Once somewhere in high school, I heard the “proper” way to arm wrestle is for the two opponents to grip dominant hands, as well known AND hold hands (like a permanent hand shake) with the weaker hands. Also, the winner does not have to get their opponent’s hand all the way down (until it touches the table surface); instead, the opponent’s hand has to touch (or rest) upon the unused arm resting on the table surface.
Does anyone know of such rules? Is this official? I’ve never seen this done (whether on a TV sitcom, or such, or in person) except for maybe this one time. Is this European, perhaps?
This describes a generally fair set of rules for arm wrestling. I’ve seen formal arm wrestling competitions where the opponent don’t grip free hands, they grip identical hand grips on a table, but if you don’t have a special table you grasp hands. Either way you those arms will be in the way pushing the opponent’s arm all the way down to the table.
Without the free hand grasp the opponents can grab some part of the table and use their free arm and chest to get an advantage, it’s no longer just a matter of arm strength. Totally isolating the contest to just arm strength is difficult though.
But like all sports, the ‘proper’ is either according to some specific written rule, or it means ‘this is the way we do it in my neighborhood’.
What you are describing is “Wrist Wrestling,” made famous in two places: (a) ABC’s Wide World of Sports covered its World Championships every year, from Petaluma, CA , and (b) the Peanuts comic strip (Charles Schulz is from that area), where Snoopy traveled to one year - one of the few times he tried to go to an event and actually made it (he tried to go to the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, but, “Well, there was this ocean, see…”). Apparently, Petaluma is the only place where organized “wrist wrestling” (as opposed to “arm wrestling”) takes place.
And for those of you wondering how Snoopy did in the event - he was disqualified as the rules say that the competitors grasp each other’s hands around their opponent’s thumb, and Snoopy, like all other dogs, doesn’t have thumbs.