u/DWu1815

John, Devon (first peak), Voyevoda, Bresnan, Travis, Taras, Arsen, Krasi, Cleve, Lupkes, Bath, Trubin, Babayev, Farid

Bonus: could any of their peak shapes have cracked the top ten today?

Several years ago like half of the top SHWs are North American. Now it's still just them, and some of them are getting old and past their prime, like Jerry and Dave. Meanwhile there's not a single young top SHW from NA.

I say this as a long-time fan of Brian as a strongman (I started following pro strongman way before I got into armwrestling). I've watched a lot of practice pulls and interviews/podcasts/etc from both, and Devon genuinely doesn't give a fuck about his image and always seems super genuine, which seems very rare among elite athletes. Brian is quite the opposite: very self-conscious, and hides a lot of not-so-nice traits behind his trademark niceness and humility, which has always been kinda easy to see through. Makes it really easy to like Devon and hard to continue being a fan of Brian.

Who you got?

I'm a pretty decent toproller with fairly strong backpressure, pronation, and rise. I train in the gym, go to the club, and have competed a tiny bit. As my level gets higher and higher, one thing becomes more and more clear: this sport at its core is still a "sideways" sport, and even if you have strong hand and backpressure and rely primarily on outside moves, you still need really solid side pressure and shoulder + humerus + elbow conditioning to become competitive at a reasonably high level, e.g. to pin, to defend against a flop, etc.. And to build these things up, a lot of patience is required, and that annoying inner elbow pain doesn't just disappear after the first months/year. The human body isn't really designed to exert too much force through internal shoulder rotation, and it really takes years or even a decade for the body to become fully conditioned.

I've personally experienced the importance of the riser in a toproll many times, and the same goes with having a longer forearm + hand. But I trying to fully understand it on a theoretical/mechanical level. My questions are:

1. Say my opponent and I are trying to toproll each other, and he outrises me, and my hand is now lower than his. Of course he now has access to my cup. But don't I still also have access to his cup by toprolling up instead of back?

2. Say my opponent and I are trying to toproll each other, and he has a much longer forearm + hand than me. It would seem that while he has access to my cup by toprolling up, I also have access to his cup by toprolling back. So what advantage does he have exactly by having a much longer forearm + hand?

Not sure if relevant to answering my question but I'm a fairly tall outside puller with a pretty long distance from elbow to fingertip.

My question is this: as part of my cup training I've been using a thick, strapless wrist wrench. It feels a bit awkward to use, I can't use too much weight with it, and it seems hard to progressive-overload with it. Should I switch to a wrist wrench that's both thinner and has a strap on it (one where you run your hand through the strap to use)?

It seems like unlike with RH, things are a bit unclear outside the top 3. Or maybe I'm just not knowledgeable enough.