By Canadian Press

Canadian teacher eager to showcase integrity of arm wrestling in online broadcast

Jan 12, 2024 | 1:14 PM

Integrity, camaraderie, even friendship, are what drew Heidi Cordner into professional arm wrestling. She hopes it will also capture the imaginations of viewers as Arm Wrestle Canada makes it streaming debut this weekend.

Cordner, a high school math teacher from Newmarket, Ont., will face Sweden’s Anna Gronlung in a best-of-five supermatch on AWC’s All or Nothing card on Saturday afternoon. 

Cordner said that, like all combat sports, respect is at the heart of arm wrestling.

“It’s business at the table but friends off the table,” said Cordner. “I don’t know any other sport where, after a match, your opponent will come to you and say, ‘Hey, do you know what you could have done to beat me? If you just grip me here, or if you would have pulled backwards a bit more.’

“The camaraderie is, I can’t compare it to anything I’ve ever seen before. You want your opponent to do better, because then in turn, you become better.”

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Cordner’s father was into fitness and bodybuilding — even meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger at a bodybuilding show in Montreal in the 1970s — and encouraged her and her two brothers to get into strength training and arm wrestling. 

Cordner first considered doing it professionally after her first date with her future husband. The couple had done a bunch of competitive activities like playing squash and arm wrestling, and he suggested she get into the combat sport competitively.

Contrary to appearances, arm wrestling is not about who’s the strongest.

“Coaching is mostly about technique and focusing on where you want to train some special parts of your body,” said Cordner. “A lot of it has to do with your hand and your wrist and your forearm, but it also has to do with your position at the table. 

“Then you can get into some more complex coaching, which is different manoeuvres against different opponents.”

Cordner teaches at Huron Heights Secondary School in Newmarket, an arts-centric high school north of Toronto. She said that being a teacher has prepared her for competing on a broadcasted event.

“I’m used to performing and juggling all day long for my students, so I think the pressure doesn’t get to me in that sense, like the cameras and the lights and all that,” said Cordner. “I can’t say there is no pressure, but not as much as the pressure I put on myself to make sure that I’ve done everything that I needed to.

“There’s a whole checklist in my head and I don’t want to miss any of it.”

A showdown between American Jeff (Popeye) Dabe and Canadian Jason Costantini will main event the All Or Nothing card. AWC was founded by Madga Kaczmarek, a former arm wrestler based in Barrie, Ont., who started holding local tournaments during the COVID-19 pandemic and was encouraged to keep them going for the good of Canada’s arm wrestling community.

“When things loosened up a bit, people said that I have to continue running tournaments, so I did,” said Kaczmarek. “From my garage, to local, to international events. 

“Europe takes the sport more seriously and has more elite athletes. Our Canadian athletes did not have a chance to travel to Europe to face some of the strongest, so I decided to bring them from Europe to here and test them against our Canadian power.” 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 12, 2024.

John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press