Shawn Turner

Shawn Turner [right] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.


Shawn Turner [right] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.


Shawn turner [left] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.


Shawn Turner [left] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.

Gary Kessler from Kentucky Muscle

Gary Kessler [left] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.


Gary Kessler [left] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.


Gary Kessler [right] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.


Gary Kessler [right] from craig stevenson on Vimeo.

Short break

Hey guys, I know there hasnt been much posting by yours truly lately. I have spending all my time working on some software for the new website, projectArmwrestling.com. I already own the domain, and the site should go live after christmas break. Theres just too much cool stuff I want to do that blogger wont let me. Anyways, keep on pulling and I will see everyone at the Get-A-Grip tournament in January.

chris heath vs Brent Rockers [left]

Booya! Go Chris!


chris heath vs Brent Rockers from craig stevenson on Vimeo.

Jeremy Kessler - Kentucky Muscle

This page is not finished. I will continue to update it as more of my videos come online.

Left Hand












Right Hand

John Brzenk Beats Dennis Cyplenkov!!!

John Brzenk is back baby!!!!!!

http://www.worldofarmwrestling.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5442

Kentucky muscle

hey guys, I am processing all of the kentucky muscle footage as we speak. I should get the first batch of videos up Late tonight.

Here is the first video.

Jeremy Kessler Vs. ?

? Vs. Jeremy Kessler from craig stevenson on Vimeo.

David vs. Goliath?

This matchup happened fairly recently up in Connecticut. On one side we have Michael Selearis and on the other we have the insanely huge Jerry Cadorette. It doesn't really come accross in the video, but Jerry is a super nice guy. Also, I think I am older than Jerry, which makes me cry a little bit inside.

Here is a quote from Jerry about the match.

"Boy was I really sleeping on that first match! Great job Mike! It was also great to meet you too Jared, I am looking forward to the meets coming up!"

A big thanks has to go out to Jared Vale who filmed the matches and put them up on youtube.

Match 1.


Match 2.


Match 3.

Deadlifts

Sevan Matossian, the guy who runs armwrestling.wordpress.com had a post on October 15th where he issued a little workout challenge. Here was my attempt at the workout he did.

This is an attempt at a 250lb x 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 set of deadlifts in under 20 minutes.


Deadlift from craig stevenson on Vimeo.

ROTN results

For those that dont know, the Ruler Of The Nation tourney took place last weekend. This is the biggest cash tourney in the United States. It looks like this tourney is on its way to becoming the most difficult tournament as well. Almost everyone who's anyone showed up. Here are the results.

ROTN RESULTS
OCTOBER 11 2008
PBR BIG SKY
KANSAS CITY

242+ RIGHT
1 TRAVIS BAGENT
2 MICHAEL TODD
3 NICK ZINNA
4 JOHN SHAW

242+ LEFT
1 TRAVIS BAGENT
2 MICHAEL TODD
3 RYAN CONSTANTINO
4 DON FRITSCHE

242 RIGHT
1 JOHN BRZENK
2 RON BATH
3 MARCIO BARBOZA
4 SCOTT FLEMING

242 LEFT
1 JOHN BRZENK
2 MARCIO BARBOZA
3 RON BATH
4 MIKE SNELLING

198 RIGHT
1 ROB VIGEANT JR
2 CHAD SILVERS
3 ERIC WOLFE
4 MIKE BOWLING

198 LEFT
1 BRYAN JOHNSON
2 CHAD SILVERS
3 SONNY LARSON
4 MIKE BOWLING

165 RIGHT
1 ALLEN FISHER
2 ANDREW COBRA RHODES
3 MATT HARRIS
4 BRANDON DYE

165 LEFT
1 MATT HARRIS
2 PAUL BELLUZ
3 LUKE STANLEY
4 ETHAN FRITSCHE









WOMAN
143 LEFT
1 MARGIE CIACCIO
2 JOETTE PETERSON
3 EMMA CLARK
4

143 RIGHT
1 EMMA CLARK
2 MARGIE CIACCIO
3 TAMARA MITTS
4 JOETTE PETERSON

143+ LEFT
1 DAHLIA MEDZIAUSYTE
2 MARY MCCONNAUGHEY
3 BRANDY STARK
4 DUSTIE FRITSCHE

143+ RIGHT
1 DAHLIA MEDZIAUSYTE
2 BRANDY STARK
3 MARY MCCONNAUGHEY
4 DUSTIE FRITSCHE


ARM TV OPEN
165 LEFT
1 STAN KARAPETYAN
2 MIKE JONES
3 JOSH HANDELAND

165 RIGHT
1 HEATH MCDONALD
2 JOE GONZALES
3 STAN KARAPETYAN

198 LEFT
1 BRANDON REDMOND
2 JOHN GRANT
3 CHRIS HOOD

198 RIGHT
1 BRANDON REDMOND
2 PERRY DAVIS
3 JOHN GRANT

242 LEFT
1 CHRIS HEATH
2 CHRIS HOOD
3 TIM LEWIS

242 RIGHT
1 CHRIS HEATH
2 CHRIS CALLEGARI
3 JOHN GRANT

242+ LEFT
1 TRAVIS BERGGREN
2 DON CHANEY
3 CHRIS HEATH

242+ RIGHT
1 TRAVIS BERGGREN
2 KRIS NELSON
3 TIM TRUSLER

Tournament video

Here is the footage of all of John Byerley matches from the Europa tournament in Texas. He is a fellow amateur, but got a chance to wrestle John Brzenk at the end of the tourney.

Finger pressure training

Here is a sweet video on how to train finger pressure. The guy had a pretty cool custom handle built and uses some kind of stretchy cables. Here is a link to the video.

Armwrestling birthday party

My girlfriend recently attended an armwrestling birthday party. She used to be a writer and wanted to get back into it. She is really interested in any comments you guys might have on her writing. So, for your reading pleasure, here is what she thought of a bunch of crazy armwrestlers.

"Saturday, September 27th marked an important occasion for none other than Randy Stanaway, arm-wrestling champion. It was the day his friends and family gathered to celebrate his 50th birthday with food, drinks, and of course...pulling.

The party was a surprise for Randy, who looked rather confused as he entered his home and was greeted by a crowd of well-wishers. As his closest friends and family welcomed Randy with embraces, well-wishes, and over-the-hill jokes, the pullers in the crowd retreated to the garage to allow Randy some quality time with his loved ones.

As we entered the garage, which was actually more of a home gym than anything, my eyes were immediately drawn to the sheer number of trophies that lined the far wall. A quick count revealed that there were over fifty, all of them tributes to Randy's legacy.

The day was pretty low-key, with different pullers stepping up to the table to try out various techniques and teach each other new tricks. Keith Dowdy, Chris Heath, Ray Barry, and Craig Stevenson (all of different weight classes and expertise levels) took turns pulling against one another. Meanwhile, the other guys would stand around the table offering their own point of view on the match. The wealth of knowledge was incredible; both novice and expert alike could benefit from the comments and feedback offered from the onlookers.

Perhaps some of the most valuable advice came from Steve Stanaway who regaled us with pulling stories from sixties and even demonstrated how the rules of have changed since then…and with good reason. For instance, he demonstrated with Craig Stevenson a move that pullers use when their opponents leave their thumb unprotected. Applying just a small amount of pressure to the thumb nearly renders the opponent helpless. Steve reported that he saw many pullers get serious injuries as a result of this tactic. Nowadays, most competitors know to protect themselves a bit better…and most refs will call a foul on this move to prevent any injuries from happening.

Randy didn't get to join the other pullers until late in the day and was rather unfortunately only able to have his turn at the table for a few moments before he was called away by his guests again. However, even his short stint at the table proved that he deserved every one of the 50 plus trophies lining his wall. He demonstrated, that if anything, pullers only get better with age.

The celebration ended in the early evening, with each of the pullers going their own separate ways. There's no doubt that each man left with at least a little more knowledge and better perspective than he arrived with. "

Everything you ever wanted to know about the wrist

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about the hand and wrist. I had hurt my wrist near the end of August and have spent quite some time researching what I could have done to myself. The following links turned out to be the most helpful.

First up is the basic hand and wrist anatomy guide.

Second is the site I used to diagnose what i had done to myself. This site is really useful for exploring what sort of things can happen to your hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder.

Last but definitely not least is the grays anatomy guide to the hand and wrist. This thing is super technical but has a bunch of sweet pictures.

Tendon Training

I cant link to it because it is on a forum that you must register for, but here is a very part of a long thread talking about tendon strength. I found this post to be pretty much the conclusion of the thread. Theres a lot of good information in here so read up folks and stay injury free.

"Bodybuilders are know for their muscle strength not tendon, nor are strongmen. Back the statement of tendon lack of blood supply because the way body built. IMO, it takes a lot longer than 6-12 reps to really burn the tendon with ANY exercise. For ex: 1st stage: if you do bicep curl and get tired after 6-12 reps your muscle felt the burn and pumped up but the tendon itself is not yet there at that stage. 2nd stage: immediatedly after the curl pick up a lighter weight (or cable) and try to do wrist curl with your bicep still supporting the resistant (arm still bent 90 degree) wrist curl as fast as you can you will feel the lower bicep tendon burn near the elbow joint. Now when you can't wrist curl any more just hold the resistant isomerticly for more time. The bicep tendon will burn even more a long with the muscle of course. The 1st stage focus on the muscle while 2nd stage goes to the tendon on same group. I like to 2nd stage better I usually do just that. It feel like you are wrist curl while holding your opponent arm at 90 degree. This is one of the methods I use. The burn is right the bicep tendon and inner elbow depends on whther or not you turn or face it directly. If you can not wrist curl the weight the bicep can handle, then that is why you need to curl first if that was the case. Though I can generally wrist curl most of the weight my bicep can hold

Back to the tendon train philosophy and protocols. This is really tricky part. By observing all movements of life, I 've come to conclusion that tendon training can be done with either light weight or heavy weight. Depend on whether or not you use dynamic or isometric style. But it always comes down to one important objective: Making the tendon exhausted before it responds to training.

Light weight training observation: Watch a piano player runs on the keys fast and repeatedly for hours effortlessly. Now if you ever play it at a beginner, you know your fingers get tired quickly. What is in the finger but mostly tendon and ligament? You can have most amazing hand strength but that light movement tire it out in no time. Finger tendons are not there yet. The classical trained piano player in my band can bend nail 1st time he tried it. Same thing will happen to a beginner guitar player. While the pro can hold a difficult chords with easy and a guy with strongest grip can barely make any sound articulatedly. At times fingers cramped up bad. My conclusion: light motions at high speed and super hi-reps will evetually get your tendon too. In AW John B. use a light gripper and just go super fast for 100 of reps everyday to exhaustion work tendon too. A pro dancer who trains for years also get the body tendon powerful to look elegant while dancing. Especially in ballet and ice dancing. Lifting a partner with ease while moving and yet himself never built big. A bodybuilder can also lift a woman in the air but IMO he can never be elegant or graceful just because his tendon lack of the kind of power and coordination. The muscle power can also lift a human but it takes tendon too to make it look easy

This is only my observation thru the years. I will be back with heay weight training for tendon theory and slow motion training for tendon. Remember this is only a theory of mine... boring or not. It's Friday and I am hungry, I am out!"

Is Travis Bagent super human?

This had been floating around for a month or so, but just in case you haven't seen it I am posting it here as well. It is a part of a documentary on people that are "Super Human". It has some cool shots of Travis training as well as some of his matches.

Cleave dean

The guys over at worldofarmwrestling have a sweet profile on Cleave Dean. Just to wet your apetite, Cleave was a pig farmer whose walkin around weight is about 450. He is 6'8 or so with one of the biggest hands in the business. We are talking freakishly huge hand.

Denis Cyplenkov

I have decided to try an compile every piece of decent video about this new guy, Denis Cyplenkov. I find him interesting because he is one of if not the most imposing armwrestler I have ever seen!

Some new footage of Denis has surfaced and by new I mean really old. Here he is looking not nearly as huge being beaten by a guy at least 50 pounds lighter.


He doesn't pull any superstars in this tourney but he does go up against some very solid guys.


Here is Denis practicing with Alexy Voevoda. Alexy hasn't wrestled in a while but he is still one of the top guys in the world. (They disabled embedding for some reason so here is the LINK)

Here he is training with Alexy Voevoda again. This time lefty.(They disabled embedding again so here is the LINK.

The first video I found is of him right after he decided to try armwrestling.



This is him pulling what I believe to be the current #2 guy (left handed) in the world.



Here he is destrorying Alexey Semerenko. You may remember Semerenko as the guy who passed out after a match with John Brzenk.


As near as I can tell, this is all the footage available on youtube. If you can find some better stuff please let me know. You can contact me at craig.stevenson@gmail.com or just leave a comment.

Armwrestling on TV

Over in Europe they are prepared to air a 26minute show once a week on armwrestling. It has Neil Pickup's name associated with it so you know it is going to be exciting. Read all the details over at world of armwrestling.

Here is a link to the article.

Taining with Allen Fisher

Check this out. Allen Fisher is holding a sweet training camp for arm wrestlers. I think its 50 or 60 bucks. It lasts like 6 hours or so. I am insanely jealous of anyone that gets a chance to attend one of these. Here is a link to all of the information you need.



Here is a highlight video of Allen Fisher. To give you an idea of how strong Allen is, his last opponent in the video can bench about 400lbs raw and Allen basically demolishes him.

Gary Goodridge highlight

The grippler created another sweet video. Many of you might not know that Gary was a world champion arm wrestler before he started fighting the UFC. Here is his arm wrestling highlight video.

Marcio Barboza video

The grippler created a sweet highlight fil of Marcio Barboza. Check it out here.

I have also embedded the video here

Supermatch

Hello everyone. This is the first in a series of supermatches held once a week between myself and a friend. I am still definately an amateur so drop me some comments on my technique in the comments.

Here is a link directly to the video.

Looks like the ROTN tourney coming up might be appearing on eurovision TV. This is incredible news. How awesome would it be to have started a tournament that ends up getting broadcast to 250 million people!

Click on the logo below to check out everything you need to know about ROTN.

Armwrestling training video

I found a pretty good video of some armwrestling techniques narrated by Richard Poole, the former British champ.

Part_1


Part_2

John Brzenk highlight

There is a spectacular highlight video of John Brzenk on youtube. Watch the master at work!

Is Alex Jigalko the best 209 lefty in the south east?

There has been a lot of talk on the northeast board about whether Alex is the best 209 lefty in the south east. He won the 209 lefty class at the "Quest With Arms" tourney. Here is all of his matches in order.

match 1


match 2


match 3


match 4

Updated InTheHook rankings

Since Devon Larratt layed down the law over in England, InTheHook just updated their Canadian, american, and North American rankings.

Heres a link the the updated rankings. Although there is tad bit of controversy due to the Michael Todd's name being left off the list. I will keep you posted of any changes.

Quest With Arms: Marciao Barboza

Hey guys, I decided to take each winner of the Quest With Arms tournament and compile all there matches in one place. The first one up is Marciao Barboza.

There were only 2 people in the left handed class. Since it was double elimination they had to pull twice. On a side note, holy crap do Marciao's arms look huge. In person they about as big around as my head.

match 1



match 2




There were only 2 people in the right handed class as well. They pull twice in the video.

Match 1 & 2

Tournament Anouncement

September 20, 2008 - Sanction #983-08 - Virginia State Championships - Onancock Harborfest, 15 North St., Onancock, VA
Registration: 10:00am - 12:00pm Competition starts 1:00pm
Entry fee: $10
Men's Right Hand: 70kg, 78kg, 86kg, 95kg, 105kg, 105+kg
Women's Right Hand: Open
Awards: Trophies 1st thru 3rd
Information: Contact John Thornes 757-789-5317

I really wish I could make it to this tourney but a long time friend is getting married the same weekend. Good luck guys!

Interview with Devon Larratt

Here is an interview by armsportvideos with Devon Larratt. This interview took place directly before his supermatch with Travis Bagent at Arm Wars. He shares his thoughts on how he thinks the supermatch will go. If you have an ArmTV subscription you can watch the entire supermatch. I think its interesting to watch the interview and compare it with how he performed.

Interview

Ruler of the Nation!!

Its that time of year again when the best pullers from across the United States meet up in Kansas City to throw down. After having watched all of the footage from last years event, I am incredibly disappointed that I wont be able to make it to this years tourney. But I cant wait to see the footage!!!

Follow this link for all the sign up information

New Website

Theres a new website out there that is beginning to pick up steam. The idea is for everyone to sign up and provide your location so that there is an easy way to locate pullers near you. Here is the website, I signed up already(its totally free) and I can only see this helping the community.

ArmDB

I have decided to create something which I call the ArmDB. Here are the problems that ArmDB is going to solve.

1. There is no decent quality video of matches available online. I have about 50 matches recorded in high definition that I cant share with people in the quality I intended them to be watched. YouTube does allow you to upload "high quality" video, but anyone who has watched it knows that it is still pretty crappy.
2. I want to be able to search for every match John Brzenk has ever had and watch them all in order. I dont want to have to watch a tournament in order to see the 4 matches he had. I also think it would cool to have someones matches over several years and watch them in order to see them get stronger.

ArmDB is going to be completely free. I am going to try and use Google Adsense to support it. I will keep ArmDB up as long as I can afford to. This means that if you see an advertisement that looks even remotely interesting please give a click and at least check it out.

The First videos going into the ArmDB are going to be all of the matches I have from the "Quest With Arms" tournament. By the way, if you have any match videos or training videos or pretty much anything armwrestling related that you would like to see hosted in very high quality, let me know and we can see about getting them hosted inside of ArmDB. That being said wish this experiment luck :)

I can be contacted by clicking on my profile (craigzooka) on the sidebar to the left.

John Brzenk looses to Devon Larratt 0-6

On September 13th 2008 John Brzenk lost a challenge match with Devon Larratt 0-6.

I have been following Mr. Brzenk since about 2005. After having read all the back dated MILO articles I became a huge fan. Doing a youtube search and being a member of ArmTV allowed me to watch a considerable amount of footage on him. I basically came to think of him as some kind of arm wrestling god. I had seen John loose a match here or a match there, mostly because he was messing around or had decided to pull 5 weight classes. So in my heart I always thought that he was basically invicible. John even had a match with Devon in 2004 in which he absolutely destroyed him. I have to say that I am kind of sad to see john loose like this. But I hope that this may inspire John to become the strongest he has ever been, which is what it looks like it may take to beat Devon. I dont know of any talk of a rematch, or if John is even interested in one. But if a match could be set up 6 months to year from now, for me, it will be the most anticipated match since I began following the sport.

Mission Statement or How I fell in love with arm wrestling

Hello everyone and welcome to Arm Sports. Let me give everyone out there a little background information on me. My name is Craig and I am addicted to arm wrestling. My journey from normal person to arm wrestling addict is pretty interesting, at least to me, so I thought I would share it.

It all started when a friend of mine, Joe, convinced me I needed to go rock climbing with him. I had never been before so I thought it might be fun to give it a shot. I had always thought that I was pretty strong, I was definitely stronger than Joe in the absolute sense, so I thought I might be decent at the sport. I didn't think someone could be so much better than me at something strength related. So, I started looking around for things to improve my grip. This led me to the Captains of Crush grippers. I ordered my first grippers from Ironmind and added in a few issues of their quarterly magazine, MILO. Inside of MILO was where I found out about the world of professional arm wrestling.

A couple of months after devouring all the arm wrestling articles in MILO I decided it was time to give the real thing a shot. A friend and I decided to build our own arm wrestling table. We went online, looked the official dimensions, and made a trip to the hardware store. Well, our first table was pretty much crap, but it was good enough to start getting some matches in. Every weekend we ended up arm wrestling. It turned out that I was decent with my left but that my right was abysmal. That is when I decided to re-read every arm wrestling article in MILO and scour the internet.

Scouring the internet let me to ArmTV, the gripboard, and the North East board and that brings us up to today. I am still an amateur arm wrestler but have decided to give serious training a try. I am also addicted to arm wrestling news. Between the three sites mentioned above you can stay pretty up to date with everything happening in the arm wrestling world. But I wanted to create one place where you could get up the minute news as well as training articles, stories, and match videos.

So, while I will do my best to gather every piece of arm wrestling news that I can find an place it here, I am also looking for anyone who is interested in writing for this site. I can't afford to pay you, but if you have something interesting to say, dont hesitate to email me and we can see about having your articles appear on the site.