Toning the upper arms?

Hello everyone!

I am new to this website and message board. Everyone has been really nice and helpful so far.

I am pleased to say for myself that I am finally at a weight that I can be proud of. I am 5'4/5'5 and weigh 126. I feel great about myself, and am very proud of my accomplishments. (I started as a high school freshman at 5'3/211lbs, and am now a sophomore in college.)

My main focuses right now are eating healthy, which has never been hard for me, I have always preferred health food (and I'm a new vegan!), and toning my body.

As much as I am learning to love my body now, I still dislike my arms. They are just not toned in the way that I'd like them to be. Nothing Ironwoman or anything, just nice and athletic-looking upper arms, I'd like that.

I don't have a gym membership, so I do most of my excercising at home, in the neighborhood or on a track. All I'm doing for arms right now is daily pushups and various yoga poses, but I can't think of much else I can do without professional machines.

Any suggestions on what I can do at home? Thank you very much!

First off, congrats on your weight loss and getting healthy! You have a great attitude and you'll find lots of help here.

I know there are a lot more people on here who can give you great advice so I'll just throw a few things out there that I've noticed. I joined a gym back in May and got a trainer and he's shown me a lot of strength training exercises for my arms and they look pretty darn good now :)

You don't need a gym though to get toned arms. I'd say invest in some free weights, you can buy them almost anywhere, heck I think Target sells them! Test out the various weights and pick one that will challenge you come the 3rd set. My guess would probably be a set of 5 to 8lb to start with. You can do a ton with just those weights - bicep curls, tricep kick-backs, overhead presses, plus it adds weights to your squats. Do you do regular push ups or ones on your knees? If you do knee ones, work up to regular ones. I am sure melkor or someone else can post websites of good strength moves to do.

I started out doing something my trainer calls the 'man maker'. Start with your weights in your hands and do one each of a bicep curl into an overhead press, to a squat then down to a push-up. Go back to start and do two of each, then three, etc. Go to ten and then count back to one. If you have challenging weights, you will feel it.

Good luck! It's the coolest thing in the world to see your muscles start to pop out :) I am still astonished by my triceps and regularly flex them for anyone who'll stop and look, lol.

Original Post by folkharpist:

All I'm doing for arms right now is daily pushups and various yoga poses, but I can't think of much else I can do without professional machines.

Any suggestions on what I can do at home? Thank you very much!

yes while one can get 'toned' (& by toned i assume you mean defined muscles with less jiggly) doing yoga, you have to do alot of it. i have friends that have great bodies doing yoga, but they are all yoga instructors. and for some of us, once you get used to doing push ups they start to be more of an endurance builder.

as karen pointed out, the most efficient (im not saying the only tho) way is to get some free weights and to progress on using heavier weights until you are satisfied with your arms. progressive weight is key if you want to see results. you dont need those machines either.

congrats on your progress over the years too.

Instead of getting the regular dumbbells from Target, you might want to look at the adjustable weight dumbbells (Dick's has them, I know, and I'm sure other places) - http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/ind ex.jsp?productId=2173649

Online they are $65, but in the store they are usually less (~$50?). It seems like a lot, but you'll be getting stronger, and soon the 5-8lb dumbbells won't be heavy enough (and for some exercises, they might already be too light). Once you realize you are going to have to keep buying new weights, at ~$1/lb, it'll be a lot cheaper to get the adjustable. The set I linked to isn't as pretty as the Bowflex ones (dial-a-weight), but because they don't have any internal hardware (you manually unscrew the cap and switch out plates), there is very little that can break.

I assume by 'tone' you mean 'more definition' since you really can't see differances in muscle tone.

To increase muscle definition you need to either make muscles bigger or lose some of the fat covering them.  To build muscles in your arms, do compound upper body exercises (pushes and pulls), are isolation stuff (curl, kickbacks, etc) isn't going to do much if anything.

You can push and pull in 2 direction (horizontally and vertically), you've already got a horizontal push (pushups) so you'll want at least one pulling exercise to go with it (pullups, bent over rows, etc) but ideally you'd also add a vertical pushing exercise (military press, etc) and do both a horizontal and vertical pull (rows and pull ups).

To burn fat, diet is by far the most important thing, but after that concentrate on working your largest muscle groups (legs, back, chest).  Squats and deadlifts are great for fat burning, as well as all the compound upper body stuff described above.  If you want to add even more exercise, interval cardio is pretty effective.

Thanks to each of you for the support and suggestions!

I noticed a trend in replies, so free weights it is! That sounds manageable to me, something effective I could do at home. I remember training with the free weights in high school, and I started on 5s and made it to 12s by the end of the year, so I'll probably choose a range in/around there. (Looking forward to trying the 'man maker' karen, sounds fun and challenging!)

Thanks also for the link amethystgirl, and the specific excercises floggingsully! And for the advice octo-luv. This website is great :)

I'll be pumping iron, if anyone needs me.