Building Upper Body Strength
Upper body strength is important for most of our daily tasks such as shopping, cleaning, gardening, athletics and caring for others. Below are three exercises you can do to make these tasks easier regardless of your age.
Pushups: We can’t avoid pushups. We all learned how to do them in school. They are good for building the triceps (upper arm) and pectoral (chest) muscles. Many people, especially as we get older, find it impossible to do a pushup. That is no problem because there are many ways to make pushups easier. You can start doing pushups against the wall and gradually increase the angle so that you eventually can do them on the floor.
Curls are for biceps. Biceps are not just mirror muscles. You use your biceps every time you pick something up or carry something. For the curl you will need a weight. You can use a bag of books, but a pair of lightweight dumbbells is best.
Stand with good posture with the weights at your sides, arms extended. Keep your elbows stable at your hips and curl the weights up to your shoulder. Do as many as you can comfortably to establish your personal best. If you can do more than 12 repetitions then you are probably using a weight that is too light.
Rowing: One final exercise for the upper body is the rowing motion that strengthens the rhomboids (upper back muscles) and biceps. For this exercise it is very helpful to have a pair of dumbbells. You can perform a one arm rowing exercise by holding a light dumbbell in one hand, bending at the waist and supporting yourself with the other hand on a chair as in the image below. Keeping your back straight, pull the dumbbell up toward the side of your chest. Use a weight with which you can do 8-10 repetitions with good form.
As you get comfortable with these exercises you can do more repetitions and/or add weight.
Let’s Get Moving!