On Joe Rogan Experience #2510, arm wrestling competitor Devon Larratt spoke about the toll decades of competition have taken on his body, especially his elbows, which no longer fully straighten.
“No, they don’t. Unfortunately, that didn’t work,” he said, confirming Rogan’s observation.
He traced the issue back to his early days in the sport and a mentor he once looked up to.
“I got into club arm wrestling around like 18. By the time I was 20 or so, we have this champion called Crazy George. He famously, at the time for me, couldn’t straighten his elbows. And I was like, ‘Oh man, I can’t wait till my elbows don’t straighten.’ Like a silly wish, right? So it started early. I think I was probably like in my late 20s and it just, the range started to shrink,” he said.
When asked about the cause, Larratt pointed to the long-term stress placed on the joint.
“It’s just pressure mostly. Just the constant pressure on the elbow joint causes, you know, osteophytes potentially. And it doesn’t happen to all the arm wrestlers,” he said.
The damage eventually required medical intervention. “I’ve had three surgeries to remove bone and scar tissue. Dr. Pollock, bless his soul, at the Ottawa Hospital has extended my career till this age,” he said.
He described how serious the condition can become in the sport.
“That’s probably one of the worst chronic conditions that arm wrestlers get. If the bone growth gets bad enough, it can start to constrict your nerves or blood flow, and that’s when it becomes a problem,” he said.
He added that he had personally experienced this. “100%. It was like 2013, so like 13 years ago, is when I had my first surgery. I’ve had two surgeries on the right, one on the left.”
Not everyone in the sport develops the same issue, he noted.
“It’s a style thing. It’s a genetic predisposition. I rolled the dice wrong one day and had a bad match. It’s the pressure, it’s the bones over time, and then it’s if you’re a dummy and you keep on doing it when you should probably rest. And I’m guilty, you know,” he said.
Despite the damage, Larratt reframed the limitation as part of his competitive identity.
“It doesn’t affect me in the sport. I actually call it weaponized arthritis. There are ways you can kind of make your loss of range work for you at times. If you’re doing an arm bar, your body resists with the ligaments and the tendons. So that starts higher for me. And I think that there’s a muscular strength component that kicks in as well right at the end of the range to protect you. So I just have a higher arm bar,” he said.
Over time, the degeneration has become severe. “I’ve been bone on bone for probably two decades. All the cartilage is gone. Nothing. So when I went and got my surgery, the doctor told me there’s nothing there but bone. He said, ‘Devon, maybe we can give you another couple years on your career. Maybe.’”
That warning came roughly 15 years ago, yet Larratt, now 51, is still competing at the highest level.
He also spoke about the long-term connective tissue demands of arm wrestling.
“The tendons and the tendinous structures of the elbow are super taxed in arm wrestling. The process of rehabilitation and development of these structures under great duress and trauma is difficult and it requires a lot of time and monotony, which a lot of people aren’t willing to put in,” he said.
Despite everything, his outlook has remained unchanged. “In my mind, it’s a small price to pay. I’m as all in in arm wrestling as you can possibly be. And this is our cost of admission for some of us,” he said.
