The difficulty of going to the gym or sports center should never be a problem when training or carrying out a routine. Doing arm exercises at home is a great alternative to show off that desired physique and lose weight without spending money or having to travel to the appropriate space to achieve your sports goals.
What are arm exercises at home?
The arms include multiple muscles to develop, from the biceps, the triceps, the shoulders to the forearms. However, you don’t need dumbbells or fitness machines to build these small muscle groups. The weight of our body can be enough to be able to do a good workout through arm exercises at home. Even most practices, which aim to develop other larger muscle groups such as the pectorals, affect the arms. Without going any further, a simple pectoral flexion ends up affecting the arms, especially the biceps. Therefore, there are multiple options to plan a good workout without leaving our home.
Although the work will be done at home, the training needs planning and organization if you want to avoid injuries and achieve the proposed objectives. However, it requires working each muscle group a minimum of two or three times a week, respecting the rest day necessary for recovery. Before starting the training, warm up the muscles to activate them and avoid any type of ramp. In turn, at the end, it is also necessary to perform the relevant stretches in order to avoid muscle overload.
Finally, don’t forget to combine muscular work with aerobic and cardiovascular exercises to complement your training. Diet is also of paramount importance. You have to eat in a balanced way knowing how to combine carbohydrates and proteins to promote muscle growth and recovery after each routine.
Benefits of training your arms at home
Obviously, training the arms at home can limit us to a certain level. The more advanced we are, the greater the need for external weight to continue increasing the demand on our arms. Except for this reason, doing arm exercises at home has many advantages. The most prominent are the following:
- Improve the physical strength of all muscles including the arms
- Prevent possible injuries in any of the arms that may be suffered in the future
- Playing sports and adopting a healthy lifestyle at a general level for our body
- Greater adaptation in training. With machines or bars, the weight is lifted with both hands. With our body we can perform exercises adapted to each arm.
As with all muscle groups, any type of discomfort or possible injury should be immediately examined by a competent professional who can make a diagnosis. It may be necessary to stop training until fully recovered. Do not forget that forcing yourself to train can trigger a vicious cycle in which the muscle is never fully recovered again. Sometimes it is wiser to stop for a while and come back stronger. They already say it: take a step back to take two forward.
How to do arm exercises at home
Performing arm exercises at home is a great option since there are multiple methods to strengthen the different muscle groups of the extremities using only the weight of our body, or on some occasions, some very common objects in our homes such as chairs, towels or bottles. To exercise the biceps, triceps, shoulders and forearms we will only need a chair and, optionally, a towel so as not to perform the exercises directly on the ground. With these objects, and without the need to add dumbbells or machines, we can achieve our goals of toning, volume and muscle definition in a comfortable and simple way.
To begin with, we will perform triceps dips, managing to exercise all parts. With a chair, or even a step from home, it can be done. We will flex our legs and supporting the palms of the hands on the end of the chair, we will lower our body until we form a right angle in our arms and we will return to the initial position. This movement can be combined with traditional push-ups., which we all know. You just have to remember to keep your back straight and not arched, to avoid possible future injuries. In this exercise, you work the triceps, the front part of the shoulder and, in part, and the biceps. If, on the other hand, we want to concentrate the work on the triceps, it is enough to close the arms and place them under the trunk to carry out what is known as diamond push-ups.
To work the shoulders and continue with the work of the triceps, if you have light objects, you can do other types of exercises. The shoulder press involves sitting on a chair, placing your arms at a right angle to shoulder height, and raising them until they are almost fully extended. Subsequently, it returns to the starting position. Side and front raises Instead, they are performed standing and raising the two objects from the hips laterally, or frontally, until they are parallel with the ground. Finally, the triceps extension requires a slight flexion of the legs, raising the arms with the object at hip height, and flexing the elbows until they reach the nape of the neck, before returning to the starting position. A good option to perform this type of exercise is a bottle of a few liters, such as 1.5 or less than a liter, depending on the strength and physical condition of the person in question.
For the biceps, pretty much the only exercise available is the curl, with no machines available. By not having dumbbells or a bar, there are multiple options. Larger bottles of water or milk could be used to carry it out. In another case, the tension of a towel can also be used. Stepping on it with both feet, and with the legs bent, we can perform the traditional movement. If we have a bottle, the concentrated curl is also possible. In turn, we can vary the degree of inclination of the body. We will carry out the contraction, we will hold the position for 15 seconds and, later, we will return to the initial position. Remember that it is necessary to stick the elbows to the trunk to concentrate the force on the biceps. For the shoulders, we will make lateral movements. We will place ourselves in the initial position of a push-up. However, instead of descending with the arms, we will initiate a coordinated lateral movement with the arms or feet until we notice the fatigue that indicates that the rest has begun.
Another of the push-up modalities available to perform arm exercises at home is what is known as V push -ups. We will place ourselves in the initial flexion position and raise the buttocks. From here, we will begin the descent to concentrate the work on the triceps and shoulders. All in all, push- ups are the great alternative to working your arms at home. Thus, if we add everyday household objects, such as possible external weight, we will achieve a very complete training routine to give our arms a certain volume and benefit the abdomen and the desired strength to complete our goals and be able to boast of a well-balanced body. Sculpted during the summer season. Do not forget the importance of stretching after training.