The physical and mental benefits of arm wrestling.
It’s tough, it’s gritty and you can hear the grunts and groans from down the road. To those passing by, you’d think something nefarious is taking place. But follow the grunts through the backyard gate and you’re welcomed to a group of men who spend their evening holding each other’s hands.
In this backyard you’ll find the Canberra Arm Wrestling Club, and they’ve all gathered to train. The club gets together most Friday nights to practise and hone their craft of arm wrestling. They’ll work on techniques and try out different strategies to overcome their opponent. But at these training sessions, something more powerful is taking place.
Everyone there is moving in one direction for the positive.
While the focus at training is to work on arm wrestling techniques, the club is also working on themselves. They’re getting the physical benefits, like working on strength and endurance, but they’re also getting the chance to work on themselves. With an age-old stigma around men, mental health, and “manning up” to deal with it, training sessions like these have never been more important.
In Australia alone, one in eight men will experience depression at least once in their lives. Around 43% of all Australian men feel lonely, which can lead to severe implications including suicide, which seven out of every nine suicides per day in Australia are men.
It’s been proven that participating in physical activity is as beneficial to the mind as much as the body. And through participating in the club’s training sessions, club members are getting the opportunity to pause the world around them for a couple of hours and get it all out.
One of the major benefits of the training sessions is the social factor. When the guys have their hands locked up with each other’s, there’s really no choice but to be social with one another.
Founder of the Canberra Arm Wrestling Club, Hans Tapsell, says arm wrestling training is unlike other strength sports.
“It’s different to a gym, where you go there and you’re doing everything as an individual. You look around and no one’s really chatting and catching up,” he says.
“Where this is different. Everyone’s very humble, there’s no innuendos, it’s all about arm wrestling. Everyone’s about teaching and learning and growing and self-improvement.”
These qualities are reflected in the character of the sport, and they’re very apparent at training. Mr Tapsell says one of the most beautiful things about arm wrestling is how humbling it can be.
“You may be the strongest in the gym, but by no means are you the strongest on the table. You learn very quickly that a small guy can make you feel not as strong as you thought you were.
“If you can take that (ego) away, and remove that need to be aggressively competitive, then it gives you a more productive training environment. That’s something we really try and promote.”
The club currently hosts roughly 20 members, with an average training attendance of around 10-15. While Mr Tapsell encourages newcomers to get involved, he’s aware of the intimidation of the sport; something he tries to disprove.
“There’s a stigma around the kind of people, like you walk into a dark, smoky bar with a bunch of blokes on the table, where it’s quite the opposite.
“I think that’s one of the drawcards. When people do come along, they realise how friendly everyone is, how welcoming it is.”
Because arm wrestling requires at least two participants, it offers up the chance for the participants to get chatting. With the stigma of men bottling up their emotions, opportunities such as being on the arm wrestling table prove to be valuable.
Mr Tapsell says those opportunities, like being on the table, can be one of the first steps to helping one’s mental health challenges.
“You’ve just got someone to talk to. Whether it’s about your problems or not, it doesn’t matter. You’ve just got someone who’s in your life.
“You meet a good group of people who are all moving in one direction, and I think there’s something very powerful about it.”
The sport can be both physically and mentally challenging, with a steep learning curve, as Mr Tapsell describes it.
Despite the first couple of sessions taking its toll both physically and mentally, Mr Tapsell says that through the suffering you can grow to be better.
“With that learning curve comes pain, you’re exerting yourself to a fair amount of stress and when most people get through the first couple of months they suffer.
“But through that suffering you grow. You have the consistency to come back and be better and realise that everyone around is you just a person who didn’t know how to arm wrestle at some point.
“They’ve grown into something, by perception, when you first enter the sport seems superhuman.”
Environments like the one created at the club’s training encourages its members to develop a sense of community, which has become an integral characteristic of the club. Canberra Arm Wrestling Club President, Oscar Curtis, says it’s one of the reasons he gets involved.
“It’s a great social event! You’re just hanging out for most of the time,” he says.
“The community is great; we have pretty regular barbecues and we’ll catch up on the weekends.”
The sense of community at the training sessions is prominent, with members offering tips and tricks to each other as they practise, and everyone showing a genuine interest of being there. Mr Curtis says it’s providing great social connections.
“You get fellow people wanting to do a joint activity with you. Of course, you have to have at least two people to arm wrestle.
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done all week, you come along on Fridays and have a great time.”
For many arm wrestling clubs across Australia, the sense of community is what drives them to continue. Arm wrestling is still a niche sport within Australia, and without community support, clubs would be nothing.
President of the Australian Arm Wrestling Federation, Phil Rasmussen says without recognition from a government level, the sport relies on community support and funding.
“It’s much harder without Australian Sports Commission recognition,” he says.
“If you don’t have funding, you’re in charge of getting sponsors and funding from the community. It restricts the level of events and level of administerial governance you can provide the sport.”
But regardless of Commission recognition or not, Mr Rasmussen says the sense of community that exists in arm wrestling is his favourite aspect of the sport.
“The brotherhoods and sisterhoods that come about from the sport are one of my favourite aspects. I obviously got into this because I like arm wrestling, but I’m still into the sport over a decade later because of the people.
“I still love going to training sessions just to catch up with people I met through the sport that have become great friends, who I otherwise would never have met.”
The sense of community extends further beyond the clubs found in Australia. Mr Rasmussen says globally, community is what drives the wider arm wrestling community.
“What’s great about arm wrestling globally is that anywhere you go in the world, you’ll find an arm wrestling club.
“You can reach out and say, ‘Hey I’m an arm wrestler from Australia’, and they’ll usually put you up. I’m just amazed at how hospitable and welcoming people are globally in the arm wrestling community. You wouldn’t get that from a lot of other sports.”
Breaking the stigma of men suffering from mental health has come a long way. Getting involved in social group settings, such as arm wrestling, is one of the best ways to realise that suffering from mental health doesn’t have to be an individual experience.
Menslink General Manager, Andrew McGowan, says that loneliness is a major problem in modern society.
“Any opportunities in whatever form they take for young boys, men, any gender really, to get together and socialise is going to be a positive thing,” he says.
“Anything that encourages young guys to express themselves physically is beneficial, not only from a health perspective but from an emotional perspective.”
While not every social group activity has to include a physical element, physical activity contains a lot of benefits. Mr McGowan says physical activity that is demanding can be effective to letting negative energy out.
With the Australian Arm Wrestling Federation hosting their 2023 National Titles in Brisbane, the sense of community is bound to be felt by those travelling to compete. With Australia’s best-of-the-best coming together to battle it out, the Canberra Arm Wrestling Club is hoping to make their presence known.
Mr Curtis, along with a couple of the others, is getting primed and ready to compete. He says it’ll be fantastic.
“That’s when you get to see the best of Australia,” he says.
“No matter how strong you feel, there’s always someone who can humble you.”
But until then, you’ll have to follow the grunts through to the backyard.