Question: It seems to me that the east and west have different schools of thought regarding training. In the east the AWers lift a lot of heavy weights on all sorts of curls (and some quite brilliant equipment produced by mr. Igor Mazurenko), but the westerns value table time a lot more, using weights for the most part to recovery and regenerate. I'm not saying that easterns don't train on the table with a partner or westerns don't train with heavy weights, but the cultural difference seems clear to me. Why? Whats your opinion on the methodology? Thanks.

I agree that eastern armwrestlers are more focused on being strong than it’s technical necessity even though they are technical pullers as well. We have a saying here that strength over comes technique, it is usually true. When you reach to certain technical level then strength plays more important role. It is easier to beat someone who does not know much about armwrestling but is strong, with technical ability (even that is not always possible) but once you are pulling at the World level then you find most of the armwrestlers there with high technical ability. Of course some has higher quality than the others but usually not enough to create miracles with technique alone.

In fact the basic trainings of armwrestling have been invented by the American pullers as we easterns learn the basic trainings from the Americans but as of now eastern armwrestlers are ahead of Americans about armwrestling trainings with the weights & rubber bands. In my opinion if we judge it by general then Eastern Pullers are harder trainers than the western Pullers. That is just my opinion. It may be a cultural thing or a result of the difference in difficulties of the life standards. Once you are not so much concentrated on weights then you concentrate on table time and there you are technically improving. But in eastern armwrestling world the lifting for armwrestling progressed so much that their lifting is not anymore anything like simple body building but good enough to improve someone even in technical way. To be able to use a technique effectively you need to be strong. At the table time you train only as good as your training partner is and he trains you only with the muscle groups that he uses. I believe that a high level weight lifting & rubber band pulling program is necessary to become stronger in armwrestling. Not everyone has the capability of creating the synergy by the table time. These people need to learn how to train their necessary muscle groups for armwrestling with weight lifting & rubber bands and more they develop more they will be able to use them at the table. And with time they will start to coordinate their separately trained muscle groups. Pure horse power is necessity in modern armwrestling. About ten years ago Americans considered as technically high while Eastern pullers were considered as powerful but today Americans also becoming very strong and Easterns are becoming very technical and i call this evolution of the Armsport.