From 24:00 Toddzilla talks about how he started armwrestling and about his background in armwrestling. He started armwrestling in Michigan with Karen Bean and Frank Bean’s organization AAA – American Armsport Association. He then spent about a year pulling local bars, local armwrestling tournaments all for trophies and such. And after about a year he got his first taste of what a truly national level puller feels like, when he pulled both Bill Ballinger and James Horne in a tournament. Back then his only goal in his life was just to win the Michigan State Championships. James Horne won like 6 classes then and Bill Ballinger won the rest of them, nobody was touching these guys.
Then Todd lost his job, he worked in the automotive industry, and he went to South Carolina for 10 years, and then he started touching the national level pullers and the world level pullers. There was an actual camp that had a dedicated training philosophy, the philosophy that no one else had, it was their own, it was South Carolina style practice and there he learned a lot.
After South Carolina, he spent 5 years in Utah with John Brzenk, Bob Brown and Kevin Bongard and other armwrestlers from Utah. And according to Toddzilla the most amazing thing about Utah is that even in some small tournaments for people who pull once a year, everybody knows who to armwrestle, to toproll, hook, press. Jordan Sill, Justin Green are there in Utah a lot of really good guys are there, just hovering, according to Todd Hutchings it’s easy to get up to the national level capability in about 5 years, but to make that jump up to the world level, that 5-6% takes years to develop and you never know when it’s gonna happen. There are a lot of armwrestlers in Utah ready to do that.
Now he lost his job again, and he is in Arizona (with a new job), John Brzenk came there also and they train at Eric Wolfe‘s house. According to Toddzilla Craig Soubliere has to talk with Eric Wolfe on his Arm Wrestling Nation Radio, because Eric has a garage if anybody ever conceived, thought of, mentioned, drawn or yet to have thought of an armwrestling training contraption machine or device Eric has it. 🙂
From 28:10 Toddzilla talks about his training off the table, because John Brzenk and other armwrestlers are 3,5-4 hours driving away from him in Arizona. His training strategies didn’t really change in his last 14 years. When Shawn Lattimer started armwrestling after his records from powerlifting, Toddzilla connected with him on linkedin, “which is facebook for nerds” – Toddzilla’s words. 🙂
I wrote only about a small part of the show, there are many other interesting topics, please listen to the recorded show below.
Check out this Monday night on AWNR Todd Hutchings action starts at 8pm est.
