LET'S BE HONEST

Where the gym falls short

Community

AT THE GYM

At most gyms, you train next to people, but rarely with them.

AT THE ARMWRESTLING TABLE

You need a partner to train at all. Within a few weeks you'll know everyone by name.

Earbuds in

AT THE GYM

AirPods in, world out. Nobody's talking and you've heard this music before.

AT THE ARMWRESTLING TABLE

At the table you talk, help each other and laugh together about the term "deep inside" having a sexual undertone.

Repetition

AT THE GYM

Grinding is fun, but the challenge comes from finding out if your training is 99% or 100% optimal.

AT THE ARMWRESTLING TABLE

Toproll, hook, press, starts: you'll never stop learning, and every opponent asks something different of you.

Resistance

AT THE GYM

You're fighting gravity. At best it's a few kgs or reps more than last time.

AT THE ARMWRESTLING TABLE

You're fighting someone who pushes back, thinks and tries to surprise you.

PvP > PvE

For the gamers among us: armwrestling is basically a PvP strength sport instead of PvE. And how cool is that?

HOW IT WORKS

What does a training look like?

  1. 1

    Warm-up

    Getting wrists, elbows and shoulders ready for the real work.

  2. 2

    Two hours of sparring

    The core of every training: pulling against as many different people as possible, from beginners to experienced armwrestlers. Every opponent is different, and that's where you learn the most.

IN BETWEEN

Technique

We pick one technique and practice it together.

Starts

“Ready… Go!” Whoever reacts fastest has often already half won.

Competition

Watch a match or play one yourself in our internal competition. More on this ↓
Sparring during training

INTERNAL COMPETITION

Claim your spot on the leaderboard

Our leaderboard hangs in the gym, with a left-handed and a right-handed ranking. All members are encouraged to participate, but no one is obliged to!

  1. 1 Challenge someone ranked above you.
  2. 2 You plan the match during a training.
  3. 3 Win, you take their spot and they and everyone below shifts down one spot
The Armwrestling Utrecht leaderboard with left and right rankings

The rules in short

Challenge tokens

Everyone gets 4 tokens per calendar year, to split between left and right however you like. For the rest of 2026 you get 2.

Best of five

A challenge is best of five, unless you both agree otherwise.

Declining

Allowed for six months after you last defended your spot. After that, declining makes you unranked. The challenger gets their token back.

WAF rules

We follow the WAF rules as closely as possible. Experienced members referee the matches.

Open weight

There are no weight classes (yet): everyone is on the same ladder per arm.

New?

You start unranked, at the bottom of the ladder. You can join after a safety approval from Hein.

The rankings are there to motivate progress and create fun competition, not to decide anyone’s worth within the club. In armwrestling, everyone is both a teacher and a student.

Full rulebook (PDF)