Arm Workouts

 

Simple Arm Workouts That Give Powerful Results


Putting together a selection of useful arm workouts isn't all that difficult, no matter what your ultimate objective may be. Your goal may be to build larger, bulkier arms, in other words bodybuilding, or building up your arms for the simple purpose of strengthening them. One goal, particularly among women, is simply to tone the arms, which translates into reducing fat, and strengthening the muscle, without concerns about bulking up.


Arm Workouts Can Be Easier Than Some - Although it may sound a little silly, one of the advantages of arm workouts is that you're working a set of muscles that are "closer" to you, in the sense that the muscles are generally highly visible when you're working them. You can't always say the same thing about your hamstrings, glutes, or back muscle groups. A favorite of many among the arm workouts is the concentration curl, where you can literally keep your eye on the biceps as you are working them.


The Muscles Of The Arm - Before we get into a description of some basic exercises, let's quickly review the muscles of the arm. When doing arm workouts, or workouts involving any of your body's muscle groups, it can be very helpful to know a bit about the muscles you're working. You get a better sense of what the purpose of a particular exercise is, plus if a trainer starts spouting off the names of various muscle groups, you might even find yourself understanding what he or she is talking about.


Muscles seldom work alone, but work together with other muscles. Your biceps and triceps work together. When your biceps extend, your triceps contract, and vice versa. The same can be said for the muscles controlling the opening and closing of your fingers. When you pick up something between your thumb and forefinger, one set of muscles is contracting to bring your thumb and forefinger together, an opposing set is extending, and in doing so is fine-tuning your movement so you exert just enough pressure to grasp and pick up an object, no more, no less. Besides opening and closing, or pushing and pulling, sets of muscles also enable rotation, such as rotation of the shoulder or the wrist.


When we talk about muscles, we can classify them as extendors, flexors, and rotators. In proper arm workouts, these three muscle types are all worked. When you are trying to build bigger arms, you don't just work the biceps, but need to work the triceps as well, and for complete arm workouts you also need to exercise the rotator muscles, especially the wrist.

Flexors, Extensors, and Rotators - The arm muscles are attached at one end to bone, and form tendons at the other end. The tendons are cable like tissues which are used to extend or bend the arm, or hand. Extensor muscles function to extend the hand and fingers, flex the elbow joint, extend the arm and wrist, and extend the fingers and thumb. The flexors perform the opposing functions of bending the hand, thumb, or fingers, and bending the arm or wrist. The rotator muscles, usually working in concert with flexors and extensors, control the twisting of the forearm and the twisting or supinating the wrists.  In dumbbell exercises you'll come across the terms supinating and supination, which means the wrists are to be rotated while gripping the dumbbell.


The two major muscle groups we haven't mentioned, but are included in the above, are the biceps, which function to bend to flex the arm, and the triceps which function to extend or straighten the arm. Comprehensive arm workouts will not only exercise the biceps and triceps, but the other flexors, extensors, and rotators as well, serving to strengthen the forearm, wrist, and the grip of the hands. The majority of the exercises described below, though referred to as biceps or triceps workouts, serve to exercise the other muscles groups of the arm and wrist as well.