. Okay. This is the guy. How big is this dude? He gets about four twenty . Yeah. Oh my god. I love this guy. Look at the size of this motherfucker. This this is shit. That's a little AI. That can't be real. Is that AI? Is that picture AI? No. That one right there. Okay. That's real. Oh my god. This is real. This is real. I don't know Jamie. That might be real. He might just be pumped. Lavon is the pinnacle. Okay. We scanned him too. And surprise, he's a weirdo also. Oh yeah. Duh. Yeah, yeah. Look at the size of that motherfucker. He's in Little Rock in two days. In Little Rock, Arkansas? Yeah. Where does he live right now? Georgia. Georgia, the country. There's so many weirdos that come from Georgia. Really? Yeah. Proportionately their strength is is not normal. Geor Lavon is uh he hasn't nobody has beat this guy since 2017. He has absolutely flattened the field, okay? Like he's so hairy too. Oh. He he looks like a primitive man. He looks like a science project. Look at the fucking size of that guy. Oh my god . Smart guy. Cool. I bet. Very cool guy. Um I I absolutely love Lavon. Um he has beaten the piss out of me at every opportunity. But he's so big though. Yeah, he is. He is so big and uh and he's so good. He's like he grew up in the trenches arm wrestling. Okay. He didn't he's not one of these guys who came in uh,, you know, he he made his way through the world championships. Yeah, he hasn't lost in ten years, man. And so he does he do different stuff than you do? He does. Um a lot of the guys have different formulas. Okay. Lavon does a lot of pull ups, really heavy ones, and he does a lot of really heavy curls. This is the base, but he does all the same like we do all the same exercises, just different Now when you hear the best guy is doing things different than you, what keeps you from doing what he does? So we are all different. Right. Um That's what it used to look like? That's crazy . Shout out to stero ids. Shout out. Shout out to all the scientists out there. He's very young in that first photo. Of course. You know , he he slowly evolved through the world championships to what he is today. Um when you see different champions, and I try and learn from everybody. I I I watch what everybody does. I I see what they're doing. Uh you have to also consider where your body's at. Okay. I can't do the things I did when I was twenty five. Physically. I just can't. I I I I have have like I said I've had surgeries. Um but yet you can still arm wrestle. Yeah. So so obviously you're very strong in these particular areas and it's not holding you back at all. So what what is holding you back Um say injuries. Well, arm wrestling is a big thing. Okay. There's several things that you can kind of choose to focus on. Probably my biggest limiting factor is my elbow because I've had multiple surgeries on it. I burn it out. Like at the beginning of my career, I was more of a hook-style arm wrestler. That's where like the primary kind of drive in the sport is the flexion of the wrist and you're moving forward with your shoulder and you're kind of trying to attack the person's arm more. But over time, my elbow just got broke down to the point where, you know, I just don't have a lot of stability. Now, I continue to work on it and and quite honestly, my hooking now, my this stability is probably pretty good. I think I think that we do we all as athletes do the best thing we think we can. And um I think that the work that I do is very precise. Like the way the Levon trains and I and and please, I don't like to criticize Lavon, he's the best, okay? Um but egotistically and arrogantly I'm gonna say that my training's more precise than his. Okay? So I'm working on very precise angles where he's a sledgehammer at times. You know. Um like I'm working on very fine angles through my wrist, uh, you know, a lot of pronation in my style, a lot of hand control. Lavon's base movements, his his row, his his I mean he's doing he's doing a hundred and eighty kilo curl. You know? Two hands or one hand? Two, but that's a but he's he he's the the amount of weight that he's wrist curling and k I'm never I I'm I'm never gonna get there, okay? I'm never gonna catch him there. Okay. I need to catch him through something smaller. Like I need to be able to like a pit bull, like somehow nip onto like his fingertip and not let it go. I try it for every single prep that I do. I'm try uh in the super heavyweight division, I'm trying to get as being as strong as I can. What do you weigh now? Today I'm probably two sixty five. And so you're giving up a a considerable amount of weight. When I compete, I can I can get up to three hundred. Okay, when I'm competing. Uh and hopefully by the time I face him again, I'll be my biggest ever. I hope when I pull him I'll be three ten or three twenty, you know? And when you do that, what would you do to get that big? Would you add a bunch of weightlifting stuff? No. No. What would you do? Just eat? Eat. Stay in my basement. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Uh but he's doing all this other stuff. This is why I'm confused. Like have you tried adding all those chin-ups and all the different things that he does? I am very far down the road. I'm very, very far down the road. I've been doing this for like thirty two years competitively. I've gone through so many systems. Um while it is incredible to have a great row, while it is incredible to have a great um a great wrist flexion. Well it's incredible to have great legs. Like I go to tournaments sometimes and my legs are sore. But typically the reason why you win and lose the match is very small things in the hand on the wrist. Like this is typically the failure point. So I just try and put everything into the most valuable pieces that I think is actually going to determine my victory. And look at apart from Lavon, it's working. You know, this guy has raised the he's raised the sport, you know, and I continue to chase him. I continue to try and beat this dude. You know, my wife You've gotten close? The first time, the first time he tore my bicep. Oh whoa. You know, see see that tattoo? Uh-huh. See it's a cat with four fifteen. I used to call him a a four hundred fifteen pound pussy. You know, in the work up to the match, I was teasing him. And in Georgian it says Lavon was here 'cause he ripped it. Second round. Uh so that was the first time was a wash. Uh the second time I pulled him, uh I stopped him. I stopped him round one. What does that mean? So a lot of times in arm wrestling, get everything straight, don't move , go . And uh to stop a match means there's no movement. So no one's winning. Nobody's winning. And you don't just keep going to the death? Oh yeah. You do. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I I got like if you look up the second time that I arm wrestled for round one, yeah. Okay. So this is this is the last time I pulled them, which is two thousand twenty four. And when you say pulled them, it means you have to match with them. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So everything goes to straps. And I'm telling you, like So that is that what happens when the match doesn't work out and the hands slip away from each other? Straps. Do you guys put powder in your hands or anything? Yeah. Use chalk . But yeah. Evolving in arm wrestling. It used to be well in some leagues still you get a foul if you if there's a slip, somebody's intentionally did it, or it's a neutral slip and then they go to the straps. Um but yeah, so we get to the straps and this first round is the closest I've gotten to him . Um and in this match, I think he I think he might have ripped my spine apart. Like Yeah. I couldn't walk properly for like four months after. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm top rolling. I get into his wrist and uh and I'm just like I'm in shock. I'm like, I can't believe So I kinda I think I had the opportunity here to do a little bit more, like to seize the initiative, but I was in such shock that I got him to this point. Um, you know, I'm just and then here we go. Uh his wrist is starting to go, and so that's a flopper's pr ess and I get a foul, okay? First, see my shoulder goes below the table. Uh-huh. This is called decline humorous, and it's and it's a foul. You can't you can't do that. So you start from scratch? I'm actually on my second foul, so that's a loss because I was being too much of an idiot in the setup and they and they gave me a foul. And then from here on he just he just runs me. So it's a loss? What do you mean? So y in arm wrestling if you get two fouls, uhhuh, it's a loss. So the match is over. Match is over. But see this is best of seven. So from here he runs me over. But this is the closest I've gotten. Okay. We've practiced since then. We've we've we've gone on to I'll probably practice with him this weekend. Um but I'm slated to pull this monster again. It's gonna happen one more time for sure. It's uh it's what keeps me in my basement . He's awesome. I love this guy. He's lifting the sport in terms of performance, you know, like he's so hard to deal with. Yeah. And that's it, man. It just gets worse. It just gets worse. But uh yeah so I I can still win in like the 115 kilo division in the 105 kilo division. I think I've got those ones pretty much wrapped up. It's but but it's the open man to be the best. Yeah. Regardless of weight . Um That's so much weight to give up. I know. But you're giving up what, 135 pounds? Yeah. But it's so cool to try. You know? It's so cool to try. And what he does is he cleans my life up. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't do all this. Really? No . No, I'd be happy being the champ. You know? But when you're not the champ, you're not happy and you're gonna do everything you can. So you even though're a champ at your weight class, it's the open that open haunts you. Haunts me. Yeah. I've been there before. Like so in two thousand eight I was actually I I won against this legendary figure of the sport, John Brazink. He's considered the greatest of all time. John Bersink uh basically for 40 years, 40 years, from the time he was like 18 to like almost 60, okay? He he went undefeated for like basically undefeated for like 25 years. Yeah. In American. This guy, this guy, super cool, okay, different era. And you'll see the difference. Okay, so you'll see that this sport has changed. Can we pull him up? John Bersink. John Bersink's the goat. Yeah. Yeah. He'll be there this weekend too. And is he still competing? John is not really competing but he's just so tied into the sport. I think it's inevitable that he comes back but how old is he? He's like 60, 61 or yeah. Wow. Yeah he's the man. This guy's the man. So you know the movie Over the Top. Mm-hmm. Uh so Sylvester, that's actually John. The tournament was real. Oh really? Yeah, that was a real the movie followed the tournament , and John is actually the guy who won it. And how much does John weigh? On a good day, on a great day, John's like two thirty. But when he was young and healthy, probably one ninety-five, like So when he was winning. When he like he went like he went like twenty-five years around two hundred and ten pounds, beating every single person on the planet. How? He's awesome. He's awesome. John Brzeck. So John started arm wrestling with his when he was a kid with his dad. And he's one of the first guys. Did we see him do it? Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to. John's one of the first guys who arm wrestling has kind of evolved in its respectedness, okay, as a sport. I think if you went back like forty years and you talk about arm wrestling, uh people would be like, Oh that',s cool, yeah, let's go arm wrestle. Like and I'm gonna get better by arm wrestling by doing pecks and glutes and, you know, get my whole body strong. And John was kinda one of the first guys who was like, I'm an arm wrestler. I I practice arm wrestling. I go to tournaments. I don't need to lift weights. Okay . So he started young. Uh the dude's thumb is probably like bigger than mine. And he's like, you know, six foot one, six foot two. So he's to a certain degree built for it. But um masterful technician. Um So he doesn't lift weights? No. So all he did was arm wrestle to train for arm wrestling? In that wild? That's crazy. Right. So it gave a big guy. No, he's not. That's a former Russian champion, Zower. Uh actually no Zour might be Georgian. He might have been Russian at this time, but he's a he's a Georgian. Um yeah. Yeah, John's technique was way above everybody's, way, way above. Uh I remember coming up like I had heard about John Braz ink for years before I ever saw him, because you know, it's pre-internet, right? John Brazink like silently ruled the arm wrestling world for decades, you know, pre-internet, pre pre uh, pre-all this stuff. And yeah, and he went around the world beating all the monsters, all the and this is who I actually got the the world title from. So I beat John in 2008 for the world title . And it looks very different now, you know, like so before so I was probably the last of the small super heavyweights, if you call m if you call me small. Like I'm bigger than John, but not by a lot. Not by a lot. Uh see Dennis Saplankov on the left, that guy's a really famous armor So that guy had a strength level, Dennis. He came in and he won the world title w without really doing anything. Yeah. I can't believe he doesn't lift weights. He doesn't lift weights. All he does is arm wrestle. All he does is arm wrestle. No other kind of physical training at all? He's a mechanic. He's a special guy. Listen, listen. That's incredible, man. He's he's the goat. He's like the forefather. Like um I remember when I was coming up, I read everything this dude wrote. He is the one of the reasons why we all kind of respect table time, don't need weight so much. Specialization. John is kind of the poster boy for specializ ation. And what kind of training did he do? Aaron Powell Dude. He arm wrestled. Just arm wrestled. Did he do specific things when he was arm wrestled? And that we keep asking the same questions about John. Like we think like some people think he had like a secret setup in his basement and stuff like that. But everything kinda points towards um even if he's kind of kidding us and tricking us, it's certainly not a lot. Uh he arm wrestled with his dad as a kid , okay? And you know, they're practicing all the time. So this Iceman, okay, that's the that's the guy who John beat to become kind of the best. Okay, this guy is like the guy before John So he was the original king of arm wrestling? He is Johnny Walker. Johnny Walker. Yeah. Iceman. Uh and he he was the best for a long time, but John eventually beat him. You know, you see, that's John is like a kid. Right? John's probably like seventeen there. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. But no, John arm wrestled all John like arm wrestling is gonna make you strong. Oh imagine. Oh, you you will get and that's a lot of reason why we get guys into the sport who are in the strength field. Like if you're a strong man, if you're powerlifter, you try arm wrestling, you'll be so sore. You'll be like, oh my god. Because people look for that, right? Like people will something that can get you really sore. Arm wrestling will get you so sore that you can barely move. I I've been so sore from arm wrestling matches I can't even walk. I can't even get up for for days. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Unbelievable. Because it's something about the way the body's designed. Like we are actually probably designed to resist things from happening more than we are to make things happen. So we're very, very strong to stop things from happening. And arm wrestling is what that that's the strength we really hone in on, right? Because we're locking, we get into these locked positions and then we're trying to open the other person up. And this process of being ripped open is super taxing. Super super tax taxing. So yes, John John ruled the RS and world for like twenty five years. Uh he's still around. Yeah, I'll get to I'll get to talk to him tomorrow. Yeah. And so do you think he thinks about competing again? Of course he does. Of course he does. But he doesn't When was the last time he did it? Last time he competed was in Dallas. He competed against a guy called Yoshi Kan ai, uh who's the number one guy from Japan. Um John is way past his prime, okay? Like John John uh when John was like in his thirties, he was like the Levon, but 210 pounds. Nobody could beat him. It took a while, but the thing is arm wrestling got cool, you know, to a degree where we were on ESPN . Uh governments started to recognize it, so if you were from the right country,. you You know could be a pro arm wrestler, like if you're from Georgia or Turkey or Kazakhstan. You know, so the level started rising. When did this start happening? Um I think that governments started to recognize it. I'm gonna guess here that a lot of them started to do it around the turn of the millennia. Okay? Probably they started around then. But it takes a long time for the it all to like get in. And and some countries are still switching over. I think Sweden just got recognized like I think within the last year or so. But once a country recognizes it as a sport it's a massive influx of cash and support. So that'll raise the level. Um but what happened was we got there was all these leagues, like there was uh the PAL in Europe, there was the WAL in in North America. and And it it and it got the sport to a point where if you were the best, you could probably quit your job. Okay? And that was a huge step forward because , you know, um yeah, that's a big step, right? And that happened around uh 2015. And do you think that's because of the internet, like YouTube videos, like popularity increases, TikTok, Instagram, that kind of shit? I uh that was massive, but it happened a bit later. Um first what happened, a lot of small little steps. Uh you know, there was a documentary pulling John that came out. There was a couple rich guys who thought arm wrestling was cool, and they just started to run leagues. Robert Drank with the UAL, Ultimate Arm Wrestling League out of California. I mean, it went from like when I first started the sport, Mike Gould Classic, if we won 500 bucks, it was the greatest day of our life. You know? It was so cool. We won five hundred bucks. Like, you know, um that was it. Uh and then with by by by 2010 or so, to even before that, the PAL , we were talking about thousands of dollars, ten thousand dollars, WAL came along and we got a massive influx of money. You're talking about twenty thousand dollars, okay? And then we were on ESPNs, so there were sponsors, okay, so you could get some sponsor money. If you were the best, you could barely make it. You could barely make it. And then uh and then COVID happened. And COVID burnt down everything, burnt down all the leagues, which were kind of fractioning the sport, right? We had the best guys from Europe competing t together, best guys from North America . When all the leagues burnt down from the ashes, and a lot of people and that's when TikTok and YouTube really started kicking. Because everybody was locked in their house and somehow arm wrestling got found. And our views went through the roof, people started to follow. Arm Resin's good for TikTok attention span, you know. You can see a whole and uh and then yeah, so East versus West came along and now we're everything uh UFC we're like the UFC of of arm wrestling now, East versus West. All the best guys in the world all pull at East versus West. And there's an event every seven weeks international. So like what does a top guy make to win a tournament now? Um you know it's it's tricky when we talk about money, but you will make like if you're a if a if you're a top arm wrestler now, you're you're definitely you definitely don't need a side job. You definitely don't. Um and you're and you're you're probably definitely making a a healthy a healthy six figures, you know, definitely. Um so yeah, so East versus West kind of raised the level. After COVID, it's not the same sport. It's not. Like the champions now, like it's tough. It's tough to win a world title. Way harder to win a world title now than it was ten or fifteen, twenty years ago. Yeah. Yeah, now we have Levon. Right. Is there any drug testing? At East versus West there's not, okay, so it's it's F one, you know, everything everything goes, but What does F one mean? Uh you know like IndyCar? Uh huh. Everybody's got the same car? Right. F one like innovation. Innovation. Right. Innovation. Um WAF, government funded, that has testing. What is WAF? Oh sorry. World Arm Wrestling Federation. So World Arm Wrestling Federation is kind of like the base of the sport. Okay? It's it's uh a world level, so every country kinda plugs into it. They have uh state or provincial, uh then they have national, they have like Europeans or North Americans, and then they have a world championships annually, different part of the world every year. That's tested. It's such a universal thing. Like I remember arm wrestling kids in high school. You know, everybody knows how to arm wrestle. It's always been around. It's always been a thing. So it's really interesting to think that it's becoming more popular now than ever. It is. It's wonderful. I I love the sport . Uh I I think that it's a great sport because of its safety, its longevity, um , its simplicity. Yeah. Beautiful sport. Aaron Powell But there's a lot of aspects to it. It's simple, but you're still learning.. It is So it can't be that simple. Like anything, you know, the more you dive into something, the the more it opens. Yeah . Yeah. At at the level that I'm at now, uh, you know, I continue to learn subtleties on a technical level, but it overflows more now into more vague and kind of like lifestyle principles. Uh and I feel like that's how I get my big gains now is uh you know, is is the way I live my life. Like the sport, you know, kinda cleans up my whole life. Yeah . Because you want to perform well. That's it. And so you're just so dedicated that like you're on top of your nutrition, your sleep, everything. Everything . Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere between a balance between chaos and order, perfect performance is found. Yeah. The balance between chaos and order is interesting because you kinda to become great you kinda have to have some chaos. Chaos is a huge part of the thing. Talk to me about that. What is that? This is this is I love this one. This is so good. This is one of my latest learning points that I I've taken into account. And it's massively affected my planning, the way I plan events. So I have met many people in my life and I've met probably in my entire life probably like two people who I would consider completely pure. You know, like basically like a Jesus Christ kind of person, like no sin. Okay. But and uh and on the other side I've I've met only like a couple people who I thought were generally pure evil or you know uh but I think most people are somewhere in the middle, okay? And and they need that balance in their life, you know. Um and I think that you need to if you're talking about performance on a single date, this balance of what you are needs to be structured. Um so I think that actually in the fight, like when you're actually fighting, um a lot of people I think perform best in chaos. Okay? So when you get into the stage you, have to be completely wild, uh no rules, like you need to be completely unhinged. Um but leading up to it, you need to structure, you need to really become very ordered. And the more you can bring order into your life, the better. I went to a kind of a a presentation by this by this guy, Mac, okay, he's a geneticist as well. And he was talking about how life only exists in this balance between chaos and order. And from that, I I brought that into my training by making sticker charts. So when I was young, my mom used to motivate me through sticker charts. So when I did a good job, she'd give me a sticker. And I loved it. So I have brought this concept into my training where uh there's only two stickers. There's there's a blue sticker, which is uh you didn't quite make it. It's representative of chaos. And uh and and a white sticker, which is repres aentative of order. And after I compete, I I purposefully move into chaos. And it's not as though like, oh I'm in chaos and I let everything catch on fire. I just I don't need structure. I can go wherever, I can learn new things, I can try new things, I can open up my mind to whatever I want. Nothing's required. But really, I'm trying to gather data, put together a plan so that when I move into structure I have a new kind of plan . Um so like how do you st structure that? Like when when you say you move into chaos, like you allow yourself to not have a plan? Yeah. Like what this is obviously very planned. Yes. Yeah. So I will move from major my life is structured that I'm move I my it's in blocks. Okay? So I move from major event to major event. I am now at the very beginning of probably the longest block that I've ever had in my life. I'm gonna face that guy, Levon, in like sixteen months. It's forever. It's an eternity. You know. So I am now in this period when I can travel, I can I can just I can be more op en. Um in a way it it helps get me there. You know, I am trying to come up with what I think is the perfect blend so that when I lock into my basement I'm being super accurate. But I do believe that if you just try and be good every day, if you try and live a certain way every day, it creeps into your life, I need like a finish line. Okay? Like if I know I only have to be like this for four months or five months , I can make it. You know, if I'm like I have to be like this for my whole life, everything creeps in, it falls apart, but it it's a it's a aid for me psychologically to remain disciplined. And it's and it's a way for me to fit chaos into my life where it satisfies me as a human being and I get to have fun and uh I get to go outside of my box. But um that's the hardest thing to be a world champion at fifty-one is to put all your energy into something so simple. This is the most difficult piece is the psychological dedication to do 10 hours of wrist curls in a day. You know, this is the difficulty. I do I I'll go I'll get up in the morning and my wife Jody will help me. Okay, we'll have food. And I'm doing like and and that's a thing. So right now I'm coming up with the formula for the next one, but I was doing fourteen uh seven times two uh because I was doing right and left. I'm going back to pumpkin training which is right hand only. Uh they call that pumpkin training. You know about growing giant pumpkins? No. You know those you know you ever seen those fairs where they have like a eight hundred pound right. Yeah. So what that tells what that teaches is if you want to have a giant pumpkin, you pinch off all the flowers on the vine, except for one. Oh . My giant pumpkin. Yeah, so I've try and put everything into the right. I try and put all and this is so this is specializ ation. So I've done this project for like I did it for like six years before. So when you're saying you put everything in the right, mean you don't do lip r wrist curls or anything with your left hand? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Now is this uh energy resource allocation thing? Yes. Yeah. It's interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Is it the difference between your right and your left? Yeah. So you see and I I came up with this theory, you know, a little bit because of just nature, okay, and I see how nature works. Um but um Yeah, you have one giant . Look at the size of the difference. Put those up. It's a bit it's a bit bigger. It's twice as big. Okay. And and I was balanced. Okay. I was equal. I was left-hand world champion also, okay? I I've but but as I've aged I'm like how can I remain at the top of the sport? I'm gonna have to cut things, you know? But why does n training your left arm take away from your right arm? I I think we only have so much energy . I think there's like a finite amount of energy that we have. And if I tell my body that my energy goes here, more of it will go there and more development will happen. I don't think it's like I have this limitless amount of energy where I can be like a proportionate bodybuilder and be a world champion. I think that to be at the very top, you need to be very specialized and very focused. That's that's what I believe This comes a lot of people criticize me for this. Okay? I get I get heaps of criticism and I I'm very well aware of it. Um I think that if you were to Can I stop you there? We say heaps of criticism by who, and is it valid? I don't think it's valid. So who's criticizing you? Aaron Ross Powell I think that most of the criticism comes from more junior players. Okay. I think that most senior arm wrestlers, most guys who are like on my level, uh, they understand it and to a certain degree we all do it. Okay, I'm just an extreme example. But a lot of guys do it. Okay, a lot of guys do this in the sport . There's a couple things that lead me to this. Okay? The the the pumpkin is just a fun metaphor, okay? But um when you get hurt in the one side , I think that a lot of people notice that somehow there's this amazing compensation that happens. Another thing is we have freaks in the sport. We have we attract some real weirdo Okay, a guy called Oleg Zok or uh or Matthias Schliti . Okay . And these are hellboys . Real life hellboys. Okay? So they have like one arm that is crazy jacked. I've seen this one cat. He's a small dude. Yeah. And he has one arm that's like a leg. Yeah. What is his name? Probably Oleg. It's Oleg or Matias. They're our best examples. Oleg is is better. Like Oleg Oleg's a world champion. What's his last name? Zoc . What a great name. Oh, he's so cool. What a great name. Yeah, and that's the dude. Yeah, that's the dude. And I've fought him. I've fought him. Look at the size of his fucking left arm. That is m that is insanity. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I actually pulled this guy at the UAL many years ago and he was like 165 pounds. And I was and I was the current world champion. And the kid almost beat me. Okay. Yeah. Left-handed. Left-handed, yeah. Um Jesus Christ, his arm is insane. Isn't that awesome? That is so crazy. Yeah. He has the arm of a 300-pound man. Dude, at 1 70 pounds, he was almost not even the world champion in his division. He was almost the world champion in the open . Okay? Look at his left arm and, it cra'szy . And what's extra crazy about it is the insertion points. It's not just that he's hypertrophied and blown up. Like the insertion points are different. He's like the angles of his musculature , the development like it's it's wild. And how is that genetic? Is that built? He was born like that to a certain degree. But his right arm looks normal. Normal. So how is it so different on his left arm ? So it's my theory, okay, that he has a bit of a blood flow disorder. Okay, I believe that so the arterial spread in the body. For most of us it's all all the same. We have like an even distribution across our body. But I believe that his arterial spread is different. I I think he's got a heavy heavy arterial flow to one side. This is just your own personal theory? I I've heard I talked to Matias. Matias is another guy with this disorder. He was the one who kind of led me to believe that this was what was going on with him. And And um so this made me believe that there was so much value in blood flow alone when it comes to the expression uh of what you are. Like I think anything that just gets more blood flow enhances. Yeah. The expression of the human being uh is largely determined by the circulation of that the genetic, you know piece receives. Um and I think with guys like this it happened like in utero. That is cra that left arm is fucking crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And he got in a vicious car crash. A horrible one. Almost killed him. Um and he's he rehabbed and he's and once again he's he's the world champ again in the eighty-five kilo division. Completely and he like he should be dead . Like he broke everything, like super trauma and he's still the best. Uh pieced it back together again? Yeah, pieced them back together and he's still he's still the man. Um but yeah, but what it what he taught me and what other people taught me is the value and I believe it's all theories, okay? I could be wrong on everything, but I I think that it's the blood flow that really it heals, it strengthens . Um and a lot of the thing is is um the heart isn't strong enough to feed all the structures. And that's where movement comes in. So that's why I train this way , increase circulation. Yeah. Wow, so but y but I still don't understand like i i clearly he's working that one arm more than he's working the left Yeah. I think to a certain degree. Um but because of the way he was b yeah, this is Matthias, right? Same deal. Yeah. And he's and he's like German German national champion kind of level. Yeah. And like it's just it's hard to compete with. Right, but how much of that is just work with the right side over and over and over again and how much of it is you think a genetic component? With these guys, it's a lot of genetic. Really? Yeah. With them. But I believe the reason why it's expressing that way is because of an RP arterial spread. Okay, and talking to Matias, he's the one that led me to believe that initially. Is that arterial spread influenced by work? Like does it change the expression of the arteries in the in the muscles? I think you can influence blood flow. For sure. Like I think if you are repeatedly working one region very heavily, your your circulatory system is gonna adapt. Like my endurance capabilities on my right and my left are completely different. And that's from years of doing this. And so I have to think that uh you know it's not just a a cellular thing, it's gotta be the blood flow, it's gotta be everything that is adapted over years. Yeah. And look it, I I really care about being the best. And all the information that I have makes me I'm doing it again. Like I laid off it for a couple years, but I've started to do it again as I do my final prep one more time. When you say do it again, what are you doing differently? I'll go back to so my work um capacity, work work amount that I'm doing between my right h and left arm, it's sometimes it's equal. Sometimes is what I do with the right is what I do with the left. Uh sometimes when I go to the club, I'll do right arm, I'll do left arm. And now I've just swung it back. So I go to the club and I'm basically arm wrestling everybody I can right hand until people are kind of bored and then I'll do some left-hand work. But the right is the priority. And the same thing when I do my homework in the in the basement, I'm doing like eighty-five to ninety percent work on the right and maybe like just ten percent, like just, you know, just for timing and whatever on the left. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Super specialized. Yeah. Yeah. It's i it's insane. I I was I'm sorry. Uh I was so worried like that I was gonna develop like back issues Yeah. None of that ever happened. Huh. Yeah. Guys do that from archery. They develop b imbalance issues just from pulling a bow one sided. Like my friend Evan, he got a left handed bow just so he could practice left handed as well. Because he felt like it would balance him out. Right. I think balance is overrated. Really? Yeah. I think balance is a nice concept for like some imaginary world that you live in. But if I live in a world where I'm trying to win a world title right-handed, then I need to let my body know that this is what I'm getting ready for and not confuse it. There's an interesting comparison in jujitsu because there's a lot of guys that have like a very strong right side attack. Like Eddie Bravo, for instance. Eddie Bravo's attack is almost always on the right side of the body. Obviously, he has a black belt level attack on the left, but his right side attack is where he puts all his energy to and his philosophy was along those same lines. If you just develop this one side, like so lethal. Yeah. I think that um so much is about you know being able to have an icebreaker, you know, something that stops a match or wins you the match. And at at a world level it's it's everything. Like y if you can if you can bring something from a ninety -nine to a hundred, you know, but it takes fifteen points off your left, that's a trade that a lot of people are willing to make. You know, if I can do anything to push my right a level up, if it let makes me, you know, wither away in my left , good trade. One of the things that I watched that I thought was really interesting, I've been watching a lot of uh these rock climbers and their ridiculous grip strength. Yeah. A lot of these guys. There's that cat that has a YouTube channel I know you've been on it, Magnus. Magnus. Magnus how do you say his last name? Midbo. Midbow. And he had that one dude who's just a super freak. Eve Gravell. Yes. He trains with me. Okay . That guy went right into arm wrestling and was fucking people up. Right away. Which is crazy. Which makes me think that maybe that kind of specialized training is like a cheat code. It's close. It's close. Yeah. Right. Eve Gravel. So you can find him training with Magnus because they're in uh Eve's basement where he does all of his training and he's doing these like how many millimeters is the holes? Okay. So he's doing two millimeter holes with his fingers where he's hanging. Yeah. I'm telling you, it makes no sense. He's such a freak. It makes zero sense . Um, like Magnus is is super stud, okay? Magnus is like world-level climber. Eve, when it comes to the strength component of climbing, it's it doesn't even make strength. I don't even understand how it's how anybody could even do it. Like it's like credit card. He can do pull-ups off of a credit card. That's insane. Yeah. How? I I I don't know. I don't know how he does it. It doesn't I and and like he has like rounded surfaces where there is nothing to bite. Right there. So he's just chalking up his fingers and he hangs off of those? I want to see that. There's nothing there. I I I don't know how he does it . Um there's nothing to bite. There's nothing. And he's pulling up off. I it I can't even understand how he does it. So he came into arm wrestling um and he's like a hundred and fifty pounds. And But it's forty pounds of his forearms. So we have a tournament in in Ottawa where we both live. It's called the Ottawa Open. And it attracts the strongest dudes in the region. To win the Ottawa Open is is really tough. He won it his first year after arm wrestling six six weeks. What? Yeah. He's completely crazy. No, no, he's crazy what? 160? 150 pounds. Oh my God. Eve Gravel is a complete weirdo. Uh I I've never in my life met somebody who can do the stuff with grip that he can do. And it's all that training that he's doing. He's doing all this insane grip training. Yeah. Which makes me think like,, what if you did that stuff? Yeah . Yes. Let me tell you, as good as Eve is now, he's gonna get even better. Okay. I can only imagine. Yeah. Nobody is touching Eve's fing ers. But like I talked about earlier. So if you kind of relate it to climbing, okay. Can you show me some stuff with that guy doing things? Well, I was trying to find that one. But just show me some of the other freak ish things he does because he could pick up things from the ground that nobody could pick up. Yeah, he does grip competition too. So so that's another world that's closely tied to arm wrestling is the grip championships. Right, where they're just it's like power lifting for grip. Right. Yeah, and he's the best at that too. Yeah. It's just nuts. Yeah, it's really nuts. Yeah. So there is a high degree of crossover. Right. There there is. But there are slight intricacies. Like a kind of way to think about it in climbing, if you have a great grip, you are able to climb the wall. Okay. But in actual arm wrestling, you actually don't want to be the climber , you want to be the wall. Right. Right. You want to make it hard for the other person's grip. You don't necessarily he's capable of climbing any wall. Okay, but once he figures out how to be the wall instead, he's gonna be so, so difficult. It's fun to work with him. Our club in Ottawa, we have like super freaks now. We have all these new guys with ridiculous potential. We got a guy come in who's bigger than Brian Sha w. Did you ask this can you show me some video of this guy? Right. And I'm on not his channel too. I'm like it's bouncing back in between doing fat grip, one arm, chin ups. Did you see the uh the Thomas Inch ? You know, see a t see the Thomas Inch on the left? Yes. Right? Nobody picks up the Thomas Inch when they're 150 . You know? That's nuts. Yeah, it's crazy. Like this kind of grip is just insane. Oh my god, that's crazy. He's pinch gripping. Yeah. And that guy Magnus is strong as shit too. Like I saw a video of him training with Eddie Hall. Crazy strong. And he's doing these one-arm rows with like a hundred and eighty pounds on each side. And I'm like, that is bananas, because he's not a big guy. No, but he's ridiculously strong as well. And that's even him, he's dwarfed by this guy's strength. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. Eve is considered the strongest climber in the world. And did you ask him when he started this and how he got that strong? I've talked to Eve a lot about his training. He's so detailed. Like the way he trains is very interesting, very progressive, very science based. Um look at those forearms. That's bonkers. Yeah. Yeah. Eve is a and and he's an artist too. He makes masks. Masks. Yeah, you know like movie movie masks. Like Oh wow. Yeah, that's that's his main job. He he makes masks and he and he can climb anything. Yeah. He's super cool guy. Yeah. Wow. It is. In your ability to arm wrestle. So why would n't everybody do that? If a guy is a hundred and fifty pounds that he could do that shit and he's doing it with two arms. I mean both of his arms are super jacked. There are levels of specialization. Right. Do you think it's maybe too late for you to do what he's doing because he's been doing this for decades and decades? I believe that he is so good at all its grip work and his grip work is so high and it does have a lot of crossover. It does. Would I want that strength? Yes, of course. I just think that the motions that I'm doing are actually even more dangerous for the sport of arm wrestling. Like i if I was to advise Eve, and I do, I talk to Eve like every week. Um I tell Eve, you know, the way he's gonna progress his game is by probably doing these more precise movements to become the wall, you know, to become the thing that's hard to hold on to. Right. He has an amazing ability to hold on to anybody. Okay? And that's going to take him really, really far in the sport. But I think that as he's Eve, I've told him he he's older in terms of entry, but he has world championship potential. You know, he he's less than a year in the sport. Wow. Yeah, he's been arm wrestling since like last November. Yeah. Give him give him like a uh give him like a a year or two or three and he's gonna be knocking on the North American like, you know, top pro level. Wow. Yeah, it won't take him long. Yeah. He's he's a freak for one, and he's super smart. And arm wrestling is a very nice crossover for climbers because so many of the strengths are similar. Really similar. Um And when you say so he's very scientific about his training, like what does he do? Aaron Ross Powell The thing that struck me when I spoke to him about his training is he kind of does testing. I found that very, very different from the way I train. Uh so before he does his workout, he does these tests like with his grip and he like says how easy or hard they are and if and if he's not feeling right, he won't do the training. So he'll continue to rest. He'll ab ort a training session because it doesn't feel right. Well Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Look at whatever I've seen it. It's very detailed. It's um And where did he learn this from? I think he's he's crazy. He loves armor sorry, he loves he loves climbing and I think he's just obsessed. And I think he probably digests everything. I probably I think he's probably studies everything about climbing and strength and he just put it all together. So what is he doing here? A way to see how much in a static capacity he can generate. Wow. Yeah. Pushing the same. Yeah. So all just wrist curling of the yeah. Isometric. Yeah. Yeah maximum output. Which is really the main strength that arm wrestlers need. That locked isometric or even negative strength. Um and all his squeezing. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, he's very special. That is crazy. Yeah. So that's the thing. He's got all these charts. And so he's doing this all himself because there's probably no one that could teach him this stuff. 'Cause he's probably at the top of the food chain with this. Yeah. Wow. Yeah . Yeah. He's a gift to have come aro und. We we love we love that we love that he we've kinda got him. 'Cause uh Oh I'm sure because when you get a freak like that, like out of nowhere , what is he doing here? Right. So he's working his curls and he's adding resistance through the elastic. So you can see he's this is not a climber exercise, I don't think anymore. He's really switching, you know. I think I think he's got the bug. Yeah It won't be long. It won't be long. He'll be at East versus West for a 70 kilo world title. Well, it's such a an enormous advantage to have these fucking gigantic forearms and insane strength. Yeah. And it's just so weird that you could get these guys that are so physically small that are so damn strong. Like when Magnus was doing Rows. You're like, where's the force coming from? You have a hundred and fifty pound, hundred and sixty-pound body, and you're doing these a hundred and eighty-pound single arm rows. Yeah. Like where's the force coming from? Like, where's the is it a tendon strength? Is it where's the tissue? Right? Like you look at Eddie Hall, you're like, okay, that makes sense that that guy could lift that much weight. Massive. Yeah. This guy's not massive. If you saw him in a t-shirt, you wouldn't even un andless you looked at his forearms, you wouldn't even think he was strong. You would say, well, it probably runs or something. Looks like a normal guy that's fit. He doesn't look like a guy who can do a hundred and eighty pound one arm rows. So what what is that? How do you do that? Where's it coming from? Yeah. I think that for I think that arm wrestlers, climbers, a lot of athletes, fighters too, uh they start to recognize the value of the hand. You know, uh a lot of guys, you know, in the in the communities like strong man, powerlifting, other strength disciplines, they get immense strength through their body and through their shoulders and different parts that by the time it goes through the chain, through the elbow, through the wrist, and through the fingers, only a a small portion of that is able to get managed. Right. I see that with guys when they work out with straps. I've never used straps. Right. Because to me with jujitsu, grip is so important . I never wanted to rely only on my muscles and not have a strong grip. Like it didn't make any sense to me. In so many functional things, the hand is the shortcoming. Or the feet. Or the feet. Yeah. I talked to Nick Curson once, who's a strength and conditioning trainer, and I said, what do you think is like the number one thing that fighters uh lack on? He said foot strength. Yeah. I said, foot strength. He goes, Yeah, foot strength. He goes it once it foot strength breaks down, everything breaks down. Your movement breaks down, your power breaks down, your ability to get out of the way of things, the ability to close the distance. Yeah. But it's it's it's a chain and grip is a part of the functional hand chain. Trevor Burrus Right. Well it's clearly he's way stronger than me with rows. with grip is grip is only a small part of control Oh, this guy, uh what's that guy's name? He's he's actually the best Andra, right? What did he get? He's actually the best climber in the world right now. Same thing . Yeah, I see. Okay, that's crazy. Yeah. Derek Lewis got two eighteen. Derrick Lewis, the guy who fights in the UFC, and he did it casually. Yeah. He just grabbed I mean Derek's got giant paws, like catcher smith pause. Yeah. And he he pulled two eighteen. He got higher than anybody. And it didn't look like he was trying. I don't know what the number is it was, but I know you had the world record. Vitaly Liletin. He so I I'm actually not big on grip. I'm not. Really? I'm not. But uh most people are. There's a guy that I follow on Instagram, Jamie, pull him up. His name is Michael Eckert and three fifty one. Boom. Is that Vitale? Yeah. Oh my God. So listen, so listen. So mine is probably like seventy pounds. But I beat him. Wait a minute. You you don't know. It's terrible. No, no. I'm crippled. Shut the fuck up. I'm telling you , I squeeze stronger than that. Yeah, you do. No, you probably do. That is literally not possible. I'm telling you. Look at the size this guy. Yeah, he's like six nine, like he's about three. Yeah. Yeah. That is so crazy. 154 kilograms is so bananas. Yeah. That's so strong. You can only do 70. That doesn't make any sense. When I was younger, I could do like eight or nine reps of the number three Captains of Crush. What is that time? I don't know what this is. You tell me. Squeeze it. Tell me where the goes. Two hundred pounds. So this isn't Captain the Crush. This is a I think it is. It's not? I bought those. Can't do it, Joe. Can't I can't do it. No, no, no. I do that all day long. You should come and arm wrestle with us. Grip is interesting. Okay? Grip is a part of control. But so much of the control through your hand has to do with the ability to control the angles. You know, can you control this way, this way, this way, this way? You know, can you spin? You know, the grip is like the final inflection point. It's the final piece to add. Right. Yeah. Well, I understand that it's not everything. I'm just it's a thing that I've been obsessed with lately because I'm not strong at it. Grip's beautiful. So this 162 kilograms. Jeez . And that's a this guy Michael Eckert on uh Instagram, he's a guy that I follow and he has all these grip strength tutorials. He's a marine and I guess as a strength that's him. And he can do 220 and he doesn't look like a very big guy either. But he does like crazy one arm pull ups and and he has massive forearms. But like look at his thing right there. There it is . Oh, so this is what he's lifting. This is he's doing this for chin-ups. But he has uh the grip strength thing. The really good one is the one that has knurled metal. It has very little play And is that two sixty-two? So he could do two sixty-two, and he's not a very big guy. So he does a hundred pounds more than me. And he's not a big guy. Yeah. I mean when you looking at him, but he does crazy like chin up stuff, two fifty six. That's fucking nuts. So his it's uh Michael Eckert uh El E cart. No, Eckert, Equart. E-C-K-E-R-T. E C K E R T. So it's Michael Eckert underscore fit on Instagram. And uh this guy's uh turned me on to a bunch of stuff, told me stuff to get and what to work out with. But I just I' blmown away because I I looked at him and I go, Well, you're not that big. That's what's crazy. Like you look at his forearms are obviously very big, very strong, but he's not like this massive guy, like who's that giant Russian cat that just he's something really . But I look at Michael and I'm like that he's not the biggest guy in the world, but he does so Yeah, we're praying for Smaiev to come into the sport. Oh my god. Yeah. That guy's a fucking freak. Freakiest. F not just freak freakyest. Yeah. How is he alive? Like you gotta think. There's not a lot of time on that hourglass. Live hard, die fast. Yeah. Yeah, I mean he's pushing there he is. Yeah. But um yeah, I mean all these strengths for our sport, they all add together. They don't even look real. Oh he's And he's open about all the sauce that he's on. He's on everything. I mean someone who was in here that was explaining how much uh growth hormone he takes? I heard he debunked that. Oh really? I I saw a video where he said it wasn't true. But I have no idea. That he wasn't taking that much. Some crazy thing, like ten units of growth a day. Yeah I heard it was like Well that doesn't even make that seems like you would just grow. You would just become a giant. Like that's like a pituitary disorder. Right? Yeah. More than because that's what you're getting. He clearly he's done a bunch of stuff though. I mean if you see him when he was younger, he looked like a normal athlete. I never saw him normal. I mean I've been following him for probably like six or seven years. Yeah. I mean, uh I think the first time I saw him he was doing chin-offs with like two hundred and fifty pounds strapped to him. You know. I think that's the first time I saw him. Uh he not normal. Yeah, look at fucking size. So the it's a left size, who's what's the left? When he's seventeen? Yeah. I mean he was look it that's not a se that's not a normal seventeen year old. No, clearly. Yeah. He's pretty jacked. But I that makes sense. Like that guy on the left makes sense. Like I've seen guys like that before. That's not 17. No. But could but go to that photo again. But the guy on the right, he looks like the incredible Hulk. Like he looks like a superhero. Like it doesn't look like a real human being. Like the size of his forearms, the size of his biceps, that doesn't look like a regular human being. It looks like a complete freak of nature or science. Aaron Powell And he's training for arm wrestling. I could only imagine. So he's like if you follow his Insta or whatever, he's doing the arm wrestling lifts, like the pronation and his lifting is already at a level of like world world. Go to his Instagram please. I was trying to it's his Instagram got taken down so it's like some new it's yeah that's right he didn't just look later. Why'd it get taken down? I don't know. I don't know. But I heard it was taken down. But he does have a new one. Whether it's his or it's a fan one. I know I just saw it yesterday. Why would they take down his Instagram? Yeah, the only one I could find is this it's like Smy ev official and it's twenty-seven weeks ago. There's a tag and that's all that 's but no there is there I know because I saw it like yesterday. Oh so it's gone. The page is gone. There is some fan page where he's doing pr onation lifts. What the fuck? What is wrong? Why would they take this guy's Instagram down? Because he's inspiring people to turn into monsters? Do you think that's what it is? I don't know. I don't know. There. This is what I'm talking about. See, now this is a much more normal, like for arm wrestling. This is actually more functional than anything through the grip, I think. So this is all pronation. That's pronation. Turning the wrist, lifting insane weight. Yeah. And just based off of that information that I see there, I already know. Click on that one that you got your Yeah. Fucking size of this guy. Yeah. That it's so crazy. Explosive jumps. Yeah. And the the crazy thing about him is he's not competing in anything. Right. But I think that this is a guy who's just gonna show up whether it's in anything. He gets to pick, and he's probably gonna show up at like a world level. Like anything like what? I'd say anything, whether power lifting, strong man. Um I I'd be terrified if he even got to like blue belt in G . Oh my god. Like what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? How much does he weigh? I think like three forty. Three fifty. Three forty in preposterous strength. Like strength, you know, Mark Coleman always used to say that strength is a skill. And there's something to to that. Because if you are that strong, there's only so much you could do with that guy's body. Yeah. Especially if he developed actual skills, an understanding of leverage, positions. There you go. Even just the base movement patterns that are really. What a great name. Yeah. It's a German guy. He just competed against Brian Shaw like six weeks ago. He beat Brian. What? Yeah. Someone beat Brian Shaw in an arm wrestling match? Leonidas , uh young German champion. Uh they competed in Germany. It was a great fight. How big is Leonidas? Leonidas is pretty awesome. Okay. Leonidas is Leonidas and Brian Shaw. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goodness . That is crazy. Yeah. Right. And nobody's got a starring grip than Brian either. Brian's grip is completely wild. Seeing someone beat Brian Shaw in anything physical seems ridiculous. It doesn't even make sense. How much does this guy weigh? But again, stupid strength. He's like a bodybuilder slash arm wrestler . He's not a picture of me reacting. Yeah. He's been in the sport like Oh my God he's gonna curl a dude. Yeah Yeah. Crazy strength. Oh my god. He's massive. Massive. I just can't believe that he beat Brian Shaw. That is nuts. And that's where skill comes in. Well because Brian Shaw is a hundred pounds heavier than him. Yeah. But it's it's levels, you know? Like it's and that's the thing, like arm wrestling has enough technique to it, it's not just how strong you are. Look at you can look at me, okay? I'm not on any of these guys' levels. They're all stronger than me. But I'm the number two in the world in the open division. Everybody in the top 50 is stronger than me. You know? But there's a there's a high degree. That's a great picture. Wow. That is crazy. The size difference is so massive. But I'll tell you , Brian probably has a higher potential than Leonidas. Right. Brian's been armrest in less than two years. Right. And Leonidas has been armrest in less than two. No five. Okay. Yeah. So there's a lot of technique to it. There's a ton of technique. A lot of just repetition, understanding the positions, where to go, what to do, how to hold. Yeah. Miniature martial art. Interesting. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Because there's some people that are not that like Marcelo Garcia , for instance, not not a physically imposing guy, has the craziest squeeze. Like there's something about a squeeze. Like learning a position over and over and over again, t fine tuning it. That's what's interesting about power in general. It's like the repetition of movement creates more power. Yeah. And some of it is genetic, but some of it is also just fine-tuning that motion to just this like perfect chain of energy from the floor to the strike. And it's and it's two of us. You know, and it's that interaction, it's what you're doing, what I'm doing. And the more you're doing it, the more you understand what to do and when to do it, and what's happening, and how to counter it, and when to push and when to pull, when to hit the gas. And somebody's leading the dance. And someone's following. Right. And the efficiency just changes very quickly, and before you know it, you're gassed out. I'm sure you're aware of that guy in Australia, uh, Tom Havorn. Tom Hallorn. Yeah. That's another one. He's another one. That's another one. Right. Who's doing the stuff in his backyard with a fucking shirt on and jeans and work boots? Yeah. And all the images, well, most of them are just his back. Awesome. He's another one. He's another one of these strength giants that lives out there that everybody kind of wants to pull in. I I message Tom every once in a while and like dude when are you coming in arm wrestling? When are you coming in? And what does he say? Yeah I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. What is he interested ? I think so. Well he's also crazy lean too, which is really weird. He's a strange character. Oh the strangest. Because like this is most of his images are his back. Yeah. Which I don't understand why he's doing that. Well, I had the theory that he was an SF guy. You know. I I had the theory that he belongs to some organization that requires him to be discreet. But there are photos of him. Yeah, not many. Trevor Bowell There's but there's plenty where you could see his face. Yes, but he doesn't go around broadcasting it too much, does he? I don't know. Look at I I don't know what he is. I I've I've asked and guys say he's not. I don't know what the deal is. But for whatever reason, and he could, right? This is a guy who could probably again go to any one of the strength disciplines and compete happily. Yeah. Cause he's almost four hundred pounds. He's six foot eight. Yeah. And sh fucking sh redded. See if you can find some of the images. There are images on this page of him with his shirt off doing stuff where he's like walking with you know doing like farmer carries. So there's some images of him with his shirt off. Yeah. Like there he is. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's a he's a Brian Shaw type. He's a he's a Smaev type. You know, just where the baseline level of strength. But looks more athletic than those guys . Do you know what I'm saying? Like it's it's he's not as massive. He's massive, but he looks massive in a more mobile way. Do you know what I'm saying? I do, but you know, Brian Shaw w on strongman and like I there's a lot of athleticism in strongman. Oh for sure. I'm not saying there's not. I mean but Brian Shaw looks like an ape. He looks like a giant ape. Whereas this guy looks like a super athlete. He does. He looks like like that image of him with his shirt off on the far right. Like he's shredded. Yeah. He looks different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he it seems like he's just working on his strengt h. He's just like constantly look at his fucking forearm muscles. Like what the fuck is going on with the the top of the forearm where it meets the bicep? What the fuck is that? Tom, if you're watching this, come to East versus West, buddy. We love you. We love you. Has he ever done anything? Yeah. Any arm wrestling stuff? Yeah, I know he has. Because uh so down in Australia, the the president there, Phil Rasmussen, um, he's good friends with him. And I know that they're arm wrestling a little bit, but yeah, there's something with him where he doesn't kinda he doesn't wanna kinda show up. I think I don't know what it is with some of these people where they they have this amazing ability , but they don't really pop. Do you know who Eric Spato is? No. Eric Spato's a guy out of Vegas, former uh number one in the world bench guy. Okay, like he broke the world record for bench . Okay. But he didn't go to a powerlifting meet until he could break the record. He didn't even show up. He just showed up and he beat the world record. He was he was doing the world record in his basement. Wow. And and uh everybody's like, yo, Eric, why don't you go and make it legit? You know? But these guys exist out there. These guys in their basements or you know, wherever they're living, and they and they for whatever reason the they don't show up until they're the best. Yeah. Eric. This guy . Yeah. And he's an amazing arm wrestler too. Same theory though. Like it was hard to get him into competition. But I I personally know that he's like one of the strongest arm wrestl ers. Um but he doesn't compete. Doesn't compete. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, strength's amazing, man. It's fun to chase strength. It's not everything in your sport though, which is interesting. Yeah. Strength combat. So we're we're a combat sport that relies heavily on strength. Yeah. It's interesting you consider it a combat sport. Aaron Powell It's a hundred percent combat sport. Why so? Because it's not applicable to real fighting. So why do you call it a combat sport? Aaron Ross Powell I mean real fighting is hard to define anyways. I mean Is it? Well there's levels. You know, there's levels of real fighting. I mean what we look at I I love UFC. It's cool, but we invented guns long ago. Of course, but that's not a sport. I mean it is a sport in terms of like being able to shoot accurately and stuff like that, but you're using an external device, you're using a weapon. Right. With your physical body, combat sports, why would you consider arm wrestling to be a combat sport ? Well, because it's between two people and um there's so much interplay and you know, there's not the rigidity of a lot of sports that measure strength. Okay? It's very much adjustment, uh adaptation, uh decision making , um a lot of games, a lot of a lot of technique, a lot of adaptation. Uh you can be super strong, but if you can't adapt, if you can't think, if you can't speak, if you can't play, Right. Trevor Burrus, do you consider football a combat sport? It's metaphor. Okay. Look at all this stuff. I I love the UFC, but I consider it a combat sport, you know. Well it definitely is a combat sport. Probably one of the best examples of. If I was gonna put together like, you know, the ultimate like, you know, we're going to take out like a like if we're gonna go to war against another nation or whatever, you know, yeah, for sure I'm looking at UFC guys, for sure I'm looking at football guys, you know, um looking at whoever can get the job done and um Well that's different. I mean you're look if they're going to war with just bots only using your body, that's one thing. But you know, obviously with war weapons rule above all. Absolutely. Yeah Well now we're with thumbs because now it's basically drones. Yeah. I mean that's the you're gonna get to a point soon where human beings are gonna be irrelevant. So when it comes to sport , arm wrestling is falls for me, it falls into that combat sector, you know, where two people are are engaging in a a fight, uh a metaphor ical fight against each other. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah you'll you'll s I mean if if it wasn't um a combat sport, then the stronger guy would normally win. And and and they normally does but as soon as you I can get like if I could get like a guy who's been practicing arm wrestling for like four or five years, they'll beat anybody. Anyone that's not practicing. It's the same thing as like a jujitsu guy, if you if you give a jujitsu guy like four or five years on the mat and you get Brian Shaw or like some giant come in, who's gonna win? It really depends. Of course. And Brian Shaw is an extreme example. Yeah. But someone your size y yeah, it's like size is size of the size is commensurate. Yeah, the person who's trained. Yeah. They're gonna win every time. And and small people dominate big people all the time. Right. Because it's that technical, it's skill based. It's just it's also repetition, under understanding the positions, understanding mistakes, understand you know knowing where to be and what to do and how to flow, how to move with someone so you're not just going strength for strength against them. You're you're flowing with them. Right. Well you definitely do. And you definitely make it like psychologically. I try. Yeah. I try and pull all that stuff in. But you have a extensive military experience too. Like you started off like when what what is the can Aaron Powell I was with a unit called JTF two for sixteen out of my twenty years. Yeah. It was great. I'd I'd still be there if I could , really. But it got too complicated and I had to leave. But uh How so? What do you mean? Uh it wa you know, I don't want to say it was entirely one thing or another, but it it really probably had a lot to do with arm wrestling and and the visibility of arm wrestling. Like I I've been arm wrestling my whole life, but uh Jis oo was nineteen, I think um or sorry, not nineteen, it was two thousand and fourteen And we were on ESPN at the time and up to that point I was not declared military in the public eye. Like I was a farmer as far as everybody was concerned. You know, I tried to play the operational security as as well as I could and uh you know um I was a active active JTF2 member. Um but there were a lot of concerns about the growth of arm wrestling for me and my you know exposure and you know part of being an operator is you know you have to you have to be anonymous. You get on an airplane, you can't have people taking pictures of you and Oh right. Right. So arm wrestling because of where where I was and it was on ESPN and going further, they're like Devin you have to choose and I'm like, Oh my god, I've been armoring since I was a kid. So the long and short of that is uh they offered me a year off. Uh no pay. I took it. I took it. I took the year off. And we were I was gathering apples and eating sardines and sending my kids to school with dried apples and me and my wife were like, oh my God, are we crazy? Like are we crazy? Just so you try to make it in arm wrestling. It was uh it was complicated. It was complicated. Yeah. I'd I'd I'd done like seven tours and um it's weird when you do a lot of tours, you know, um things start to gray out a little bit. Also everything is about mission in life, right? Like everything. Like if you don't have a good mission , your life is gonna fall to shit. And as soon as you start to question any kind of that , and you know, you you you play in that realm long enough. Most guys start to at the beginning, I mean, you're just either so patriotic or you know, just so down to uh, you know, help your country or whatever or the people around you that you don't really you're undeterred. And I think that probably sometime around that point in my career, um, maybe I was struggling slightly, and that combined with the uh them telling me that I wasn't able to do something that was like the only thing I did, you know, when I left work, uh was kind of the thing that kind of make me take kind of a stand in my life that I was gonna , you know , follow sport instead of war . Um sport's beautiful. Sport's very clearly building civilization. And war, you know, the further you go and it just gets to a level of murk where you're not sure. So yeah, so When you say you're not sure, you're not sure if you should be doing what you're doing, you're not sure if the mission should be happening. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because I think most people join the military and stay in the military because they genuinely believe that they're benefiting mankind or civilization to some degree. It's a big part of it. Not uh nobody's there for the money.. You know I mean some b at the beginning some people are 'cause we're broke, right? But I mean once you spend like ten years, I mean uh you're you're probably okay and um yeah, so it starts I mean you you you you play enough in that world and i it starts to get confusing that you're maybe you're not doing the right thing. So uh look it I I loved my work. I thought it was great. I loved all the people I worked with, some of the best people in the world. But yeah, it came to a point where there was some issues, you know, with OPSEC, not even in my career, but in others, and it kind of trickled down into unit policy and they shut down everybody's extracurricular. And yeah, they're like, Devin, you can't arm wrestle anymore. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm a current world champion. Like I I am currently the open world champion. And you're telling me I can't do it. So I was like, yeah, we're gonna have to come up with some other solution. They're like, Yeah, okay, years leave without pay. Here's your final offer. So we took it. And my wife and I were like, Oh my god. So yeah, so I I went from making money and I had and I didn't count we didn't have money, you know. Uh but you were getting by. Yeah getting by. But it meant that on that year I like had to win. It was no longer like my hobby. It was like if I don't win, like my kids are like not I'm gonna have to sell the house or like I'm gonna have to do the gam ble. Uh it worked out. Yeah. What was that stress like? Dude, it was so wild. H olowd were you at the time? Okay, that was two thousand fourteen, so I'd be thirty-nine. Oh wow. Yeah. So you're already older as an athlete. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it was totally trippy. I remember being so stressed out. I was I was so it was uh it was a WAL finals okay I was in the two twenty five pound division twenty thousand bucks for first place uh right hand, left hand . And um and I had a great sponsor. Okay, they were matching uh my pay. So anything I won, they doubled it and they were doing some other stuff too. So I was but but if I lost, I got nothing. Right? So I'm I'm in the back. I'm in the back in the warm-up area and I'm I'm breathing, I'm getting ready, I'm going against this guy Ron Bath in the finals. And uh longtime mentor of mine, guys like my older brother, this guy Mike Gould, comes over to me, he's like, Devin, he's like, he's like, you used to run the practice when you were 18. He's like, you're just here because you love it. Don't worry about it. Just go and have fun. And I'm like, okay, you're right. You're right. And I went out and I just had fun and worked out. But yeah, so I ended up uh I ended up um doing my year's leave without pay. As soon as I was taking my leave, they're like, We want you to declare, like we want you to tell Uh when I got back, I'm like, yeah, can I have my old job back? And they're like, you're gonna keep arm wrestling? And I'm like, well you know and they're like, okay, you're going to recruiting. And I was on so at that point, I was on my nineteenth year . Okay . And you only in the Canadian Forces at that time, now I think you need 25, but it 20 years continuous service and you get like a base pension . So I did my nineteenth to twentieth year, I went around Canada and I told people how great the JTF was. And that was it. That was my career. Done. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, now full time armorist for the last ten ten years. Yeah. That had to be so fucking nerve wracking. It was I I just, you know, I thought it was very selfish of me, you know. Um I I thought that I was being very irresponsible. I thought, you know, because I really believed in soldiering, I did. And, you know, to leave it, you know, made me question very much whether I was doing the right thing with my life. And and then on a family level, I was like, I'm being am I being irresponsible chasing this, you know, thing that I love to do and it's cost ing my my kids, you know, their their university education, it's costing my kids, you know um but yeah, we we we believed in it, we went for it and uh it's all worked out. It's all worked out. I mean, um, it's been a second life for me. Um I still love all the guys I work with. Some of them are still working. My God. Guys do like 30-year careers in the special forces. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah. A lot of the guys that I went through with they're now in senior positions and I bump into them every once in a while and it's I just tell 'em how much I love 'em and how great they are and yeah. I'm li I live a civil simple life now. It it's beautiful, you know, like uh before life was very complicated, going on tours, you know, special forces life is is super complex, you. You know're it's it's difficult to balance. How my wife and I made it through that I have no idea. I have no idea, but we did. But uh yeah now now I'm at home every day I wake up unless I'm on you know, going to some armrest wling tournament, it's beautiful. Well I gotta think that the discipline that came from that life transferred over to the discipline of becoming a great arm wrestler. I think I'm still learning today from my career . I'm still digesting some of the greatest days and some of the stuff that I did. I'm still integrating it into my life. Yeah. It's a great teacher Well you can't fail . No, you can't. The ultimate consequences, the ultimate stakes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. I I I love the concept of soldiering. I think I I have it as one of the highest things that you can do, like there's being a mother and there's being a fighter. You know? And I I personally have always believed that one of the highest orders of fighters are the guys in the military, you know, the S F guys. But uh yeah, it's it's it's I try and take all those lessons and bring them into the sport and I try to um well I try and let that chapter of my life you know feed and inspire me today. Do you talk much about your tours? The different I I don't a lot. Um I it's not that uh you know anything matters at this point. I mean it's all like it's all in the past and you know, there's nothing that I could really say now that influences too much, but um yeah, I don't make it part of my general promotion too much, but everybody knows that I was, you know. Uh it's a it's a it's a wild time in my life, you know, uh it's a huge chapter, you know, the military stuff, the tours that I did, you know, we we did a lot of work in Afghanistan. So, you know, the highlight of my career is working in Kandahar , um, you know, working with the American forces, working with the indic forces. You know, we JTF does like counter-terrorism, so we're doing hits, we're doing hits at night, you know, going out and various kinds, but yeah, it was always funny to me. People would 'cause people didn't know I was, you know, widely and be like, Oh, Devin's scared to come to this tournament you know and I was like, motherfucker, I am in a goddamn war right now. I'm not scared to go to Nemurof Cup, you know? But yeah. That's funny. Yeah, it was that must have been hilarious. It was so funny for me. I'm like, you have no idea how scared I am right now what I'm doing. You know? Um the degree that it's psychologically affected me is uh it's been it's been neat, you know. I think that a lot of who I am was shaped by combat, you know, by the fear um and um and the lacking that I had , like the the the the not being enough to to be everything I could be in combat, uh shaped me so much, you know. Um you know when you go on a tour there and there's different people, there's different dudes, okay? I know some dudes who really don't get scared. They really don't. Like they're like so down for it. Like they can't wait to go on the next mission, you know? Uh and I was kind of the guy who was like completely scared shitless, but I'd go anyways, you know. Um and what I kind of learned to do , which I have a great value in, is kind of the separation of of myself. You know, I am a very different person day to day than when I compete or when I , for example, went and actually did the job, you know, I I would completely transform my character. And this is something that I learned. The first tour was hard. You know, you're a regular dude with a regular brain and a regular mindset doing this terrifying th ing. Um and then you know, you come back and you, you know, you've seen a lot of shit and you you got PTSD, you wake up and your heart's going, and it's like an injury. And you can let an injury kill you, or you can heal and develop some kind of resilience to it. And I think that I to some degree did that by learning how to become a different person. People call it a switch, you know, where you like all your values, the person that you are is different. You're not the same person when you're out in the field than you are when you're you're back on base. And I created a persona that loved it, that looked forward to it, that lusted for it. Because that's what you need to be to actually perform properly. When you say you created a persona, what was the steps? Like what it how did you do that? Well, um I think that one of the things is to really wrap your mind I think the first step is to wrap your mind about the worst possible outcomes with any fear. And I don't know if a psychologist is going to tell you to do this, but like for example, like I'll take it a step back and we'll talk about jumping. Okay. Didn't really, you know, it's kind of scary. So I had a certain fear there. Okay. Now I got over it. I've got, you know, I've got hundreds of jumps. Um but what I did was I used to watch parachute fails over and over and over and over and over. And I just kinda desensitized myself to it and kind of became okay with it. Uh and I think to a certain degree, I did the same thing with the overall concept of worst case scenario with the war. You know, kind of accepted that I'm I'm gonna die, it's okay. I I I believe in the cause, believe in the mission. It's it's okay. So now I have to solve how to actually how do I get to the best performance state to do that? And you have to love what you do. You gotta love what you do So you have to find a way to love the violence. You have to find a way to love the aggression. You have to find a way to and I think it's inside all of us. I think that the person that you are is, you know, who you've kind of created for a a certain circumstance. But the truth is, is you might act a little bit different when you're sitting at the table with your mother than when you're sitting at the table with your best friend to when you're going out and doing a hit on the front lines, you know? And it's a different psychology that's going to perform best, you know, in each of those. And it's it's learning that you are not necessarily one thing. You are whatever you want to be. You know, and you can you can change that. You can and you can become that. And the more time that you spend as that role, the more you roll it out, the more you build it out, the more you're comfortable with it, the more Aaron Powell What's interesting you say I don't know if a psychologist would tell you to do that, I don't think a psychologist would have the ability to understand what that experience even is. There's one thing about theory and about books and about learning in school. giant difference between that and application and a real world scenario where you might lose your life and you have to take a life. That's I don't think there's a psychologist in the world that could explain that. That's why I'm always very hesitant about even sports psychologists or fight s psychologists that like teach people how to prepare for fighting like you could probably give a fighter some tools, but for you to actually tell them what needs to be done, you if you're not doing that, how can you? What you're you it's just theory. Theory. Yeah. And there's a giant difference between theory and application where you are trying to keep your fucking brain together in the craziest thing a human being can do. Yeah. Parachute down and gun people down. Like what w what is fucking crazier on earth than that? I say nothing. Well look it I I used to have that attitude as well. Um but I I've I've changed my attitude when it comes to that. I think that it's about um excellence and mastery. I think that that's what life is about. And if you're in the soldiering realm, yeah. That's that's excellence and mastery in that field. But I think wherever you are, if you're a businessman, if you're an artist, if if you're a farmer, um, there's levels. Yeah. You can be you can be a farmer that, you know, has weeds and you know kinda you know, doesn't get up at the crack of dawn or whatever. And then you can be a completely psychotic farmer that does and I think that you're on that level. Yeah. You're just you're on that level of mastery. And I think that that is what life is really about is finding that thing that you're comfortable doing and becoming a master at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now I am the Bonnie Blue of Arm Wrestling . Come on, come on. I got I got the first base with everybody. I gotta ask you about this and this is a silly thing to ask you b because you said Kandahar. Have you heard of the legend of the Kandahar giant? Of course. Yeah. What did you hear? When did you hear? Oh, I've seen. Okay. There's some freaks out there, man. There's some freaks. So yeah, I mean I've seen the YouTube video. I've I've heard about it from other people, but legit, legit, okay? Um hard for me because I was far away. Okay, I was probably about 200 meters away. We were doing a mobility exercise. Okay. Mobility I hate mobility. Okay. Mobility was my least favorite op. Mobility basically you get in a bunch of trucks and you kind of roll out and you kind of look for a fight. So we were doing like a two-week mobility in this region, kind of north, north of the Panj way . I don't remember exactly what it was called. It was this surrounded by mountains, this big valley. And we were rolling around and um and so there was a village that we were going to check out and I'm I'm like a gunner, okay? So I don't know everything that's going on. I'm a dude on a machine gun. Okay? But I can see everything that's happening and I kind of know what we're doing. But I know that there's a meeting. And what they have is they have these warlords. It doesn't it's not the same kind of political system or anything that we have in like North America, kinda the baddest dude in the region becomes in charge. Okay? So we were meeting with one of the local warlords. And so the town was like five hundred meters away. They drove out from the town about five hundred meters and we had our our trucks about two hundred meters from the meeting point. Our officer and a couple dudes went forward and we're looking . This guy I mean he was maybe twice as big. He was huge. He was a massive dude. Like how big? I I I I think he was eight feet. I think he was eight foot something. And it's embarrassing. It's it's like Devon, you're crazy? He's big. How and he was two hundred meters away. He's about two hundred meters away. But I can see the guys. We've got we got optics. Um he was he our officer was probably somewhere between uh at the bottom of his chest. Um great big Afghan dude. Big beard, big dude, big dude. And his lackeys around him were normal size, great big Um so they're out there. There's big people. There's big things. Eight feet is nuts. I have personally seen um people who were probably over eight feet. What? Yeah. In Afghanistan. No, no. I saw these guys up north, northern Canada. Cree . Um I was up in Ojibugumo, okay, this Cree village. Uh I remember walking up I'm there for arm wrestling. We're having an arm wrestling tournament and I'm looking up. We're walking up the stairs in this hockey arena and this dude, I'm like, that's a really big dude. And by the time I got there, I was about me and I'm like six five, I was about at his nipple. What? Yeah, big, big, big hands. Big long hands. Like out of the Goonies, like misshapen face. I'm like, my God. I'm like, like how big are he? He's like just laughed at me. And he's like, my brother. He's like my dad's eight foot eleven. He's like like what? Yeah, big. My dad's eight foot eleven. I'll tell you there's big people. And and people don't know about him. Guinness doesn't know about him. They live up in the woods. There's big people out there. And not all that guy, Jamie. He's from that region apparently. I don't know how to say that lot. Edward Bop Baupre. So there's just Cree Giants that live in that region. Eight foot. There's b the Cree are very big people. And the thing is is when they get to eat what they're supposed to eat, the problem is so many of them eat junk now, right? Because they you know they grow up on the seven pounds maybe? Or three sixty-seven, sorry. Foot two and a half, three hundred and sixty-seven pounds, age thirty-three . Whoa. Yeah, I forget the name of these brothers, but there there's a bunch of them . Yeah. Yeah, there's some weird genetics out there, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna try and swab him. I'll give it to Ryan before you know it. But so this guy in Afghanistan was this uh one isolated incident. I saw one. Yeah. I just saw the one. And he had to be eight feet tall. He is big. He's big. Yeah. He's a big, big human being. Far out of the standard. Yeah. And he was a warlord. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. They're big, they're big people. out there And so the Kandahar Giant story, the guy is supposed to be even bigger than that. Yeah. Yeah, I heard it. Do you believe it? Uh I I do. Yeah, I do. There's freaks out there. There are. Uh But this guy supposedly had like six fingers and six toes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I believe I believe that stuff. I I just I mean, I think that we get so used to normal people and every once in a while there's a weirdo Trevor Burrus And these people are not being studied. There's no one there. Like the that region of the country is extremely remote. Trevor Burrus Extremely. Extremely. Like they don't want it's it's like going back to like the fifteenth century. Like there's there's motorcycles and some people have gas. I mean, but they they don't have electricity. Um there's not even really roads. Yeah. And there was this one guy who was a warlord that was eight feet tall. I saw him. You saw him. I saw him. Yeah. From a distance. But I mean there's no way he was any shorter. Like he he was huge. He was a a massive and he was broad across his shoulders too. He was probably twice as broad. Um Massive, massive human. Yeah. What was that like, just seeing something like that? It's wild, man. Yeah, you know . It's it's neat. Um yeah. Yeah. But it you know it's neat how they structure their leadership. That's the guy in charge. The most massive I hope he was a nice guy. Probably wasn't. I don't know. I don't know. I mean he seemed reasonable. Like we didn't fight. Like we didn't there was no fight there. Wow. So we worked it out, whatever it was. But yeah, there's there are anomalies and and it's it's neat. It's kinda cool that he made it to a leadership position. So he must have been a smart guy too. And he must have been a good guy. Because uh I don't think a a peop a a dick could have been in charge. So did you hear of that story, the Kandahar Giants story? So the pos supposedly what happened is uh it's American military guys encountered this guy in the mountains. Yeah. That was just absolutely enormous. They said he was like twelve feet tall. Yeah. Well what happened with the Nephilim, you know? Right. That's the thing. But the that was the the thing is like supposedly they had six fingers and six toes as well. Look it I I believe that uh things come to visit and sometimes things get left behind and who knows? Who knows? You know? There's a good chance that he's maybe just a little bit closer to all that or somehow a recessive and a recessive somehow found their ways together and there you go. And somehow there's a surviving population of these people still in the world that are undiscovered. It's a beautiful part of the world, that region, perfect climate, super fertile. Like if you were gonna like if there was nothing, uh what a beautiful place to start life. Afghanistan' beaustiful country, so rich for agriculture. The climate is perfect. You know, with the mountains and the rivers, uh the seasons, it's it's tough to beat. You know. I would understand why people would fight so hard to have that territory. And uh, you know, if you were a giant twelve feet tall and you could live anywhere you wanted, you know, in a valley where the rivers fed your land. I could pick there. Yeah But it seems like a story that has something to it. Because there's too many people telling that story. There's only only one story like that. There are a lot of stories. There's more stories like that? There are I mean I should say there's only one story like that online that people repeat over and over again: this one encounter. There are fascinating stories out there. Some that I'm closer to. Like what? Probably the most interest ing story that I'm in any way kinda close to is um from that region of the world and this is a whole nother can of worms, but it's um it's so weird. Uh it's demonic possession. You know, we've we had a guy, a guy he was my he I I worked with him very closely for super smart guy, great guy, awesome dude, awesome soldier. And uh and yeah, I mean he got possessed by a demon. He started speaking in tongues. He knew everything about everybody. He could speak different languages. Uh he uh he knew everything about everybody's life, he knew all their sins. Yeah, he knew he knew all the sins people did even from their childhood. What? He got taken to uh he got taken to the medical through the medical system before they knew it. He was out of the medical system and he was with uh the padre, the like uh the priest that comes along on some military missions. They uh they did uh what what do you call that when you cleanse a demon from uh what do you call it? Exorcism. They did an exorcism. He he w they sent him back to Canada. He uh he's now watched by the church. He has to go and check in with the church every every every week . I don't know what to tell you, Joe. There's a lot, I don't know. But yeah, and then and the and the crazy thing was, is the priest who did the exorcism said yeah he knew the demon. He he'd already exercised exercised, he'd already done the ex orcism like three or four times. Yeah. That demon was like popping in out of guys . Yeah. So I look I uh Joe, I don't know what's going on in the world. I'm an arm wrestler. Okay but this guy knew things about you. No. I wasn't on the tour. But the unit's very small, okay? I uh all the guys who were there I have very close personal relationships with and there's no reason for me not to trust him. And this is the all the and and the guy who had it done to him, I'm very close with. Like he comes over to my he was my stall partner. Okay . Uh and I see him all the time. When you say had it done to him, the guy who was possessed. Yes. You knew him. I know him very well. And what did he say about it? Yeah, he doesn't like it very much. Yeah. He's he it scared him a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Does he recall being able to speak different languages? Yeah, he can remember it. Yeah, he can remember. But he can't speak those languages anymore. No. It was like he was aware of everything happening, but he was like he was a a visitor. He was like there for the ride. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. Apparently he when it started it started to like it started he was freezing. He was locking up. And then he was locking. And then he started speaking in tongues and then he was like fully Joe, it's it's it's it's weird stuff out there, man. There's a lot of things that we don't understand, right? And um yeah. Uh yeah. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know. I wasn't me. Uh but I trust the story because I know the people . Um I know them I know them very I I could hook you up with them. You wanna talk to 'em? Tell ya. I'm nervous. Tell ya all about it. I don't think I would . Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And how long was he possessed for? He was possessed I think for a couple of weeks. Maybe like a week or ten days. Something like that. Wasn't super long. But he was um all messed up afterwards. Like he he got like was done working after that. Really? Mm-hmm. He retired. Medical. Wow. Yep . But psychologically, like it wasn't like he had a schizophrenic break No. I don't know that it's not. No, I don't think it it can. But what I'm saying is they didn't diagnose him as having No, the diagnosis was he had to go to church. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Literally. Yes. Right? Isn't that wild? That's so crazy. That's one of the craziest ones that I've seen personally. Have you heard of other experiences like that where people have been possessed? That's it. Well you would think that if a demon was gonna visit someone, war would be the place to visit them. And and that's a ancient That was in Iraq. That was in Urbil . Okay, and I mean that's a ancient ancient part of the world. Yeah. So uh whatever's like history is long and uh misunderstood and um something's going on. Something's going on . I can't explain it. And I've kinda just been like I'm kinda like at this point in my life I'm like, whatever. I know I don't know everything. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna do wrist curls in my basement for the next time Yeah. He's awesome. Martin, if you're watching, come over. Let's party. Yeah. I love this guy. Does he talk about it? A little bit. A little bit. I I'm so curious about that. Do you think he would come on here and tell the stor y? Yep. Really? Sure. Of course he would. Of course he would. I'm nervous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Martin yeah, he's cool dude. Wow. Yeah, I love him. I love him. Yeah, great soldier. Yeah. Brother, you've had a m pretty wild life. It's been great. Really. Um ton of fun. Happy to happy to be here. Um yeah, it's been good. It's been good. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation, man. I'm glad we did it. Joe, thank you so much. And uh really like I feel like it's kind of closing the loop for something with my brother. Yeah. Well you should s we should tell everybody. Uh I knew your brother uh before I met you online and this is from your brother. Your brother made this candle and this candle will now sit here. He uh is no longer with us, but the candle will remain. Thank you so much for your time, Joe. My pleasure, brother. Anytime you wanna get into arm wrestling, come on over. We'll get your grip strength working for you. No, no, I'm good, but thank you. I appreciate it. Wonderful. And good luck. Yeah. Good luck beating that giant dude. I'm gonna need it. Sixteen months? Sixteen months, man. Maybe we'll talk to you before then. Yeah. Do it again. Yeah, cool. Thank you so much. Thanks, brother. All right. Bye everybody .