I had a great question from one of you about training the triceps and biceps (upper arm).  These are muscles that you get when you do pushing exercises or pulling exercises and typically that is what I rely on to train these muscles in the athletes I work with.  Now, I will confess that sometimes if we finish our ‘athlete’ workout and there are a few minutes left at the end of the session we will dive right into what has become known as a “beach workout”.  These are pretty fun so I will share a few of the exercises that I will include in a beach workout to really “pump up yo arms” (say this with like Arnold for better effect – yah!).

Biceps Curl 21′s
We have all seen people in the gym doing biceps curls with 80lbs dumbbells, but the way they do it is more like a full body squat-back extension-biceps curl kind of thing.  Let’s keep this biceps curl pure by standing with your back to the wall and keep your elbows in contact with the wall for the entire set.  Now for the “21″ part… you will perform 7 reps in the bottom half of the range (i.e. your elbows fully straightened to 90 degree bend), then perform 7 repetitions in the top half of the range (i.e. elbows from 90 degree bend to full flexion as far as you can go without pulling your elbows off the wall) and finally 7 repetitions through the full range of motion.

Triangle Push Up
I won’t go through this one in detail because I covered it previously, but click here if you want a reminder about how to do this triceps blasting push up.

Triceps French Press
Okay, here is one final triceps exercise for you.  It is called the French Press or referred to as a ‘skull crusher’.  The key for this exercise is to keep your upper arm stable and slightly angled backward throughout the entire set.  You can see this in the bottom center photo – my arms are straight, but they angle backward or toward my head slightly.  Maintain this position and then just bend and straighten your elbows to target your triceps.

I know I have a video somewhere of my Quick Killer Arm workout so I will search for that and post it another day.  I do not use many isolation exercises at all in my training because I like to train muscles in patterns of movement.  I think this gives you better performance in your sport and in your daily living.  However, sometimes it is just plain fun to blast your arms.  So enjoy!

Maria