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Weight Loss Exercise

Exercise to Help Tone Your Arms



Do you avoid wearing sexy, sleeveless tops or dresses ? or refuse to take off your jacket to reveal a sleeveless shell — because of flabby and unsightly arms? Your arms may sag because you’ve recently lost weight. The fat cells may be gone, but the skin doesn’t know what to do with itself.

The arms are complicated areas to firm and tone, and it’s better to exercise them rather than attempt to target your arms for weight loss. The arm area tends to store fat cells than other parts of your body, so try aerobic exercises for overall fat loss and for toning your arms at the same time.

To achieve sexy, firm arms you’ll need to build up your biceps and triceps. Biceps are the muscles along the front of your arm, while triceps are muscles found in the back of your arms. When you tone and firm these muscles, you’ll be creating muscle where the sagging skin used to be.

All you’ll need to begin the quest for sleek and sexy arms are an exercise band and weights. Include the following exercises in your daily or weekly routine:

Exercise 1: Hold the middle of the exercise band with your feet. Holding one of the two ends of the band in each hand, bend the elbow on one arm from the waist, stretching the band forward and upward. You’ll feel your biceps muscles tensing as you raise the band. Be sure your elbow is always bent slightly. Take turns repeating this exercise on each arm for 8 to 10 times.

Exercise 2: Repeat the above exercise, except pull the band outward from the left and right sides of your body.

Exercise 3: Repeat the above exercise, except pull the band backward from the left and right sides of your body. This exercise will benefit the triceps of your arms.

Weights are also a great way to tone the arms. Lift the weights when sitting in a chair or lying on the floor. Be sure to begin with light weights and then graduate to heavier ones as you’re ready.

Basically, any exercise that causes resistance to your biceps and triceps can help tone your arms. Yoga and Pilates are also proven ways to firm up your arms. Online sites that tout yoga or Pilates will lead you to specific exercises for your arms.

Don’t pass up those sexy tank tops because of jiggly underarms. It won’t take long to see results ? and you won’t even have to adapt to a strenuous exercise routine.

Related Blogs

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Weight Loss Exercise

Jack Lalanne Dead at 96

Jack Lalanne Dead at 96

Jack Lalanne

Jack Lalanne, one of the originators of the fitness movement has died but left a fantastic legacy to help people to look after their health and concentrate on their fitness as one of the cornerstones of a great life.

Here is a great article from the Globe and mail today talking about Jack Lalanne and what he taught and meant to those in the fitness community.

Jack LaLanne, who died on Sunday at age 96, was regarded as the father of the modern fitness movement. Dressed in snug jumpsuits, the television fixture preached a balance of exercise and healthy diet and inspired millions. The Post spoke to fitness gurus about the top lessons learned from LaLanne’s legacy.

What was  the Jack Lalanne Legacy?

1. There is no excuse for not exercising. Long before Nike told everyone to “just do it,” LaLanne was relentless in his pitches, using a drill sergeant’s bark and cadence. “Jack inspired the world with his no-nonsense approach to exercise,” says Maureen Hagan, fitness instructor and VP of operations at GoodLife Fitness Canada. “Many of us will recall Jack showing his TV viewers how to exercise in the kitchen, using a chair and lifting soup cans as dumbbells. His ‘no excuse, just do it’ attitude inspired the world to at least try exercise.”

2. Weight training is a key component of a fitness regimen. “He popularized the whole notion of fitness before we recognized it as a crisis situation,” says Christa Costas-Bradstreet, physical activity specialist at ParticipAction, the national not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting active living. When LaLanne first began recommending weights in the 1930s, he said that physicians opposed his advice, warning it would cause heart attacks and lower sex drives. “People thought I was a charlatan and a nut,” LaLanne said in a posting on his website. “Time has proven that what I was doing was scientifically correct — starting with a healthy diet followed by systematic exercise, and today everyone knows it.”

3. Fitness is for everyone. “He taught that physical activity was something for all ages, irrespective of socio-economic status and ability,” Costas-Bradstreet says. LaLanne invited women into his health clubs, and also encouraged the elderly and the disabled to exercise. “I share the great passion for bringing women into the gym environment that Jack LaLanne pioneered,” says Craig Ramsay, author of Anatomy of Exercise and trainer on Bravo’s Thintervention.

4. Practise what you preach. When LaLanne was 42, he did a record 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes. When he was 60, he swam from Alcatraz to Fisherman’s Wharf — while handcuffed, shackled and towing a boat. Late in life, he continued to rise at 4 or 5 a.m. for two-hour workouts. “He himself was a role model,” Costas-Bradstreet says. “Only 7% of Canadian children and youth are meeting Canada’s physical activity guidelines and 15% of adults. We absolutely need role models, particularly for kids.”

Read more  at the National Post here

To me Jack Lalanne has always been the old guy that has lived what he preached. He sold Juicers to make sure people stayed healthy, he espoused healthy and fit lifestyle choices and most importantly Jack Lalanne made sure that we knew that growing old did not mean we had to live and acet that way.