Do you have flabby arms? If you do, it’s a sure sign that something’s not right: namely flabby arms mean no tone or muscle. It doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t strong or healthy, rather flabby arms mean you’re not doing enough to build up the muscle and burn off the fat.
If you’re a late bloomer when it comes to exercise and working out, flabby arms can be the proverbial thorn in your side. Why? Because losing that flab – just like losing weight around your mid-section, thighs and posterior – demands work! In this case, the only way to turn flabby arms into toned, solid, muscular arms is by combining aerobic activity with basic weight training. In other words: burn calories, shed the weight and build up what’s left.
It might seem on the surface that the fastest way to tone up your flabby arms is by concentrating on single-joint exercises like bicep and tricep curls. There may be some truth to that because anything that places direct stress on the biceps and triceps will cause them to firm up. Come to think of it, the triceps muscle at the back of the arm make up nearly two-thirds of the arm’s musculature so it makes sense that you want to tone the triceps in your effort to reduce your flabby arms. That’s why I’m such a proponent of push-ups, which you can read about in all their glory here.
The core secret to getting rid of flabby arms is to supplement those push-ups, bicep and tricep curls with calorie-burning aerobic activity, which means you’re gonna have to reduce the overall amount of your body fat! As body fat percentage is reduced, it will eventually change your flabby arms into healthy, toned, muscular arms.
Here are some of my favorites. You can thank me later!
– One of the quickest ways to tone up your arms is by taking an aerobics class and using small dumb-bells for as much of the upper-body exercises as you can. Over the course of a 45 minute class you will easily do several hundred repetitions for your arms and upper body. You will sweat and put continuous tension on your arms and before you know it those flabby arms will be a distant memory. These days the technique is called “Fit-Pump” but the basic technique is aerobics with weights. One of the best Fit-Pump classes I ever took was at the Gold’s Gym in Rochester, New York.
– Another technique is to power-walk or run with hand weights or small dumb-bells. The trick is that while you walk or run you want to concurrently perform bicep/triceps curls. Same basic theory in practice: overall aerobic activity that burns calories and tones the arms. I recommend tat if you do the fit-pump/aerobic class 3 days a week, you probably don’t need any additional weight training. If you are running or power-walking than by all means supplement this on alternate days with weight training.
– Another favorite workout of mine is to go to your neighborhood track and combine interval training with push-ups. At the starting line you will run a 110-yard sprint and then drop and do 30 push-ups. Get up and jog the next 110 yards. Then drop and do 30 push-ups. Continue this every 110 yards. For every lap around the track you will do be alternating 110-yard sprints but you never let up on the push-ups. That’s 120 push-ups per lap. You can change your interval training to 220-yard sprints if you want but don’t let up on the push-ups. This is a challenging work-out, and I don’t recommend doing this for more than 4 laps max. You may have to work up to that distance. You may also be tempted not to sprint as your arms get heavier (push-ups and running tend to have that effect). But if you do this twice a week to supplement your weight training, I can assure you those flabby arms will get toned up in a hurry.
As always, make sure your doctor gives you a clean bill of health before you start doing any long-term aerobic activity.
