Hi everybody, I posted this on the LWL board and haven't had a response, so I'll give it a shot here!


Could you please give me some detailed exercises to tone and take inches off my arms as quickly as possible?

I have dumbells: 3 pounds 5 pounds and 10 pounds, and a large stability ball.

Thanks so much,

Linda (from the 100 pound club )

I saw your post on LWL and thought I'd see if someone more expert than me responded. The short answer is you cannot remove fat from any particular spot. What you can do is build up the muscle in your arms (or anywhere) so that when you lose weight/fat, those lovely developed muscles will show up. Fat comes off - as I'm sure you know - from a combination of diet and exercise, mainly aerobic/cardio type exercise. Your body decides where you'll drop it from. No spot reduction - sorry.

There are lots of good exercises for your arms. Look at some of the stickies on LWL or at Krista's site www.stumptous.com She has a lot of good advice and exercises for various parts of your body.

Good going on your loss so far!

I agree that you cannot spot reduce/tone a certain area of the body. its just not possible. You can work on it like crazy, but in the end your body will decide where the fat will reduce from.

In my opinion, here are some good exercises to begin with for your upper body. These are all my favorite exercises (can't believe i just said that )

• Biceps - Concentration curls, cable curl (i do it with resistance bands under my feet while standing)
• Triceps - Tricep kick back, tricep overhead extension
• Chest - Push ups, Dumbbell fly, Dumbbell press
• Back - bent over dumbbell row, seated cable row (i do it with resistance bands wrapped around my feet while sitting on the ground with my legs extended in front)
• Shoulders - Lateral raise (i like doing one arm at a time best), shoulder press

Just pick one from each area and do one set for 10-12 reps. Make sure you give yourself a full 24 hours rest before working them again - they need their rest. You can increase the reps or increase the weight and do more sets once you feel ready.

Don't neglect the other areas of your upper body even if you only want to target a certain area of your body.

All the best

Of course, you can't spot lose fat, but I've been amazed at the difference my arms have achieved with weight training. (Though we are talking a few months here, not a few days.)

I use nautilus machines mostly now, but I took a quick look and found this site
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/wei...aining/SM00028, and the videos of the arm exercises look pretty helpful. (On the right.)

Also, there is www.fitsite.com - I completely ignore the supplement adds (I get all my body needs from the food I eat, thank's all the same), and you don't even have to register- just click on the "fitness and exercise" tab, click on the muscle you are interested in exercising and click on one of the exercises listed on the left. You can watch a loop of the exercise to replicate with your weights. I also have a weight-lifting book that I've tried in the past, but I do prefer seeing the videos.

Good luck! I hope you find what you are looking for.

Thank you

Jen...you knew what I meant! I know that spot reduction is impossible etc..
But I also know that people DO lose inches off of certain areas as they are losing weight..whether fat is covering the area or not.

I'll check out all of those links, and thanks again!!! I looks forward to hearing more replies/opinions.

Linda

Go here: http://www.t-tapp.com/articles/shorttorso/

Maybe there isn't such a thing as spot-reduction, but these certainly helped me lose 2 inches off my arms in 2 weeks...Keep in mind, though, that there is only one arm sequence on that link, the rest is torso. The other arm exercises i am doing i got from the videos.

Alicia

I've just started taking a kickboxing class, and I have to say it is by far the best arm workout I've ever had (typing actually hurts!). I'm only doing it twice a week, but I've definitely noticed a big difference already. I'm doing a group class in women's only kickboxing, but I know you can get one on one training if you're not comfortable in a class. It gets in some good cardio and works your legs, too.

if you want to drop fat around your arms, work out your legs...

sounds strange huh?

here's what i mean by that. as other have stated, you can't spot reduce.

your legs are the biggest calorie burner you've got. after doing exercises like squats, deadlifts, lunges, burpees, etc, it takes a lot of energy to repair those leg muscles. so if your diet is in line, your body is going to have to burn fat from various areas of your body in order to provide that recovery energy for the legs.

so continue doing multi joint lower body exercises such as squats, deadlifts, forward lunges, walking lunges reverse lunges, etc as well as upper body multi joint exercises such as pushups, bent over rows, lat pulldowns or pullups and shoulder press and you'll get there.

and just a quick word on direct arm work like curls and tricep kickbacks. as a colleague of mine says, these are like chinese water torture, it's just not going to work. those muscles are muscles that assist with your bigger upper body muscles like your back, chest, and shoulders so if you are only concentrating on the bicep and tricep without first and foremost focusing on the bigger muscle exercises, they are going to either stay the same or only slightly get bigger.

Michael Navin, CSCS

I've not done a burpee since I was 10 years old!!! I thought they were invented by my Physical Education teacher, with a stupid name, to try and get us to exercise

I read a great article in Ultra Fit about how to do them in a shearing shed, I think you kinda had to be there!!

I'm curious...what's a burpee?? I've never heard of those before... they sound kinda cute...

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/rossboxing2.htm

This link has an animation of a burpee. You bob down into a crouch, flick out into a press up type move, spring back into your crouch, then finish with a jump, then repeat. I haven't tried one for years, but I might tomorrow!!!

In the article in my magazine, it was written by an Australian whose grandfather was a shearer, and involved finding a wobbly floor board to give you more bounce at the end.

We used to have to do 10 of these each morning before class. Bearing in mind this was in our little schooldresses, the boys used to love standing behind us when we did them, little

that's a great site andoreth, fitsite.com cheers for that !