00:02:22.000Dr. Pollock, bless his soul, at the Ottawa Hospital has extended my career till this age.
00:02:29.000You know, yeah, that's probably one of the worst chronic conditions that arm wrestlers get.
00:02:36.000Is, you know, 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.
00:12:55.000So you're basically, it's almost like a curl.
00:12:57.000It's, it's, More complicated, but that's like the first way to start to think about it.
00:13:01.000Like, people think about arm wrestling and think about pinning each other, right?
00:13:05.000And this is a very short sighted way to think about the sport.
00:13:09.000You think about pulling the match close to you.
00:13:11.000This 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 is going to go through the weakest system they have, which is their fingertips.
00:13:27.000Yeah, so it is great to have an awesome grip.
00:13:31.000I, I, so like proportionally in my workload, if I was doing 21 sets, 21, or I think I do 21 working sets typically in my workouts, one of them is dedicated purely to grip.
00:13:56.000My structure right now, and I think that I'm probably, One of the most dedicated armresters in the world in time, in terms of like what I do with my life and how much energy I give the sport, is I base it off of a week.
00:15:47.000This table you're looking at here, that's like a 40 year old table and it's still working.
00:15:53.000But yeah, you can buy a pulley system on a table.
00:15:55.000And that's really like this is basically all I do.
00:15:58.000I work off of a table, different angles, different pressures that all just replicate the pressures in arm wrestling.
00:16:04.000So you have a fat grip, looks like a PVC tube, and then you're using that to work your fingertips and roll your wrists and just get to be really strong at that position where you're turning someone's wrist over.
00:18:01.000So basically, it all revolves around these arm wrestling practice days where it's 100%, this is what I want my body to maximize about.
00:18:11.000But the off days, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, it's all day just doing blood flow, just increasing the amount of blood that flows through the fascia, flows through these chains in arm wrestling motions.
00:18:25.000And the 100 is all I'm trying to do is increase my circulation, especially through my connective structures and movement.
00:18:51.000What I've found is, in my opinion, you only have so much energy.
00:18:55.000And this is something we've got to really weigh in because if I could just smash heavy stuff all the time and take steps forward, I'd do it.
00:19:02.000But, I've found that you don't want to detract from the thing that you're really, really trying to do.
00:19:09.000So anything that takes away from your ability to do that, I think you should look at cutting.
00:19:13.000The best part of my training is on the table.
00:19:15.000So anything that kind of messes with that, I don't want to do it.
00:19:19.000I've done a lot of systems where I'm lifting heavy, but the thing is, they take energy, they take resources.
00:19:24.000And what I really want to do is prepare my body so I can do that specific task as good as possible.
00:19:55.000But I'm proving it over and over over the years.
00:19:59.000I started doing, because arm wrestling is a strength sport, no doubt about it.
00:20:04.000So right away, people think, oh, you know, heavy weight and high reps is dangerous because you're going to become an endurance guy and it's going to make you weaker.
00:20:15.000But when you go low, your work volume is tremendous.
00:23:36.000I love arm wrestling because it's a very safe fight.
00:23:41.000Okay, like I I love fighting everything in my life has been about fighting and Arm wrestling is one of those fight sports that has super low cost like we don't punch each other in the head I'll be able to walk nothing on my spine My elbows don't straighten, you know, so it's low cost.
00:24:02.000You can do it your whole life like we have we've had world champions in the open division who are almost 70 what yeah, what yeah, that's cool, right?
00:31:47.000They think they might have figured out a way to end Down syndrome.
00:31:53.000They 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.
00:32:07.000I personally believe that, and this is a big topic with freedom and everything like that, but I really believe that when you're born, you should be swabbed and it should accompany your health card or whatever, and just as information.
00:32:35.000So, scientists have taken an important step towards a gene therapy that could one day turn off the genetic material that causes Down syndrome.
00:32:42.000Down syndrome is a genetic condition caused by an extra chromosome, 21, and consequently hundreds of triplicate genes that lead to developmental and neurological issues.
00:32:53.000According to Washington based National Down Syndrome Society, one in every 640 babies in the United States is born with Down syndrome.
00:33:00.000That makes it the most common chromosomal condition.
00:33:07.000Okay, so Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School found a way to silence much of the extra chromosomes' activity in the cell at once.
00:33:17.000Details of their research are published in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
00:36:26.000But it's weird the the whole like Down syndrome thing.
00:36:29.000They can do stop codes like some genes, like some mutations that you get.
00:36:33.000From what I understand, There's like a stop code on a gene.
00:36:35.000So whatever your gene is, When the I guess mRNA 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.
00:36:47.000And I think that that's likely what they do with that.
00:36:52.000But I mean, there's people out there who have like world records, like for things like deadlift, That don't Have fast twitch muscle according to their genetics.
00:40:54.000Especially anybody who does jiu jitsu has it.
00:40:56.000Your discs just get worn out from getting cranked on, and like heavy lifters always have it, lower back issues.
00:41:04.000The disc is the soft cushion in between the spinal columns, and those big bones push down that disc, and over time, and all that compression, it squashes.
00:41:14.000But now they've got stuff that they can inject into the disc that inflates the discs.
00:41:20.000And 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.
00:41:28.000They're going to be able to eliminate that, which is amazing.
00:41:39.000Like, I always tell everybody, and I'll tell everybody again Louis Simmons, his invention, that invention, the reverse hyper, fucking incredible.
00:41:49.000One of the greatest inventions ever for people with lower back problems.
00:41:52.000I have one here in the studio, I have one at my house.
00:42:10.000Yeah, it's wild when we look at the future in terms of performance and how far the age is being pushed.
00:42:18.000Like we see Crazy George, but I think I'm optimistic that all the ages are just going to be pushed and pushed until you're probably maybe not going to be a champion until you're 60.
00:43:16.000Because he was jacked up with testosterone, but he was also 37 years old with a lifetime of combat sport experience, a lifetime of intelligence, but hadn't lost any speed, hadn't lost any strength.
00:43:26.000In fact, he had like superhuman speed and strength because he was juicy, super juicy.
00:43:34.000But it makes you think, like, man, what would the sport look like if that was open to everybody?
00:44:12.000But I'm also a believer in open up the gates and let everybody play.
00:44:16.000Well, that's why I really love this whole idea of doing the enhanced games.
00:44:20.000It didn't really pan out the way everybody hoped.
00:44:23.000Nobody really won any records other than the one guy in the swimming, but he wore a prohibited suit that lets you swim quicker, apparently.
00:44:30.000But I was hoping like you're going to see some freakish superhuman performances.
00:44:36.000But I feel like if that's going to happen, that's going to take years.
00:44:40.000I 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 time.
00:44:49.000Like you know, as well as anybody, that training takes forever.
00:44:53.000It takes to build strength, to build speed, to build endurance.
00:48:13.000So Juju and I were doing that like a year and a half ago.
00:48:16.000And it was so good and it was so much fun.
00:48:19.000I was like, what am I doing, you know, having anything kind of.
00:48:23.000Cut into this, and that's when I stopped doing heavy lifting.
00:48:28.000It was as a result of training with Juju.
00:48:30.000So, this two arm work of just holding and just work on that you feel is more important than all the lifting and all the other stuff, yeah, because it's sport specific, exactly.
00:48:50.000Um, 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.
00:48:58.000Juju is a wonderful, creative, hardworking guy.
00:49:02.000And 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 helps me.
00:52:54.000I mean, that is the thought about deadlifting and squatting it helps everything because your whole body just becomes stronger and it would just naturally, like your base, everything, your core, everything would just be much more, your foundation would be stronger.
00:57:00.000Well, arm wrestling is a big thing, okay?
00:57:04.000There are several things that you can kind of choose to focus on.
00:57:08.000Probably my biggest limiting factor is my elbow.
00:57:12.000Because I've had multiple surgeries on it, I burn it out.
00:57:15.000Like at the beginning of my career, I was more of a hook style arm wrestler.
00:57:19.000That'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.
00:57:30.000But over time, my elbow just got broke down to the point where, you know, I just don't have a lot of stability.
00:57:35.000Now, I continue to work on it, and quite honestly, my hooking now, this stability is probably pretty good.
00:57:46.000I think that we all as athletes do the best thing we think we can.
00:57:52.000And I think that the work that I do is very precise.
00:57:58.000Like the way that LeVon trains, and please, I don't like to criticize LeVon.
00:58:06.000But egotistically and arrogantly, I'm going to say that my training is more precise than his, okay?
00:58:12.000So I'm working on very precise angles where he's a sledgehammer at times.
00:58:18.000You know, like I'm working on very fine angles through my wrist, you know, a lot of pronation in my style, a lot of hand control, a lot of table time.
00:58:27.000Like I'm doing a lot of skill-based training.
00:58:31.000LeVon's base movements, his row, his, I mean, he's doing, he's doing a 180 kilo curl.
01:00:15.000While it is incredible to have a great row, while it is incredible to have a great wrist flexion, while it's incredible to have great legs.
01:00:26.000Like I go to tournaments sometimes and my legs are sore.
01:00:29.000But typically, the reason why you win and lose the match is very small things in the hand and the wrist.
01:00:35.000Like this is typically the failure point.
01:00:37.000So I just try and put everything into the most valuable pieces.
01:00:42.000That I think is actually going to determine my victory.
01:00:45.000And look at apart from Levon, it's working.
01:00:48.000You know, this guy has raised the sport, you know, and I continue to chase him.
01:03:07.000So I kind of, 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.
01:03:16.000You know, I'm just, and then here we go.
01:15:25.000And COVID burnt down everything, burnt down all the leagues, which were kind of fractioning the sport, right?
01:15:31.000We had the best guys from Europe competing together, best guys from North America.
01:15:37.000When 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.
01:16:02.000UFC, we're like the UFC of arm wrestling now, East versus West.
01:16:07.000All the best guys in the world all pull at East versus West.
01:16:09.000And there's an event every seven weeks, international.
01:16:13.000So, like, what does a top guy make to win a tournament now?
01:16:18.000You know, it's tricky when we talk about money, but you will make, like, if you're a top arm wrestler now, you definitely don't need a side job.
01:17:22.000Sorry, World Arm Wrestling Federation.
01:17:24.000So, World Arm Wrestling Federation is kind of like the base of the sport.
01:17:28.000Okay, it's a world level, so every country kind of plugs into it.
01:17:34.000They have state or provincial, then they have national, they have like Europeans or North Americans, and then they have a world championship annually, different part of the world every year that's tested.
01:18:32.000At the level that I'm at now, I continue to learn subtleties on a technical level, but it overflows more now into more vague and kind of like lifestyle principles.
01:18:44.000And I feel like that's how I get my big gains now is the way I live my life.
01:18:50.000Like the sport kind of cleans up my whole life.
01:19:41.000So 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?
01:19:58.000But, and on the other side, I've met only like a couple people who I thought were generally pure evil, or, you know, but I think most people are somewhere in the middle, okay?
01:20:08.000And they need that balance in their life.
01:20:11.000You 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.
01:20:21.000So I think that actually in the fight, like when you're actually fighting a lot of people, I think perform best in chaos okay, so when you get into the stage, you have to be completely wild.
01:20:34.000Uh, 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.
01:20:49.000I went to a kind of a presentation by this guy, Mack.
01:31:46.000Um, but because of the way he was, yeah, this is Matthias, right?
01:31:50.000Same deal, yeah, and he's and he's like German, German national champion kind of level.
01:31:56.000Yeah, and like it's just, it's hard to compete with.
01:31:59.000Right, 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?
01:32:06.000With these guys, it's a lot of genetic.
01:33:31.000So 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.
01:33:39.000And the same thing when I do my homework in the basement, I'm doing like 85 to 90% work on the right and maybe like just 10%, like just, you know, just for timing and whatever on the left.
01:34:26.000I think balance is a nice concept for like some imaginary world that you live in.
01:34:33.000But 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.
01:34:41.000There's an interesting comparison in jiu jitsu because there's a lot of guys that have like a very strong right side attack.
01:35:19.000If you can bring something from a 99 to 100, but it takes 15 points off your left, that's a trade that a lot of people are willing to make.
01:35:28.000If I can do anything to push my right a level up, if it makes me wither away in my left, good trade.
01:35:37.000One of the things that I watched that I thought was really interesting, I've been watching a lot of these rock climbers and their ridiculous grip strength.
01:38:53.000Yeah, 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.
01:39:17.000You want to make it hard for the other person's grip.
01:41:57.000The motions that I'm doing are actually even more dangerous for the sport of arm wrestling.
01:42:02.000Like, if I was to advise, even I do, I talk to Eve like every week.
01:42:07.000I tell Eve, you know, the way he's going to 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.
01:44:20.000Curling isometric, yeah, maximum output, which is really the main strength that arm wrestlers need that locked, isometric, or even negative strength.
01:44:31.000Um, and all his squeezing that's crazy, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's very special.
01:44:43.000So 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.
01:44:52.000Because he's probably at the top of the food chain when this.
01:46:35.000I think that arm wrestlers, Climbers, a lot of athletes, fighters too, they start to recognize the value of the hand.
01:46:43.000You know, a lot of guys, you know, in the communities like strongman, powerlifting, other strength disciplines, they get immense strength through their body and through their shoulders and different parts.
01:46:57.000That by the time it goes through the chain, through the elbow, through the wrist, into the fingers, only a small portion of that is able to get managed.
01:47:26.000I talked to Nick Kerson once, who's a strength and conditioning trainer, and I said, What do you think is the number one thing that fighters lack on?
01:57:15.000Like, strength, you know, Mark Coleman always used to say that strength is a skill.
01:57:20.000And there's something to that, because if you are that strong, there's only so much you could do with that guy's body.
01:57:26.000Especially if he developed actual skills and understanding of leverage, positions, even just the base movement patterns that are really important.
01:59:55.000Like there's something about a squeeze, like learning a position over and over and over again, fine tuning it.
02:00:03.000That's what's interesting about power in general.
02:00:05.000It's like the repetition of movement creates more power.
02:00:09.000And, 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.
02:00:22.000And it's two of us, you know, and it's that interaction.
02:00:25.000It's what you're doing, what I'm doing.
02:00:27.000And 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.
02:00:37.000And somebody's leading the dance and someone's following.
02:04:18.000And everybody's like, yo, Eric, why don't you go and make it legit?
02:04:22.000You know, but these guys exist out there, these guys in their basements or wherever they're living, and they, for whatever reason, they don't show up until they're the best.
02:04:36.000Yeah, and he's an amazing arm wrestler too.
02:04:39.000Same theory though, like it was hard to get him into competition, but I personally know that he's like one of the strongest arm wrestlers, but he doesn't compete.
02:05:29.000I mean, it is a sport in terms of being able to shoot accurately and stuff like that, but you're using an external device, you're using a weapon.
02:06:37.000If I was going to put together the ultimate, we were going to take out, if we were going to go to war against another nation or whatever, yeah, for sure I'm looking at UFC guys.
02:06:49.000For sure I'm looking at football guys.
02:06:51.000Looking at whoever can get the job done.
02:07:46.000But 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, anybody that's not practicing.
02:07:56.000It's the same thing as like a jujitsu guy.
02:07:58.000If you, if you give a jujitsu guy like four or five years on the mat and you get Brian Shaw.
02:08:03.000Or, like, some giant come in, who's going to win?
02:08:32.000It's just, it's also repetition under.
02:08:34.000Understanding the positions, understanding mistakes, understanding, you know, knowing where to be and what to do, how to flow, how to move with someone so you're not just going strength for strength against them.
02:09:25.000You know, I don't want to say it was entirely one thing or another, but it really probably had a lot to do with arm wrestling and the visibility of arm wrestling.
02:09:33.000Like I've been arm wrestling my whole life.
02:11:10.000Like if you don't have a good mission, your life is going to fall to shit.
02:11:15.000And as soon as you start to question any kind of that, And, you know, you play in that realm long enough.
02:11:26.000Most guys start to, at the beginning, I mean, you're just either so patriotic or, you know, just so down to, you know, help your country or whatever or the people around you that you don't really, you're undeterred.
02:11:40.000And I think that probably sometime around that point in my career, maybe I was struggling slightly.
02:11:48.000And that combined with them telling me that I wasn't able to do.
02:11:54.000Something that was like the only thing I did, you know, when I left work was kind of the thing that kind of made me take kind of a stand in my life that I was going to, you know, follow sport instead of war.
02:12:12.000Sports beautiful, sports very clearly building civilization.
02:12:17.000And war, you know, the further you go in it just gets to a level of murk where you're not sure.
02:12:24.000So, 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.
02:12:28.000Be happening, 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.
02:13:43.000So, yeah, so I went from making money and I had and I didn't come we didn't have money, you know 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 a house or like I'm gonna have to do the gamble It worked out Yeah, what was that stress like dude?
02:14:11.000It was so much how old were you at the time?
02:15:57.000And you only in the Canadian forces at that time, now I think you need 25, but 20 years continuous service and you get like a base pension.
02:16:24.000That had to be so fucking nerve wracking.
02:16:26.000It was, I just, you know, I thought it was very selfish of me, you know.
02:16:34.000I thought that I was being very irresponsible.
02:16:37.000I thought, you know, because I really believed in soldiering, I did.
02:16:42.000And, you know, to leave it, you know, made me question very much whether I was doing the right thing with my life.
02:16:50.000And 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 costing my kids, you know, their university education, it's costing my kids, you know.
02:17:07.000But yeah, we believed in it, we went for it, and it's all worked out.
02:19:48.000You know, the military stuff, the tours that I did.
02:19:51.000You know, we did a lot of work in Afghanistan.
02:19:55.000So, you know, the highlight of my career is working in Kandahar, you know, working with the American forces, working with the Indige forces.
02:20:03.000You know, we, JTF does like counterterrorism.
02:20:06.000So we're doing hits, we're doing hits at night, you know, going out and various kinds.
02:22:04.000You know, you're a regular dude with a regular brain and a regular mindset doing this terrifying thing.
02:22:11.000And then, you know, you come back and you, you know, you've seen a lot of shit and you got PTSD.
02:22:16.000You wake up and your heart's going and it's like an injury.
02:22:20.000And you can let an injury kill you or you can heal and develop some kind of resilience to it.
02:22:29.000And I think that I, to some degree, did that by learning how to become a different person.
02:22:38.000People call it a switch, you know, where you like all your values, the person that you are is different.
02:22:45.000You're not the same person when you're out in the field than you are when you're back on base.
02:22:51.000And 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.
02:23:02.000When you say you created a persona, what were the steps?
02:23:10.000One of the things is to really wrap your mind.
02:23:12.000I think the first step is to wrap your mind about the worst possible outcomes with any fear.
02:23:19.000And 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.
02:24:29.000I think that the person that you are is, you know, who you've kind of created for a certain circumstance.
02:24:35.000But the truth 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?
02:24:45.000And it's a different psychology that's going to perform best, you know, in each of those.
02:24:50.000And it's learning that you are not necessarily one thing.
02:24:54.000You are whatever you want to be, you know, and you can change that.
02:25:01.000And 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 you might even look forward to doing it again, you know.
02:25:19.000What's interesting you say, I don't know if a psychologist would tell you to do that.
02:25:22.000I don't think a psychologist would have the ability to understand what that experience even is.
02:25:28.000There's one thing about theory and about books and about learning in school, there's a giant difference between that and application in a real world scenario where you might lose your life and you have to take a life.
02:25:41.000I don't think there's a psychologist in the world that could explain that.
02:25:44.000That's why I'm always very hesitant about even sports psychologists or fight psychologists that teach people how to prepare for fighting.
02:25:54.000You could probably give a fighter some tools, but for you to actually tell them what needs to be done, if you're not doing that, how can you?
02:26:07.000And 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.
02:34:45.000You 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.
02:34:56.000And somehow there's a surviving population of these people still in the world that are undiscovered.
02:35:02.000It's a beautiful part of the world, that region.