Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Devon Larratt: "Arm Wrestling Is My Life" | E64

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Devon Larratt: "Arm Wrestling Is My Life" | E64 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Randall Kaplan: Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player in history.
• 0:02
  Randall Kaplan: And he said that one of the things that made him the best that made him a champion was the confidence he has. Or he had while he was playing, how important is confidence and endurance in arm wrestling? And how important are they in life to be successful?
• 0:22
  Devon Larratt: You know, people talk about confidence, like, it's like a separate quality.
• 0:24
  Devon Larratt: And I have just never, I think that somewhere deep inside you, you're confident. But that's never enough. It's, it's really, I mean, to say someone's confident, the funniest thing I find is people who are confident, and then don't respect people. These are the funny people, it's great to be confident. But what is probably going to make you win is respect. You need, there's no way to get around homework. When you talk about who's the confident person on game day, who's the confident person when the test is being presented, the person did the most homework, you know, you can, you can have all the confidence in the world.
• 1:17
  Devon Larratt: But if you didn't actually apply yourself and do the work, that confidence is gonna get broken very quickly. So for me, the key to my confidence was always knowing that I put in more work than the other person I have been obsessed my entire life with, with strength. And I feel great guilt, when I don't stay on the path. I know when I show up in events, that I've done more work than my opponents, I've done more, I've, I've spent more of my life, have sacrificed more time, I've sacrificed more parts, than they have to be left standing at the end. It's very rare, that confidence alone wins, it's confidence. And then you have to have the respect in your opponents to actually do the work.
• 2:21
  Randall Kaplan: So one of the things that's made me successful in my career has been something I call extreme preparation, which means when someone's preparing one hour or two hours for meeting, or job interview or sales presentation, there are times where we've done I've done 40 to 80 hours, you talk about some specific examples of extreme preparation that you've done, and also talk about isn't all physical and strength training, and how much of it is actually mental training.
• 2:52
  Devon Larratt: I think that a lot of what it takes to be great is hiding away pieces of your life that are not important to you a simplification, and the purity, where you are spending as much of your time concentrated on the most precise bandwidth that's related to your success. Possible. I think that this is this is something that I certainly do. So I think one of the best ways I can explain it to you is in the later part of my career. So I was considered the number one arm wrestler in the world in the open weight division when I was around 33.
• 3:43
  Devon Larratt: That's like 15 years ago. Okay.
• 3:43
  Devon Larratt: And I think that that's around the time that most combative athletes kind of hit their peak between the in their early 30s.
• 3:52
  Devon Larratt: Because, you know, your injuries are still mostly manageable, you've got a lot of technique, you're young and healthy and, and a lot of things have started to fade. armwrestling is really good that you can really push that if you hold on to the love.
• 4:10
  Devon Larratt: But there's a lot of things you have to learn if you're going to hold on. One of the concessions that I made was as you age, you start to run out of physical energy, a little bit more like your ability to recover, your ability to heal become somewhat diminished. And it was my theory that I just wanted to physically express myself on the RMS and table at the highest level for as long as I could. And I actually for the last four years, I have completely focused on my right hand. So actually only train In my right hand, I don't even train my left anymore. I still practice with it. I still have fun with it.
• 5:04
  Devon Larratt: But my right hand has done all the homework for four years.
• 5:09
  Devon Larratt: I've tried to put all my energy, all my extra blood flow into this side. Because I know it's limited. I know that you can only do so much. But I'll tell you, every day, this is what I do. I practice every day, I wake up, I train, I train throughout the day, I go to practice before I go to sleep, I will practice armwrestling is my life really like? It's an experiment that I'm completely fascinated by?
• 5:51
  Devon Larratt: Yeah, it's I find it, I find it very interesting. I think you have to fall in love, I think you have to become obsessed, I think you have to give yourself permission to let the activity that you love kill you, I think you have to let it take over your life to a certain degree.
• 6:10
  Devon Larratt: To reach the highest levels, I think you have to make a lot of sacrifices, I think you have to let a lot of things fall, I think you have to let a lot of things fail. If you want to really simplify and purify.
• 6:26
  Randall Kaplan: Can you give us a sense of what your training regimen actually is on a day by day basis, what you do to prepare strength wise for a match.
• 6:38
  Devon Larratt: Say my training really falls into probably three categories. Probably the most important one is the actual practice on the table. This is probably the most fun, and the actual best, most specific thing that I can do. So what I'll do is I will train with with other guys. So I'll go to different clubs. Almost every day, I'll travel different parts of the world, I'll train with people all around the world of spend time on an armrest and table.
• 7:11
  Devon Larratt: Whatever you do, you get better at. So I never go far away from the table, this is probably the most important thing that I do.
• 7:19
  Devon Larratt: And I believe that it's the only thing I would really have to do to ensure myself to always move forward. So the most important one, to do the thing that you actually want to get better at.
• 7:31
  Devon Larratt: I that's not enough for me. I do I do other things I do to other things. So. So I try and break new ground. Okay, so I try and move forward. So the and I try to keep things very, very simple. I don't try and do a lot of things. I used to like if I went back like 20 years ago in my career, I wouldn't be doing hundreds of exercises, okay, different exercise, I would break an arm wrestling match down and I would be working every motion every movement that I could think of in a match to try and improve those areas. I now and become extremely simple.
• 8:18
  Devon Larratt: And I understand that there are parts of the game that are much more important than others. And if you win these key pieces, then it becomes extremely difficult for the other person to beat you. So I spent a lot of time pushing forward in probably two to four components. Okay, this is what I spend all my time kind of breaking new ground when I mean breaking new ground. I break new ground in strength and in power. Because these are the most important components in the fight strength and power in an arm wrestling match. People talk about endurance. Endurance is great. When the match close, it can come down to endurance. But if you ever asked me Devin, what do you want? strength power in these specific areas. Rising Rowling I spent so much time, everything after that depends on kind of the flavor of the day.
• 9:17
  Devon Larratt: The last little bit I'm working my grip, I'm working my inside game just a tiny little bit. And when I say moving forward, this is me understanding that there's a little bit of damage I'm doing to my body that I'm allowing myself to heal from. The third thing I do is I do rehab I do a lot of rehab. I do blood flow.
• 9:37
  Devon Larratt: And this is to make sure that I stay healthy, stay functional heal myself. I would not say it's really moving me forward.
• 9:45
  Devon Larratt: It is in a certain way. But not so clearly as the second option.
• 9:50
  Devon Larratt: Rehab is something it's basically you're just greasing your ligaments greasing your tendons, pushing blood through You're through tissues to enhance the healing and the metabolism and keeping the health up. So that's it, and then I do and then I'll kind of stay current. Okay, and that's just me kind of keeping my eye on the armrests and seeing and knowing what's going on. But yeah, those three things arm wrestle, develop my strength and power in certain key motions, and then rehab.
• 10:24
  Randall Kaplan: So I've already talked about some of the elements of success, we talked about a simple mindset. We talked about commitment, we talked about work ethic and preparation, how important is passion to our success, both in what you're doing in your sport, and in our lives itself.
• 10:39
  Devon Larratt: I think passion is probably the most important thing, it's probably the most important thing that is going to get you anywhere. If you do not love something, I highly suggest that you don't pursue it. It's not worth it. And when it gets tough, you're not going to want to do it. When you love something, you will come back to it over and over and over.
• 11:09
  Devon Larratt: Whether you want to or not, it won't matter, you'll be drawn to it very strongly. It won't seem like work to you. He won't go to bed and be like, Okay, well what are you going to do tomorrow, okay, I have to do this at No, you'll you'll you'll want to do it, you will be extremely motivated to do it motivation.
• 11:31
  Devon Larratt: If you are not passionate, if you are passionate about something, motivation will never be a problem. You will, you will not be deterred. If you're if you're doing the things that you love. It will continue to grow in you you will become more efficient, you will become more effective, you will continue to pursue your goal. And passion is probably discovering your passion is probably one of the most important things you can do. As a child, as a young person, you know, figuring out what it is that makes you feel alive, figuring out what it is that makes you feel at peace.
• 12:08
  Devon Larratt: These are the things that you really need to do to know yourself. So you can enter a field where you can you can make your life very easy. The word work should not be in your vocabulary, you it should be all play, even the things that are hard and monotonous. The rehab that I do for hours every day, most people would probably hate.
• 12:38
  Devon Larratt: But I really like it because I enjoy mastery of my body. I enjoy the way it feels I enjoy the process because I know it leads to victory on the RMS and table. Passion is it's very important.
• 12:56
  Randall Kaplan: Let's go to 2018 and the most anticipated armwrestling match in history between you and Dennis hyperlink cough. You lost six nothing what happened there? And how did you bounce back from that? Huge loss?
• 13:11
  Devon Larratt: Dennis is such an incredible human being is one of my very favorite people on the planet. Dennis the plank. You have learned a lot from Dennis.
• 13:23
  Devon Larratt: He is one of our greatest champions in the sport armwrestling Yeah, I mean, I don't want to make any excuses.
• 13:34
  Devon Larratt: I was defeated by an incredible arm wrestler that day. There's a good chance that Dennis and I get to arm wrestle again soon.
• 13:43
  Devon Larratt: It'll be on the right hand. It's it's really great. When you have these people to focus on and continue to draw inspiration.
• 13:56
  Devon Larratt: Continue to keep you humble.
• 14:03
  Devon Larratt: Continue to show you that there is a higher ceiling. Dennis is Dennis? Yeah, he's an inspirational athletes and inspirational fighter. Guy is so strong, it's insane. It's insane how strong he is. Like, I don't know if you ever played Dungeons and Dragons. You know, most of us when we're, you know, if you're the human class, you roll the dice you have three dice six. And if you're lucky, you roll on 18 And then if you're a fighter class, you get to roll the die for the 100 you know slash and you know every once in a while there's some legendary dude was a 19 strength that is a plank off is like God like he's not in the realm of humans.
• 14:48
  Devon Larratt: There's a few people like going you think like there's 7 billion people on the planet. I mean, when you look at these complete outliers, which I don't Think I'm really one of like, I think that what makes me special is just how crazy I am by the sport. I'm probably the, when you talk about like, where I am in the spectrum of crazy in the sport armwrestling I'm probably way, way way out there. But that is not to say he's not crazy about the sport, but Dennis is strength is it's just so freaky.
• 15:18
  Devon Larratt: It's so free. He like his hands, his skeleton. It's probably like a normal male, like a normal male. He's probably four times the the skeleton weighed, like, his bones alone. Like he's a complete complete caveman. Like, he's so strong. It's incredible.
• 15:47
  Randall Kaplan: When you're sitting there, and you're walking up to the table, and there's people watching you, or you're on ESPN, which does happen at times, can we get anxious before the fight or have anxiety or think, Gosh, what happens if I lose?
• 16:00
  Devon Larratt: I've been doing this a long time. You know, I like to know that, really, nothing matters. Really, HIV really doesn't matter. I mean, there's far more serious things in an arm wrestling match, and even they don't really matter.
• 16:19
  Devon Larratt: So really, it's just about me, and me having a good time. And that's what I kind of come back to, I come back to the fact that I've been doing this since I was a kid. And I'm here because I love to fight. And it's it's that simple. And, quite honestly as difficult as it is, I do cherish my losses, I really do.
• 16:49
  Devon Larratt: I never seek a loss. I even the times when I willingly accept the fight when I know I'm the underdog. I never seek the loss, I do everything I can to avoid it. But when it happens, I, I cherish it, I really I'm happy for my loss, you do learn more when you lose, like winning is so great. You know, I love to win, it feels so good. And you know, everybody's happy. It's when it's very simple. But you know, I think that so much strength comes from comes from failure comes from feelings of inadequacy comes from feelings of being not worthy feelings of feelings of failure. So, when you get those given to you, really in terms of if you had if you had a year or six months till your next match, would you rather come off a win or come off a loss, you know, you probably want to come off of a loss, losses, losses will make you stronger, depending on who you are. If you are obsessed and in love and you're never gonna let go, then losses are great for you. If you are kind of on the fence not sure. And doing it for maybe if you're doing it for money, or if you're doing it for you know some reason that's not as pure, then maybe a loss isn't good for you, but the people who are there just to fight and just just who are there, like very pure losses are great for those people.
• 19:29
  Randall Kaplan: Haven't you said that? Wrestling is like poker is lifelike poker as well. And what have you meant by that?
• 19:38
  Devon Larratt: Well, you have your cards, you can you can bluff. You can you can play depends on what the opponent has. I don't know that. It's that much like poker to tell you the truth. Because there's, there's not a lot you can do with the poker hand. I mean, it's getting played regardless.
• 20:01
  Devon Larratt: I mean, the I'm not a big poker player. And I understand that there's a lot of randomness, randomness. I think that in armwrestling, it's very much about just self betterment, and, you know, a growth of a growth of of self. Life. You will learn a ton from the sport, I find that there's mirrors all over the place things you learn about armwrestling they're all through your life as well.
• 20:33
  Randall Kaplan: Why is your motto? No Limits.
• 20:37
  Devon Larratt: Well, that's a nickname that was given to me. I never chose it. I think that I think that people gave me that name because most of the times it's the match stop. I win. I can normally go farther, I can normally go longer.
• 21:07
  Devon Larratt: Endurance for most of my career has been my gift. Endurance for most of my career has been the component where I've never fallen short.
• 21:19
  Randall Kaplan: How on earth do arm wrestlers make a living?
• 21:23
  Randall Kaplan: When we talk about the average prize money for some tournaments is 80,000. That article classic, I think is the highest of$300,000. You've got payouts going to the first prize for 12,500. And for women, it's$4,000. And you start going down there, if you finish, kind of at the bottom of the pack are talking top eight, you're making$500 per tournament, which means you're going there you're spending expense, you're probably losing money. You have a very large YouTube channel, you've got 712,000 subscribers, you've had Twitter and 6 million views on your videos. That's how you're making money. I'm guessing but how's everyone else making money and putting food on the table doing this?
• 22:09
  Devon Larratt: You know, arm wrestlers get compensation through different ways through prize money, through affiliation with companies with sponsorship YouTube, depending on the country that they live in their government sponsored. That's why I'd say most professional arm wrestlers are from government sponsored countries. That's why in North America, it's more rare. If you go to Georgia, if you go to Kazakhstan, you know, countries like that, where they recognize the sport, yes, it's much easier to be a professional arm. So because of that government protection.
• 22:49
  Randall Kaplan: We've had a bunch of challenges in your life as well. You had deep vein thrombosis and had a blood clot in your leg and in your lungs.
• 22:54
  Randall Kaplan: How do you bounce back from that? And what's your advice to others who are sitting here listening to this wondering, I'm sick, I have cancer, I have blood clot, I have a stroke?
• 23:03
  Randall Kaplan: What advice do you have for them?
• 23:07
  Devon Larratt: A lot of times, you're sick. But you're not dead. You know, there's something you can do. I think that so much of the key to life is very simple. It's movement, and breathing. So often when we've become hurt or sick, the instinct is to lay there, lay there and rest. But I think so often, it's the exact opposite of what we should do. I think the faster we can return to the activities that we love, the more health will be back in us.
• 23:52
  Devon Larratt: If you if you can't run, but you can walk and walk if you can't jump, but you can hop and hop, you know, you have to start again you have to you have to do what you can do. When I had deep vein thrombosis, I got very sick. Probably almost died. But you know, I just I started walking every day. Further further, until I cleared I was lucky. I was lucky. You know simple things. Stay hydrated, walk, breathe. And count your blessings, because it will be over.
• 24:38
  Randall Kaplan: assigned by your awesome wife, Jody, you met her in high school. She herself is the former number one arm wrestler in the world. Talk about your love and could you have been as successful as you are without her?
• 24:50
  Devon Larratt: Jodi has been incredible. Jodi has been such a support for me. It's just it's very interesting when you've been together for so long. You know, when talking about Jodi, we have we have three kids together. Our lives are completely basically one thing.
• 25:12
  Devon Larratt: You know, when you make a life with someone else. The bonds become so deep that when you love each other, it's a form of love for yourself. And when you fight with each other, it's a form of fighting with yourself.
• 25:38
  Devon Larratt: Long relationships become deeper and deeper and deeper until I think that it's they become difficult to recognize as whether they're another person or their you becomes very, very intertwined. Jody and I almost one person
• 26:04
  Randall Kaplan: I want to ask you about one more fight king of the table to you versus John Brzenk. If I pronounced his name correctly, where you are fighting with your right hand what happened there? And it's considered one of the greatest fights in armwrestling history.
• 26:23
  Devon Larratt: Yeah, I don't know if that would be considered one of the greatest fights in our wrestling history. But genres Inc. and I faced off again. And yeah, I guess it was 2020. The one Yeah, 2021 genre.
• 26:35
  Devon Larratt: Zinc is recognized as the greatest armrest of all time.
• 26:44
  Devon Larratt: Okay, this guy, he's actually the guy who won the over the top tournament. He's actually the guy who, who plays first. He's the guy who won the truck. He's actually like, what they made the movie Sly Stallone, he's sly. He's Lincoln hawk. And he's had an extremely long career. So basically 40 years of dominance at the very highest level of the of the world of armwrestling. I actually beat John in 2008. Take the world title from him. And yeah, we face each other a couple of times, most recently, at Kingdom the table to he came back from a little bit of a retirement. And he wanted to face me. John is he's kind of like a father to the sport. Like all of us now who are kind of at the top of the game. And all the young guys coming up, every one of the sport knows who genres NK is. John is. He is like, the OG.
• 27:49
  Devon Larratt: He's like, the guy that everyone looks to. He's, he's the gold standard. You know, we have current champions, and the sport has certainly gone quite far.
• 28:11
  Devon Larratt: You know, like the sport now, compared to what it was, you know, 1020 30 years ago is almost unrecognizable. But yeah, John Brisbanes contributions are unmatched. His his hive of dominance will probably never be replicated. So for me anytime I get the face, John, it's a big honor. So, yeah. Love that guy.
• 28:40
  Randall Kaplan: He beat him for nothing.
• 28:43
  Devon Larratt: Yeah, I did.
• 28:43
  Devon Larratt: Yeah. Yeah. So So with John. I'm basically John Stewart, like we all are. And the thing is, is I look at so many of the young guys coming up now, and what they can do in the sport. And the thing is, you should be happy. When you see the sport growing and moving forward from from what you were able to give it. John gave birth to the modern professional RMS and seen through his fame and achievements. You know, everybody, everybody looked at John, for like 30 or 40 years.
• 29:21
  Devon Larratt: So, yeah, always an honor to face that guy.
• 29:30
  Randall Kaplan: Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open ended questions. I call this part of my podcasts, fill in the blank to excellence are ready to play.
• 29:40
  Randall Kaplan: Let's do it. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is
• 29:47
  Devon Larratt: luck because the biggest lesson I've learned, well, maybe that we are extremely mortal, and this probably all doesn't matter.
• 29:58
  Randall Kaplan: My number one professional goal is
• 30:08
  Devon Larratt: my number one professional goal is to be remembered.
• 30:14
  Randall Kaplan: My biggest regret in life is
• 30:18
  Devon Larratt: a lack of bravery is never acceptable.
• 30:22
  Randall Kaplan: And one thing I've dreamt of doing for a long time but haven't done is
• 30:34
  Devon Larratt: basically giving away everything and be like a leaf in the autumn wind and just traveling and fighting. That's it.
• 30:47
  Randall Kaplan: If you could go back and give one piece of advice, what would you give to your 21 your old self.
• 30:54
  Devon Larratt: Don't hurt yourself.
• 30:56
  Randall Kaplan: If you could be one person in the world who would it be?
• 31:00
  Devon Larratt: I'm quite happy.
• 31:00
  Devon Larratt: I'm quite happy. I wouldn't know somebody else. I think I'm good.
• 31:03
  Devon Larratt: I think I'm good.
• 31:08
  Randall Kaplan: The when question you wish I'd asked you is,
• 31:12
  Devon Larratt: can I come up and train with the auto Hilgers?
• 31:14
  Devon Larratt: Yes. Yes, Randall. You can.
• 31:19
  Randall Kaplan: I love it.
• 31:19
  Randall Kaplan: Devin. This has been an awesome interview and awesome podcast.
• 31:22
  Randall Kaplan: You've really enlightened me to the world of armwrestling and so many other people's so much fun being able to watch your shows and the videos before we got here. I encourage everybody else all the viewers and listeners to do the same. The very cool sport. Devin, you've been an inspiration. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you being here.
• 31:42
  Devon Larratt: Thanks so much, Randall. It's great to meet you.