The difficulty of going to the gym or sports center should never be a problem when training or carrying out a routine. Performing arm exercises at home is a great alternative to show off that desired physique and lose weight without the need to spend or have to move 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, triceps, shoulders to forearms. However, it is not necessary to have dumbbells or fitness machines to be able to develop these small muscle groups. The weight of our body can be enough to be able to perform a good workout through arm exercises at home. Even most practices, which aim to develop other larger muscle groups such as the pectorals, have involvement in the arms. Without going any further, a simple flexion of the pectoral 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 workout, 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, do not forget to combine muscle work with aerobic and cardiovascular exercises to complement the training. The 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 our 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, performing arm exercises at home has multiple advantages. The most prominent are the following:
- Improve the physical strength of all muscles including the arms
- Prevent possible injuries to any of the arms that may be suffered in the future
- Perform sports and adopt 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 you can perform exercises adapted to each arm.
As with all muscle groups, any type of discomfort or possible injury should be examined immediately by a competent professional who makes a diagnosis. It may be necessary to stop training until full recovery. Don’t 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 one step back to take two steps forward.
How to perform 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 sometimes, 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 floor. 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 funds, getting all the parts to exercise. With a chair, or even a step from home, it can be carried out. We will flex our legs and rest the palms of our 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 place your back straight and not arched, to avoid possible future injuries. In this exercise, you work the triceps, the front of the shoulder and, in part, 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 triceps, if you have light objects, you can perform other types of exercises. The shoulder press consists of sitting in a chair, placing the arms at a right angle to shoulder height and raising them until they are almost completely stretched. Subsequently, it returns to the initial position. The lateral and frontal elevations, on the other hand, are done standing and raising the two objects from the hips laterally, or frontally, until they are in a parallel line with the ground. Finally, triceps extension requires a slight flexion of the legs, raising the arms with the object to 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 form of the person in question.
For the biceps, practically the only exercise available is the curl, without having machines. By not having dumbbells or bar, there are multiple options. Bottles of water or milk of greater magnitude could be used to carry it out. In another case, you can also use the tension of a towel. 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 perform the contraction, hold the position for 15 seconds and, subsequently, 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 perform 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 arms or feet until we notice the fatigue that indicates that the rest begins.
Another flexion modality available for performing arm exercises at home is what is known as V-bends. We will place ourselves in the initial flexion position and raise the buttocks. From here, we will start the descent to concentrate the work on the triceps and shoulders. All in all, push-ups are the great alternative to work your arms at home. Thus, if we add everyday objects of the house, as possible external weight, we will get a very complete training routine to provide our arms with a certain volume and benefit the abdomen and the desired strength to complete our objectives and be able to boast of a well-sculpted body during the summer season. Don’t forget the importance of stretching after training.