How to Tone the Backs Of Your Arms

How to Tone the Backs Of Your Arms

Have you ever heard of “bye-bye” arms? That’s when the flapping fat on the back of your arm keeps on waving even after you’ve stopped. My mom used to call her arms “flopping fish”, and flabby arms are also known as “lunch lady arms,” “quail flanks,” and “bingo wings.”( Thank you, Urban Dictionary.)

How to Tone the Backs of Your Arms

Regardless of what we call them, the fat on the back of the arms can be an annoying reason for avoiding t-shirts and tank tops. In this article, you’ll learn how to tone the back of your arms and discover the best arm toning workout.

What Muscles Are On the Back Of Your Arms?

The muscles on the back of the arms are called the triceps. In anatomy, the technical term is actually “triceps brachii”, which is Latin for three-headed muscle. Though this seems to make your triceps sound like some kind of fairy-tale monster, the reason for this name is that the triceps are comprised of three different muscle bundles on the outside, middle, and inside of the back of your arms.

Because the triceps has three different muscles, simply doing one exercise is typically not enough to tone the back of your arms. Instead, you need to come at that three-headed monster from as many angles as possible, using a variety of exercises and hand positions.

The Best Exercises For the Back of The Arms

In the Quick and Dirty Tips video “Tone the Back Of Your Arms” I demonstrate two exercises with a Gymstick: the overhead triceps extension and the narrow grip chest press. But there are many additional exercises that work well for the back of your arms, including these fantastic five:

Narrow Grip Pushups: Do a pushup in the regular or knee push-up position, but keep your hands closer together and make sure your elbows brush your ribcage as you lower yourself down and push yourself back up.

Tricep Pushdowns: At most gyms, you’ll find a cable apparatus with a rope or bar attached to it. This is perfect for triceps pushdowns, in which you start with your arms bent at 90 degrees and then extend them until they’re completely straight. By using different handles and grips, like a front grip, a reverse grip, or a rope grip, you can ensure that you work all three heads of your triceps.

Dips: For this triceps exercise, you begin by holding onto two bars and suspending your body in the air. You then lower yourself as far as you can--or until your elbows are at about 90 degrees--then push yourself back up. Sound too hard? Don’t worry, many gyms have an assisted dip machine, which is similar to an assisted pull-up machine, and includes the ability to select the amount of weight you’d like to help you complete the dip.

Skull Crusher: Yikes! Though it sounds extremely violent, a skull crusher only lives up to its name if you accidentally drop the weight on your head. To do this triceps exercise, simply lie on your back on a bench, and hold a barbell or dumbbell with your arms bent at 90 degrees and elbows on either side of your head. You then extend your arms until they’re completely straight, and then bring them back to 90 degrees. By adjusting your hand position to knuckles up, knuckles down, or knuckles sideways, you can target the different heads of your triceps muscle.

Close Grip Bench Press: You’ve probably heard of a regular bench press exercise in which you lie on your back on a bench and then push a bar away from your body. A close grip bench press, as the name implies, is the same exercise, but involves keeping your hands closer together on the bar, and keeping the elbows close to the body as you lower the weight.

The Best Triceps (and Arm Toning) Workout

So now that you’re equipped with all these triceps exercises, what’s a good triceps workout to tone the back of your arms? I’ve included one below, but be warned, it may double as a diet derailer, since you may have a hard time pushing yourself away from the table because the backs of your arms are sore! (But you’ll know what to do if you’ve seen “How to Recover After A Workout”.)

This workout actually includes some exercises for the front of your arms (the biceps), since the back of your arms can look better after toning the front of the arms too, and also because when the biceps contracts, the back of the arms stretch and get a little extra workout.

Instructions: Do 10-12 repetitions of the two exercises in these stations three times back-to-back before moving on to the next station.

Station 1: Tricep Pushdowns to Bicep Curls (hint: each time you do the workout, use a different handle or grip for the pushdowns).

Station 2: Close Grip Bench Press to Narrow Grip Push-Ups (hint: you can actually do a close grip bench press with a set of dumbbells and hold the dumbbells with different grip positions to target different parts of your triceps muscles).

Station 3: Dips to Pull-ups (you can do the “assisted” version of both if desired)

If you have questions about this workout, just head over to http://www.facebook.com/getfitguy and ask!

Original article and pictures take www.quickanddirtytips.com site