Arm Exercises with Resistance Bands.

Whether you're male or female, arm strength is important for many different reasons. Utilizing Resistance Bands is means you can tone and strengthen your arms at home.

We use our arms every day for a variety of different tasks, and the more conditioned they are, the easier those tasks become. A lot of people think of arms as 'biceps', and while biceps are definitely part of the arms, they only account for 1/3rd. of upper arm muscle.

Triceps are often under trained. Any movement that requires pushing will generally engage the triceps. I see guys who want big arms doing endless amounts of curls, and then getting frustrated because they're not blowing up like they thought the would. 

Let's go over a few exercises that can be done at home to tone, strengthen, and add muscle to our arms. I'll begin with triceps.

The Tricep Extension:

This movement is performed from a standing position, beginning with an arm behind your back as shown. Extend your arm overhead until your elbow locks out, making sure to squeeze at the top. Release back to the starting position and repeat. Tricep Extensions can be performed for 3-5 sets of 8-12 reps.

Tricep Kickbacks:

Fair warning, these burn like a blank cd in a bootleggers basement, but no pain no gain. Begin from a standing position, and slightly leaned forward. With your arm at 90 degrees, extend it out behind your back until fully extended. Remember to squeeze at the end position for full contraction. Slowly release your arm back to 90 degrees and repeat. These can be performed 1 arm at a time, or both arms at once. Sets should be 2 sets of 8-12 reps, and finished with 1 set to failure (as many reps as you have left in you).

Biceps:

 















Any movement that requires pulling is going to activate the biceps. From opening a door, to doing a pull-up, Biceps play a very important role in day to day activity. Let's discuss a few bicep exercises that can be performed at home.

Bicep Curls.

This is an exercise that everyone is familiar with. It can be performed unilaterally or bilaterally (one arm at a time or both at the same time). From a standing position, with your arm(s) at your side, curl your arm while rotating your palm towards you to the second position shown and squeeze at the top.  release and repeat. Bicep curls can be performed for 3-5 sets of 8-12 reps.

Hammer Curls:

Wait a minute, this looks like the exact same exercise as the last one, why the repeat? The biceps have both a long, and a short head. The last exercise employed supination, or rotation of the palms which activates both the long and short heads of the bicep. Hammer curls will tone and strengthen the short head of the bicep specifically, which is often neglected.

Without getting too repetitive, this exercise is performed in the same manner as the last, the only difference being that your palms will be facing each other the entire movement. Hammer curls can be performed after supinated curls for 3 sets of 8-12 reps.  

Arms are a very important part of any physique, but they also serve several functional purposes in our day to day lives. Training them just makes life easier.

Cheers,
John. 

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