PLAN YOUR TRAINING

 

In order to make a training program you must pay attention to the following moments: tasks you define for yourself, your age, constitutional type (anthropometric data), state of health.

You have to develop your training program depending on tasks you define for yourself. Simply put it means that in order to gain power potential you need to include basic exercises with big weights and small number of reps in the beginning of your training. Large number of reps is conducive to endurance development, but will also significantly decrease your power potential. Large number of sparrings may lead to injuries etc. Your subsequent goal is to develop your power factors to be ready for competition without the loss of strength and injuries.

THE NOTION OF A “BEGINNER”

 

For teenagers, I advise to begin armwrestling exercises from 13-14 years. Just in this age muscle fibers react to power load well and quickly recover after long trainings that considerably decreases the risks of injury. People of 18-20 years and older quite often join our sport discipline. In such age it is possible to take maximal loads with the use of plyometric exercises as well as working with optimal weights. The wonderful thing about our kind of sports is that veterans (sportsmen aged 40 and older) quite often come to join us. At the age of extreme youth, arm-wrestler’s biomechanical system develops rapidly. This must be taken into account when planning a training process because recovering processes in organism deaden with age. After the certain age, its involution begins. You can train your hand taking your age into account but, as a rule, it will be difficult to show maximal result in such age. Nevertheless, many professional armwrestlers of such age wrestle on a par with the young ones (John Brzenk, Richard Lupkes, Ron Bath etc.).

We often observe move from the other disciplines or just combination of a training plan with the other kinds of sports. In any case the task of a training diary is to help you to find your way, to create individual plan in order to achieve fast and effective result in armwrestling regardless of age and preliminary qualification when changing from another kinds of sports or seeking to increase professional arm-wrestler’s results.

Thus, we shall divide the notion of a beginner into two common categories:

1. Beginners without experience of power training,
2. Beginners with experience of power training.

And four age categories:

1. 13- 20 years
2. 20-33 years
3. 33-45 years
4. 45 years and older

There are peculiarities of training process for each of categories listed. The reason is that our organism reacts to power load and recovers in different way depending on age (period taken by our organism to fully recover after physical loads).

TRAINING FOR THE BEGINNERS

 

BEFORE you start exercising let us sort out what principles shall the training program in armwrestling follow. Knowing its fundamentals will enable you to create your own exercise sets in the future. We offer you some pre-set exercises for beginners; nevertheless, it is very important to follow the instructions and to do exercises the right way, i.e., to understand how to distribute your exercise plan correctly.

Many beginners often ask similar questions: how to start exercising my arm in a correct fashion? Can I combine these kinds of sports with some different sports? And some other questions that encouraged me to write universal answer for every one of you.

Success in armwrestling as well as in any other kind of wrestling depends on many factors, such as power, speed, endurance, skills and tactics. But in distinction from the other types of martial arts, the priority in armwrestling belongs to strength. Without good power factors, neither skills nor speed can bring the desirable result.

In the last few years, considerable difference in trainings appeared between armwrestling and the other kinds of sports. It is safe to say that our sport is a kind of martial arts and not just pressing the opponent’s hand with your own hand with the use of force as many people think. In distinction from such kinds of sports as judo, wrestling, boxing or the other kinds of martial arts, in armwrestling you must begin with power training which differs dramatically from power training in the other kinds of martial arts. To improve your strength you have to exercise with big weights, not only dynamic and static loads but also plyometric exercises, i.e. heavy-lifting with the eccentric type of muscular activity. The more is the weight you train with, the stronger you will become. But, on the other hand, the more is the load, the more time your muscles need to recover. This must be taken into account when creating training plans. In distinction from bodybuilders who load all muscle groups by turns, arm-wrestlers have exercises dedicated only to their arms and separate body parts (chest, muscles of back, abdominal muscles).

We invite you to learn about basic armwrestling exercises on our special page!