This Breakdown Is Going To Tell You What Muscles Are Utilized During A Match At The Table
When it comes to armwrestling, the main components and secret sauce of what you need to train comes in the name itself with very little exception.
Armwrestling Muscle Breakdown With Diagrams
Your hands, forearms, biceps, and back muscles will be pushed to their limits when training for armwrestling.
Primary muscles utilized in armwrestling are in red boxes for each group!
Hands:
- Flexor Digitorum Superficialis: Flexes the fingers to grip your opponent.
- Flexor Pollicis Longus: Flexes the thumb, crucial for maintaining grip.
Forearms:
- Brachioradialis: Assists in elbow flexion and stabilizes the forearm.
- Extensor Carpi Radialis Longus: Extends and abducts the wrist, aiding in wrist stabilization.
Biceps:
- Biceps Brachii: Flexes the elbow and supinates the forearm, providing the main pulling force.
- Brachialis: Lies underneath the biceps and provides additional pulling strength.
Back Muscles:
- Latissimus Dorsi: Extends, adducts, and rotates the arm, contributing to pulling strength.
- Trapezius: Stabilizes and moves the shoulder blades, essential for arm positioning and leverage.
Training Your Hands For Armwrestling
You will consistently see any athlete who employs grip strength for their sport with a pair of grippers, or better yet, flexing and contracting their hands in tubs of rice like they are making dough.
Your hands are the beginning of the kinetic chain for the pull movement and back pressure in armwrestling. Therefore, you need the tendons and small muscles within those hands to be strung together like battle ropes.
Flexor Muscles, AKA Needing The Strength Of Your Forearms
The flexors are the group of muscles you can see bulging in your forearms when you clench your hands and flex your fist upward or downward. These muscles are critical for grip strength and work in tandem with your hands and wrist strength to keep your hand pulled in towards you.
A ton of hammer curls and wrist flexion movements will strengthen your forearms – farmer carries with dumbbells wrapped in towels is also an exceptional DIY method for training this muscle group. There is also a muscle in the forearms that leads up to the biceps that helps the two work together: the brachioradialis. This muscle is a great segway into our next muscle group.
Biceps All Day For Armwrestling
This is what draws many new and amateur armwrestlers to the sport: The ability to make everyday arm day with all the critical bicep movements for armwrestling.
A seasoned armwrestler must work bicep supination, bicep pronation, and neutral bicep movements to build an arm like Popeye. All these special words for bicep movement mean different positions of the wrist and palms while moving the arm into a curling motion.
The Unnoticed Muscle: Your Arm Wrestling Back
If your hands, wrists, forearms, and biceps are the chain, your back is the anchor of the ship that sails the sea of armwrestling champions. A strong back allows you to sink deep and pull hard against your opponent’s arm. This will ultimately win you the match. Your back, if armwrestling correctly, can be worked, and should be worked, quite effectively by armwrestling.
It’s Time To Get To Training
Now that you know all the muscles involved in armwrestling, it’s time for you to head over to our training archives and technique archives to develop a regimen for yourself. These two segments of Grip Gladiators will remain as the library for many posts that can assist you with crafting a personalized routine that will make you a master of the table.
If you don’t have massive arms by the end of your armwrestling hobby or career, you are doing something wrong!