Devon Larratt is a professional arm wrestler, widely considered to be one of the best of all time. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Devon's Instagram: https://instagram.com/devlarratt
Devon's YouTube: https://youtube.com/devlarratt
Devon's Facebook: https://facebook.com/devon.larratt.5
Devon's Website: https://nolimitsarmwrestling.com/

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
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Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:45 - Over the Top and John Brzenk
12:18 - Strength vs skill vs strategy
36:41 - Denis Cyplenkov
1:05:47 - Jodi Larratt
1:09:48 - Canadian Special Forces
1:14:22 - Arm wrestling
1:21:06 - Freedom arm wrestling
1:32:39 - Diet
1:40:03 - Devon vs The Mountain
1:51:33 - Mortality
1:57:06 - Aliens and robots

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Because there's this saying like, oh, can you beat him at a hook?

And I wonder if that gets in the head of the other person.

The following is a conversation with Devin Larratt, considered by many to be 1 of the greatest arm wrestlers in history.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Devin Larratt.

You are considered to be 1 of the greatest arm wrestlers in history, plus are 1 of the most charismatic and fun people to watch in arm wrestling.

But let me first start with the ridiculous, the controversial opinion.

I actually really enjoy Over the Top, the movie with Sylvester Stallone where he's a trucker, it's like a father-son movie.

It's, you know, like a bunch of sports have the definitive movie.

Boxing has Rocky, maybe folk style collegiate wrestling has Vision Quest.

This is the sort of movie for arm wrestling.

What did it get wrong about arm wrestling?

That was actually based off of a real story.

The over the top movie, I mean, to a certain degree, that's actually real life.

Like that tournament over the top was real.

There was a trucker division and the guy actually won a truck for real.

So the actual over the top tournament, the trucker division was won by John.

He, he is a lot of people talk about him as like a legend and a 1 of, if not the greatest arm wrestlers of all time.

John Brzenk is every arm wrestler's father to a certain degree.

I mean, at 18 he won over the top, at 57 he just competed with me a couple months ago.

Still at the world level, 18, that's 40 years being at the top of the sport.

He's hailed as the greatest of all time in the sport of arm wrestling.

And he doesn't, he's beaten some monsters.

I mean, when you talk about like the, the evolution of the sport, he's responsible for so much of it.

Like when you talk about like a lot of times when you go back like 20 years, 30 years, a lot of us looked at arm wrestling, I think, I mean, as something you could kind of do.

And he's the first guy who's like, if you wanna get better at arm wrestling, you gotta arm wrestle.

And it seems so simple, but, you know, he answered so many questions that all of us had about techniques in the sport, back pre-video internet.

Yeah, he's been everybody's target for like 40 years.

So in terms of strength, in terms of power, in terms of skill, what did he teach the sport of arm wrestling?

So if you look, how did the sport change from 80s, 90s to the aughts?

You were at the top of the world for many years.

Many argue you're still at the very top of the world, but you were very dominant both left and right hand in, I don't know, 2008 to 2013, something like that.

So it's hard for me to comment, you know, prior to, you know, when I came to the sport was kind of mid 90s.

Like I've been arm wrestling my whole life, but I wasn't really involved in the sport to a major degree until probably, you know, mid 90s.

But I'll say that before the mid-90s, it was really hard to get good at arm wrestling, very difficult.

It was really rare to find people who were technically good arm wrestlers.

You know, when I got into sport, it was a flyer that came in the mail.

You had to know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, and then you go to a club and you can't do anything with these people.

And they knew how to arm wrestle, they did, but real masters were rare.

And then internet, internet helped everybody.

Communication, the transfer of knowledge became so much faster.

People became technically, you know, invested and people start train sharing, sharing ideas by I'd say 2000.

Well, probably around the turn of the millennia, I'd say that professional leagues started to slowly pick up more organized, bigger productions started to attract more athletes.

By 2010, I'd say there was another jump, more serious leagues, a little bit more money.

By 2015, more major media, like people were investing a lot of money, like, you know, millionaires, billionaires type of people were organizing events, setting up leagues.

And, yeah, I mean the past 5 years, it's just blown up, the techniques.

I mean, if, if I was to go back to when I started, you know, what took me 10 or 15 years to learn, I mean, new guys are showing up and they've got it down in like a year.

Well, the thing about it, the development of the sport, is it's, like I was telling you off mic, it's a battle of 1 versus 1.

And then that can turn into battle of nations, which, you know, there is.

There's Canada, there's the United States, there's all the Eastern Europe, Russia, Georgia, all of that, that's what makes some of the greatest sports in Olympics great, like weightlifting.

It's a battle of nations, not just a battle of individuals.

And it's almost like these 2 humans represent the 2 nations.

We'll talk about your matches coming up, but there is that battle between North America and that other part of the world.

Yeah, yeah, North America is very prized.

You know, the North American champion is always highly sought after because they're typically the most famous.

Even still when, you know, quite arguably, there's always somebody in Eastern Europe who's just monstrous.

It's typically the North American athlete who's more recognized.

By the way, we'll have a cup here with some maple syrup.

We should probably show, you just downed that whole thing.

No, no, no, I'm gonna sip it, I'm gonna sip it, but by all means.

Yeah, That's a perfect July day from Canada in a bottle.

So you're on a total tangent, you are known for appreciating food in all kinds of ways, but 1 of the things you're known for is pancakes.

That is, yeah, that's gone to a crazy place in the sport, but yeah, like.

When it went from like your actual love for pancakes

Yeah, so I think what happened was, so I had a match with Michael Todd, big match.

He's another guy who's, you know, he's never gonna get off the horse.

You know, he's, Jesus, his elbow is a complete disaster.

Probably 1 of the most loved and hated guys in the sport right now.

Yeah, the King's move brings him a lot of hate.

Not from me, not from a lot of people, but a lot of observers have a big problem with the King's move.

What's wrong with being a little bit controversial?

Just win and don't talk to me about anything else.

If you can win with style, win with style.

But don't talk to me about anything but winning.

So we invented this thing called the Legacy Hammer and Michael took it from me in I think 2018.

And then COVID shut everything down and Michael went overseas to try and set up, because at that time Michael was a North American champion.

He beat me and he went to Dubai and he organized this great big match with Levan.

Organizers, leagues, wouldn't let it happen, but there was still an ability to have a match of significance happen.

And I'm like, let's give Devin a rematch.

I had DVT, I had pulmonary embolism, I was mentally in a terrible place and I got offered the match and I just totally turned my life around and I committed really hard.

Yeah, there's a lot of camaraderie you guys talked afterwards, it's great.

So we let each other really fight hard against each other.

But so I was, I knew, I mean, strength and mass, they go hand in hand.

And I committed to just getting as big and as strong as I could, and literally I was eating pancakes every day.

Bacon, pancakes, every sloppy bit of garbage food I could eat.

I was trying to eat healthy also, but if there was garbage food, I'd eat it.

you mean bacon and pancakes isn't healthy?

People should go watch, there's a video where you make the Canadian meal of bacon with some bacon cooking tips, water, that was interesting.

And then obviously pancakes and maple syrup all over the whole thing.

Yeah, you're making me very hungry, Lance.

I've caused more diabetes than, you know, probably gonna get in trouble karmically for making the world obese.

You should probably write like a book, The Pancake Diet, with Devin Larratt.

So you said mass and strength go hand in hand.

Just at a big level about arm wrestling, what's more important?

Strength, power, endurance, skill, strategy, or mental toughness?

Like how do these components all come into play in arm wrestling?

You can use everything and you can adjust your strategy based off of the tools that you have.

I would say if I could pick ever just 1 thing to have more of, I would say that it would be strength gained while fighting.

While actually arm wrestling, so not off the top.

No, no, no, so you get stronger from arm wrestling.

How do you get stronger from arm wrestling?

Like in jiu-jitsu and grappling, you can get good by training with people much technically worse than you.

So with white belts and blue belts, it's actually beneficial.

But I wouldn't say it develops that intensity and power required to go against people at your level.

Is it okay to go against people that are much weaker than you?

Or do you really have to go against people at

I think that a blended strategy is probably the best.

I'd say kind of a rule is whatever you do, you get better at, right?

So you want to be kind of as precise as possible.

I am currently a big believer in what I call tower building, right?

So you have to do a lot of volume to build a great tower.

So when you look at how to best build volume, you want to do workouts that aren't particularly challenging, to make you feel good, and do them so that when you add them all together, you get the biggest number.

So many easy workouts a day that are specific as possible, in my opinion, is the best way to lay the foundation for an extreme peak.

Like there's no more precise way to get strong at arm wrestling than arm wrestle.

What is the training process to get great at arm wrestling?

Well, again, it's gonna depend on what level you're at.

The answer at the beginning might not be the same.

For me, a guy who's been doing it almost 30 years, I have to harvest, I have to harvest energy from clubs.

Sorry to interrupt you were here in Austin, Texas.

You are in Austin, Texas, but you were at the, what was it called?

I get to watch, I got to interact with a lot of those guys.

Just amazing community, amazing human beings.

I got to talk to Dmitry in Russian and in English.

He's an engineer, his wife is an engineer, so he's a brilliant dude, but also 1 of the toughest, I guess, guys you face there.

But you faced, I don't know how many people, must have been hundreds of matches.

Yeah, and that for me is a perfect training scenario, yeah.

So if I go in and just kind of be, I'm like a lightning rod, and I just absorb everything that I can get from people, all their effort, that's perfect, that's perfect.

But I'm lucky because I'm in a place that I can handle it.

If I was losing or failing, this would not be optimal.

But because I'm strong enough, I've been doing it long enough that I can kind of absorb it without damaging me, this is perfect, this is perfect.

I typically, When I'm training up for a very serious match, I'll try and do that 3 or 4 times a week.

And then the days in between, I will just do blood flow rehab, blood flow rehab.

I will never hit a PR, a record, I'll never do it anymore.

A lot of things change, and that's why I say there's a lot of ways to do it.

This is currently a system that's working very well for me.

So when you say PR, you're not aggressively chasing a peak.

You're just building and building and building.

Yeah, my only peak that I care about is for this cycle, the 25th of June.

Let's talk about LeVon Siganishvili, the Georgian Hulk.

Question number 1, is it possible to beat him?

He is widely acknowledged as the most powerful person in arm wrestling today.

He is what this modern peak of arm wrestling represents.

So for people who are just listening, we also have an overlay of a video of LeVon going against Vitaly Leletin, another top 3 person in the world, perhaps, in arm wrestling.

And the aggression, I mean, actually, sort of underneath it all, it seems to be a teddy bear, but when he turns it on, it's raw power.

He's, I mean, he's curling 300 pounds with 1 arm.

I mean, the strength that he shows for arm wrestling is, is, is so far ahead of the field, is very, very strong.

But it's absolutely possible, it's absolutely possible.

The 1 thing that I'm confident about, well I'd say there's 2 things.

The 2 things I'm confident about is that I have more experience than he does.

The other thing is my ability to breathe and recover.

So if ever there's an opportunity for the tide to turn, that's I think where he'll never get it back.

So I think if I can somehow find a hole in his game, then yeah.

you want to hold off the initial assault of power and then wear them out to find the hole.

How much of it is just the physical ability to do, for your muscles to have the endurance to hold off?

And a lot of things that most arm wrestlers believe the sport is, I always try and push those boundaries.

So there is definitely a mental aspect to it when you're faced with something that you've never seen before.

That's when things like experience comes in.

He can become surprised, where what's a surprise for him is routine for me.

So my adjustments will be more precise, more accurate.

So some of it, how important is confidence in the whole, in the progression of the match?

Like, holy shit, I actually have a chance to win this.

Holy shit, I'm winning this, you're done.

There's some of my favorite moments, I don't know if those are fake or not in terms of your expressions, if it's fake until you make it, but whenever you shake your head or whatever, you make it apparent that you believe the match is finished.

When you start to actually, So I'm sure you're doing things, like precise, detailed things with your hands to also indicate that you believe they're finished, but you're facially just.

Oh, that's right, because it's facing the other.

So that's ultimately what the battle is about.

It's like, you're done, you might as well give up.

Commitment is so important in anything that you do, right?

Like, I always kind of try and bring things to a level of commitment that's uncommon.

I think that that's a lot of reasons why I do well.

It's because I just get so committed in the whole process.

And by the time that I actually show up to fight, I sometimes just wish that they would kill me.

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Devon Larratt: Arm Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #265