Arm wrestling has a vocabulary all its own. Whether you're watching your first supermatch or stepping up to a table, this glossary explains the terms you'll hear most often, grouped by topic.
Equipment and the table
- Regulation table — the standing arm wrestling table, fitted with elbow pads, pin pads, and pegs, that defines the modern sport.
- Elbow pad — the padded square each competitor must keep their elbow on during a match. Lifting or sliding the elbow off it is a foul.
- Pin pad (touch pad) — the pad on each side of the table that a competitor is trying to drive their opponent's hand down to. Touching it is a pin.
- Peg (handle) — the post each competitor grips with their free hand for leverage and stability. Losing contact with the peg can be a foul.
- Strap — a band used to bind two competitors' hands together so the grip can't break (see strap match).
The start and the match
- Referee's grip — the setup the referee creates before the start: elbows on the pads, hands joined palm-to-palm, wrists straight and squared so neither side starts ahead.
- Start command — the referee's sequence to begin a match, commonly "close your thumbs," "close your hands," then "Ready… Go!" Wording varies by ruleset.
- Pin — the win condition: forcing any part of the opponent's hand, from the wrist to the fingertips, to touch or drop below the pin pad.
- Slip / slip-out — when the competitors' hands come apart without a foul. The match is typically restarted, often with a strap.
- Strap match — a match (or restart) in which the hands are strapped together so the grip cannot break, used for closely matched or slip-prone bouts.
- Flop / flopping — collapsing or going limp to avoid a clean loss or to escape a bad position; generally penalized rather than rewarded.
Fouls
- Foul — a rules violation. Repeated fouls lose the match; the exact threshold depends on the ruleset.
- Warning — a lesser caution; under many rules two warnings add up to a foul.
- False start — moving before the "Go" command.
- Elbow foul — lifting the elbow off the pad or sliding it past the pad's boundary.
- Centerline — the midline of the table; letting the shoulder cross it, or dropping the shoulder below the elbow pad, is an illegal (and dangerous) position.
Techniques and positions
- Hook — an inside move: supinating the hand and using back pressure and strength to control the opponent up close.
- Toproll — an outside move: pronating and sliding toward the opponent's fingers to strip their leverage, then rolling their hand down.
- Press — a forward power move driving the shoulder, triceps, and bodyweight over the top to push the opponent's hand to the pad.
- Pronation — rotating the forearm so the palm turns down and away; central to the toproll.
- Supination — rotating the forearm so the palm turns up and toward you; central to the hook.
- Cupping — curling the hand toward the inside of the forearm to strengthen the wrist and weaken the opponent's fingers.
- Wrist control — controlling the position and rotation of the wrists (yours and your opponent's); often the deciding factor in a match.
- Back pressure — pulling your hand back toward your own shoulder to drag the opponent toward you.
- Side pressure — driving across the table toward the pin pad.
- Rising (the "riser," posting) — lifting and loading your hand and knuckles up and above the opponent's to gain a stronger attacking angle and close down their elbow.
- King's Move — a defensive outside-survival position built on rise, pronation, and drag, popularized by Michael Todd. It does not mean a straight, collapsed arm — pronation and hand control stay intact — and it's an advanced survival tool, not a beginner move. If it degrades into dropping the competing shoulder below the elbow pad while losing, that becomes the dangerous position referees foul.
- Broken arm position — the dangerous configuration behind most arm wrestling fractures: the elbow drifts outside the shoulder, the arm falls behind the body, and the torso twists away from the hand, loading the upper-arm bone in a twist. Keeping the arm in front of the body avoids it. See arm wrestling injuries.
Competition
- Supermatch — a scheduled one-on-one duel between two named athletes over a set number of rounds; the staple of professional arm wrestling.
- Double elimination — the common tournament format in which a competitor is knocked out only after two losses.
- Weight class — a division grouping athletes by bodyweight; exact cutoffs are set by each federation.
- Open / masters / junior — age-based divisions (senior/open, older "masters," and younger "junior/youth" competitors).
- Left vs right — competitions are held separately for the left and right arm, with titles awarded per arm.
Keep learning
Ready to put these terms in context? Start with Arm Wrestling 101, go deeper on the core techniques and how to train for arm wrestling, see what muscles arm wrestling works, or read the rules and championships.