#2510 - Devon Larratt

What It Covers

Joe Rogan speaks with 51-year-old professional arm wrestler Devon Larratt — widely considered among the greatest of all time — covering his 32-year competitive career, specialized training philosophy, the biomechanics and technique of elite arm wrestling, genetic freaks in strength sports, the sport's growing global infrastructure, and his ongoing pursuit of superheavyweight champion Levan Saginashvili, who outweighs him by roughly 135 pounds.

Key Questions Answered

• •High-rep blood flow training over heavy lifting: Larratt structures his non-competition days around 100-repetition sets at minimal weight — roughly 20 pounds — performed throughout the day across 21 working sets. The goal is not muscular fatigue but circulatory stimulation through connective tissue. He argues this approach heals tendons and ligaments faster than heavy lifting, which depletes recovery resources needed for sport-specific table work. After decades of experimenting with heavy systems, he credits this method for competing at world-title level at age 51.
• •Sport-specific table work as the training priority: Larratt trains on an arm wrestling table with a cable pulley system twice weekly at maximum intensity, treating these sessions as the irreplaceable core of his preparation. Any supplemental training — gym lifts, cross-training — is evaluated solely on whether it detracts from table performance. When a single training session with Jujimufu revealed that prior heavy lifting slightly dulled his table output, Larratt eliminated heavy weights entirely. The principle: protect the highest-value training at all costs.
• •Pumpkin specialization — right arm only: Larratt dedicates 85–90% of his training volume to his right arm, doing virtually nothing with the left. He draws the analogy from giant pumpkin cultivation, where growers pinch off all but one flower to concentrate all plant energy into a single fruit. His theory holds that the body has finite adaptive resources, and splitting them equally between both arms dilutes development. His right arm has grown visibly larger than his left as a result of years applying this method.
• •Technical arm wrestling: attack the grip, not the pin: The opening strategic move in elite arm wrestling is called "rising" — an upward, spinning motion designed to shift hand contact from palm-to-palm to fingertip pressure on the opponent. Once an opponent is forced to grip through their fingertips rather than a full palm lock, their mechanical efficiency drops significantly. Larratt frames the sport not as a pinning contest but as a grip-disruption game, where making the opponent hold onto you is the first step toward technical dominance.
• •Chaos-to-order periodization using sticker charts: Larratt structures his training calendar in blocks between major events. After each competition, he enters a deliberate "chaos" phase — no fixed plan, open experimentation, lifestyle flexibility — to gather data and form a new approach. He then locks into a strict "order" phase as the event approaches. He tracks compliance using a two-color sticker chart: blue for chaos days, white for order days. This psychological framework makes extreme discipline sustainable by giving chaos a defined, bounded role.
• •Weaponized arthritis and elbow degeneration as a sport cost: Larratt has had three surgeries to remove bone chips and scar tissue from both elbows, which no longer fully extend. Rather than treating this as a liability, he reframes the reduced range of motion as a mechanical advantage in certain arm bar positions, where his ligament resistance activates earlier than in opponents with full extension. He describes this as "weaponized arthritis." The underlying cause is osteophyte growth from chronic joint pressure — a condition that affects some arm wrestlers but not all, influenced by style and genetics.
• •Arterial blood flow as the driver of extreme muscular asymmetry: Larratt theorizes that arm wrestlers like Oleg Zhokut and Matthias Schlitte — who have one arm dramatically larger than the other — develop this asymmetry not purely from training volume but from an uneven arterial distribution that concentrates blood flow to one limb. He extends this into his own training logic: sustained movement through a specific limb over years reshapes circulatory adaptation, increasing nutrient delivery and accelerating tissue development beyond what cellular training stimulus alone explains. He considers blood flow the primary expression mechanism for genetic potential.