occupations that make you better armwrestler

[Mike Moeller]

I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on different occupations that make you a better armwrestler and share some stories about them. I pulled a guy that was a brick layer by trade and had amazing hand strength. didnt know much about armwrestling thankfully. also pulled a kid one time who had a job changing semi tires by hand all day. sick forearm and hand strength!

[Johnny Ordonne]

My buddy and fellow TEAM RCA member Ryan Comardelle is a crab fisherman, and his forearms and hand strength are unbelievable!!! His first big tournament after a long layoff was the Dallas Europa, and he never lost a match in the novice or amateur division all day!!! Just a side note, he raises over 300 crab traps a day six days a week, All by hand!!!

I also think that anyone who works as a mechanic would have strong hands, fingers and forearms from tightening and loosening bolts all day long!

[Harold "Rattlesnake" Ryden]

Ironworkers and electricians!

The toughest people Ive pulled that were just straight off the street it seemed the Ironworkers were always the toughest!

[Curtis(Smash)Klashinsky]

I noticed a HUGE difference in my strength overall after a few months of working as a bundler/assembler at a farming equipment plant. All I do all day is move around big pieces of steel and use very large tools to get the jobs done. Makes a big difference when you are doing stuff like that all day.

I have met a few heavy-duty mechanics and they all seem to have very impressive hand and wrist strength.

[Ron Klemba]

psychologist, sometimes I win matches before we even grip up.

We also try to figure out how to make our opponents beat themselves

[enginterzi]

Sept 19, 2008 5:57:24 GMT -5 Ron Klemba said:

psychologist, sometimes I win matches before we even grip up.

it depends on who you are armwrestling against.if there is no possibility for you to beat your opponent in physical ways then nothing can help you.but mind is important to analise what is going on during the set up to choose the right strategy.alse yes you can win a match with a good mind preparation even before the match as long as there is a way to win.but still,your body will not do something that is not trained for.so mental trainings require physical exercises for mind to be able to control the body.

it is a deep subject,but a healthy mind is very important since it can see the facts as how they are and this guides you into right direction.a healthy mind can also provide you to visualise what you have not done yet,so you can improve your self by reaching one step ahead of where you are.

[Ron Klemba]

Very true Engin

My point is I have wins over many who have superior strength.

[Jake Smith]

water delivery

[Coley Jones]

Farmer/Ranchers. By far the toughtest people I've pulled around here have been in that profession. Cleve Dean is a good example. I never played sports as a younger guy, but I worked on a ranch for 3 years, and moving sprinkler pipe did wonders for my forearms. If only there was something out there that had worked my biceps a little more.

A couple others: Concrete workers and baseball pitchers.

[James Battles]

I have done many different things that impacted my performance at different times.
Under a category of fishing I have worked as a longliner which is basically kind of like king crab fishing in Alaska but instead of crab pots there are leaders with a hook on the end that clip to a line that is about 3 miles long. It can lay at different depths depending on whether we fished groupers 600 feet depth or swordfish 100 feet depth. We set 600 hooks per run and alternated two lines working from 2:45 am until about midnight each day. There was a task every once in a while of spooling the line into trash cans by hand. I did not like that part because even with gloves the Brownell line would eventually remove most of the skin on our hands. working in salt water made this painful. I used duct tape wrapped around my fingers to strengthen my clipping and unclipping of the leaders to get me through the trip. We would catch about 6 thousand pounds of fish and come in and offload. My hands have taken a beating over the years. In the early days we did not have the float buoy to pull the anchor which we put in 250 ft of water so with scope it was about 700 ft long and had to be pulled by hand.
Another time I ran 4 strand barbed wire fence on a job around some property my family owns . The fence length was several miles I think but with four strands you have to run one and back up and run another. The terrain allows no vehicles and this was before the 4 runners time. I used a crowbar and carried the spool and then used the crowbar to tighten the strand by prying and stretching the barbed wire around trees that were in the fence line and then nailing to them. The posts were the type you pound into the ground with a double handled mechanism. That was a rough job that had my hands strong for a while.
In the early days I started by carrying concrete blocks to do perimeter foundations on houses we built and then moved on to frame carpenter. There is such a thing as too much and along the way I figured out that my armwrestling was suffering simply because with work my tendons had not healed up and suffered fatigue. Working building a house has many situations from hand hauling wood onto the house ranging from thinner to thicker boards to plywood after the initial concrete block movement and then later on finishing with the Sheetrock is a major wakeup call. I have seen Sheetrock delivery crews that all had severe hand strength.
Electricians dealing in pulling Nomex wire through a house after drilling runs all over also get all they can stand. Plumbers have heavy handed jobs but in the end no more than the carpenters or the Sheetrock people.
I guess one job that has repeatedly been a wear on me was the one referenced Drag-line professional. The tool of choice "A shovel" and a "pickax" and "an ax" . when you dig a ditch in Florida you all should be aware scrub oaks and other vegetation here are very hardy due to the root systems. I have hand dug and removed a tree trunk and this is in the past year. It was about five or six hundred pounds. I tied it to a set of hand trucks and dragged it about 200 feet to the road. It severely warped the hand trucks framing.
when I was a kid we built these reefs and hauled them out into the Gulf of Mexico. We gutted smaller cars and once I did a Volkswagen bus . I had a lot that was filled with tires . There were several thousand of them. I used a wooden handled knife called an Old Hickory. The tires would not sink unless they had cuts placed in them so I would go into this lot and cut a slice with the knife about a foot long in two spots on both sides of the tire and then stack them up. Then we took poly propylene rope and turned the boat around in the slip with the bow facing and passed them onto the bow and tied them together. Of course this was after we took a small car and between some guys edged it to the boat on the dock and then lifted it onto the bow.We would tie the tires in big stacks and tie the stacks together and then to the car. Then we would make more stacks and tie them together down the sides and then turn the boat around and load another car on the stern and do the same thing. Then we waited on the weather because that kind of load could not stand alot of waves...... " We might Tump over " Then we would drive very slowly into the gulf and pick a place and make a reef. In about a year there would be an average amount of fish you could make a living from with tourist. In two years as long as you could keep it hidden from the rich banker A-holes that did nothing but tried to find what we worked to make a living off of then it would really produce some fish. In the end when the rich leeches all failed to catch themselves a fish they used their money to lobby for laws preventing the reef building but only managed to give the government another way to suck the life out of us with inspections. Then they lobbied to make fishing licenses for charter boats so high that you worked all year to pay 3grand for one along with the 3grand quarterly insurance premium to be insured. Then it wasn't enough so the rich man started lobbying about the population of fish being depleted which had a little merit to it but now they have cut into the industry so deep that red snappers are eating the boats down. You have to throw them back. Anyone here try to imagine catching a 30 pound red snapper and having to throw it back. Been there done that. Anyway they put such limits on every species that you have to carry a ruler with you at all times because a mistake in Florida is no ticket. It involves handcuffs and then they have to call me to post bond.
This is why I was forced to move on but the family still owns a boat and all we can call it is a hobby. They wont allow us to catch much and with the price of fuel it makes it really unjustifiable and alot like being a golfer for most. Our boat has 453 Detroit diesels in it though and they are very fuel efficient but our cruise speed is 8knots. I like to fish but it takes about 8 hours one way to get to a decent fishing ground. This past year though for three days we won out being from old school Destin. We got out and caught all the rich mans fish they had been hording on closer spots and then came back to the dock and waved them in their faces. Yes defiant to the end! Alot of the rich own their own fisherman now days so they can catch fish too. It was the only choice the fishermen had they could make to survive. They do charge them a good fee though and when you work for them while it is similar to servant status it is still like family. Not all of them are A-holes I can personally vouch for a man named Mr. Mall who owned International Business Aircraft from Tulsa Oklahoma. He was a great guy to work for and the last one I did work for which I found him a youngster to replace me in 1989 before I left.
Life is a journey with great benefits to anyone willing to get their hands dirty. This has been but a small piece of the things I have done. If I went on it would dwarf this bit of typing.
It all helps armwrestling in body and spirit.

[stevenking]

the way i have my strenght is when i was a kid we where junk iron haulers we would not go for the small stuff my dad would get cars and engines do i would left engines fron evey type of car and truck the beggest i lefted was a 350 with trans still attached from the ground to the trailer and did that all day and when we had nothing else to do i hauled hay even split firewood allday

[CHRISTIAN BINNIE]

REST is the key.....I am retired and BUT sometimes I HAVE to get up early like 9am...Pisses me off!....

[James Battles]

Sept 19, 2008 10:52:34 GMT -5 CHRISTIAN BINNIE said:

REST is the key.....I am retired and BUT sometimes I HAVE to get up early like 9am...Pisses me off!....

That is the age factor....... S H I T H A P P E N S........
To me as well. Key = Rest

video for the day. This way you can stay active and still be sitting!

[Ken McKinney]

Loggers and those who operate Chainsaws on a daily basis.

[SeungMin Bae]

Carpenters, and as ken McKinney mentioned, Loggers are whom I believe very good at armwrestling.
Also, a few years ago, I met a guy working for a ship construction company. His job was screwing humongous bolts on metal sheets, and he was a true monster; but the funny thing is that he didn't care about his extreme strength, he just wanted to go home and take some rest.