To help sculpt your arms and make them photo-ready, here are 10 exercises to pump up your arms using items that you can find almost anywhere (no gym or exercise equipment required).

Repeat each exercise for 5 sets of 30 seconds each (in other words, do as many repetitions as you can for 30 seconds) 5 times, and take 20 seconds to rest between sets.

Push Ups

There is a reason push-ups are the first exercise that most of us learn. Push-ups will help strengthen the front part of your shoulder and your chest, as well as your tricep, which accounts for the back part of your arm.

This is truly the king of bodyweight arm exercises due to the fact that on the concentric (lowering) component of the exercise you work your pull muscles, and on the eccentric (pushing) component, you work all three heads of your tricep evenly.

Instead of doing a traditional push-up, here is a variation you can do to kick up the intensity. With your hands placed slightly outside the width of your shoulders, lower your body and squeeze your elbows in as much as you can so you activate your lats and chest. Lower your chest to the ground, and then push yourself up.

Curls

With just a pair of dumbbells in hand, curls will pump up your biceps. However, if you do not always have dumbbells, you can use anything that you have available to you that will have some weight to it and that you can easily hold on to and maneuver, such as a jug of water. Your biceps are the front facing part of your arm.

Curls emphasize every component of the bicep and work all parts of your biceps evenly.

When you perform this correctly, you work both the long head and the short head of your biceps, the deep part of your bicep responsible for the shape of your arm closer to the elbow, as well as your forearms.

Start with your hands facing each other at thigh level. Then, elevate your hands up to your shoulders, rotating them inwards and aiming to bring your pinky finger to point outward toward the outside of your arm.

Equipment needed: Pair of dumbbells, a jug of water, or other household items.

Diamond Push Ups

Diamond push-ups are going to work your triceps further. By bringing your hands in, you will emphasize the clavicular head of your pectoralis. It will also emphasize the lateral head of your triceps, the outer head. This variation will allow you to feel more in your triceps.

Use the same movements as the basic push up. However, with this push-up variation, you bring your hands in to form a diamond on the floor. From there, lower yourself down to the ground until your chest is touching the floor. Then, raise yourself back up.

Hammer Curls

Just as the name suggests, with hammer curls you will hammer out the long head of your biceps.

This variation of the curl will emphasize the long head of your biceps, which will help add fullness to your arms.

Using a pair of dumbbells or a pair of weighted household items, keep your palms facing each other at thigh height and bring the weights to your shoulders.

Focus on squeezing your bicep muscles during the curl movement. Each repetition should be quick and take no less than two seconds each.

Equipment needed: Pair of dumbbells, a jug of water, or other household items.

High Low Plank Tricep Extension

The high low plant tricep extension is going to engage your core. This emphasizes the long head of your triceps, which will add width and size to your arms. Your core strength is a factor in your capacity to do the exercise smoothly.

Starting in a high plank or push up position, lower your body into a low plank. Throughout the entire motion, your body will not rock left to right.

You will know that you are doing this correctly by both elbows and forearms meeting the ground simultaneously. Your elbows will be pointed out at roughly a 45-degree angle.

Then, push your hands down into the floor and extend and raise both arms up together, raising back into a push-up position. Make sure to squeeze your triceps together during all of your movements.

Flat Curls

Yes, you read that right, another type of curl—we are going to curl and curl and curl some more. We are going to make sure we make those arms scream!

These curls are going to emphasize the short head of your biceps, which gives your arm the peak. These are most likely going to be the most difficult arm exercise for you to perform.

This time, keep your palms facing outward and perform a curl movement. Focus on keeping your upper arms glued to your side, and bring your palms up to your shoulders. Squeeze your arms tight toward your body, and don’t let the weight go.

Equipment needed: Pair of dumbbells, a jug of water, or other household items.

Dips

Dips are another total arm movement that involves a pressing to engages your triceps, deltoid, and pectoralis.

Dips can be done with your feet and hands on several different surfaces to increase or decrease difficulty and core activation, as needed.

An L-sit dip is a great dip to activate your core. To perform an L-sit dip, use two chairs (larger chairs provide more stability, so the larger the better). With one hand on each chair, pick yourself up and kick your legs out.

You are looking to achieve a perfect 90-degree angle with your body. Sink down until your hands are roughly placed in your armpits. Then, press up until your arms are straight once again, all while maintaining the L-sit position to optimize core engagement.

Equipment needed: 2 large chairs.

Concentration Curl

Yes, another curl! This is variation is going to remove any movement from the back of your arm, by bracing it against your leg. Just as the name suggests, you are going to make sure that you focus all of your energy on the bicep (and don’t let yourself cheat).

You will work the biceps evenly when you keep your hands upward facing the ceiling. This curl variation is going to make your arms burn if they aren’t already.

To do a concentration curl, press your triceps against your inner thighs to stop your arm from moving. Then, bring your weight up to your shoulders. Again, focus on squeezing the tricep muscles. Do not rush through your repetitions.

The time that you spend under tension is one of the single most underrated variables when it comes to exercise. By increasing the time under tension, you increase the amount of work that your body has to do.

Equipment needed: Pair of dumbbells, a jug of water, or other household items.

Lateral Push Up

Lateral push-ups are going to make your shoulders do a ton of work. You are removing one of your arms from the motion that you are performing, forcing a deeper more intense burn in your triceps.

For this push-up variation, push your hands out as far as you can reach on both sides of your body. Then, bend one elbow to push your body over toward your elbow, while still keeping the other arm straight. Then go to the other side, contracting your triceps with every repetition.

Zottman Curls

Yes, for our final arm-specific exercise, we are going to do another variation of a curl! The Zottman curl this is going to greatly increase your time under tension.

You are forcing the brachialis to do extra work with the rotation at the top and bottom of the exercise. You will squeeze through the motion, which will force even more of a pump into your arms. These will take any extra energy that you had left in your arms and completely drain it.

Do a traditional curl on the way up and rotate your arms with your pinky finger facing out. Then at the top of the movement, flip the dumbbells over so your pinky is facing in. Then, return the dumbbells down to your thighs. Flip back over and repeat.

Equipment needed: Pair of dumbbells, a jug of water, or other household items.

See more fun workouts and simple exercises to do at home.

The post 10 Do Anywhere Exercises for Strong Arm Muscles appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The triceps muscle is divided into three parts: the lateral, long, and medial heads. As such, developing all three of these parts has functional and aesthetic importance. The primary role of the triceps is to extend the forearm and arm, respectively. Secondly, the triceps serve to decelerate the arm during eccentric loading. Lastly, it is responsible for pulling the arms behind the body and stabilizing them during loaded carries.

I’ve been told often that I’m crazy for teaching my clients how to perform a bench press in concert with training for a push-up or loaded carry. However, the triceps are worked maximally this way and the Tate Press is a great way to start.

The Tate Press

The Tate Press named after Dave Tate and is done on an incline bench for proper positioning. Made popular by powerlifters, these presses help to develop thickness along the medial head of the muscle, promoting pressing power deeper in the hole on a bench press.

This, in the bodybuilding world, is often utilized to build a tie-in with the front of the biceps and helps to separate it from the bicep as well. As seen in the video below, my coracobrachialis is also very active, thus building a more quality arm aesthetic.

1. Begin with grabbing the dumbbells with a neutral grip on your thighs while seated on an incline bench.
2. With a 45 degree to 75-degree angle similar to a standard width push up, place the back of the hand facing you. As you adjust, you should feel the bones and or muscles of the forearm twist. Once settled into position your knuckles should be pointing at you. Imagine giving yourself a double knuckle kiss.
3. Place the weights on your chest—this is your starting position, a stretch should be felt in the inner arm.
4. Initiate the movement from your elbows, not your shoulders as the chest should remain relatively quiet, and extend for 1 to 2 seconds with a peak contraction at the top locking out similar to what you would do on a bench press. Go from chest to slightly more than shoulder-width apart.
5. Reverse the movement by lowering the weight for three seconds, feeling the stretch return on the triceps. If you’re looking in the mirror, the area deep to your bicep should flare up, this is your coracobrachialis. This will feel like a shoulder exercise if your elbows flare from 80 to 90 degrees or if the arms are unconsciously uneven. It is possible to perform this at 80 to 90 degrees, however close proximity to 90 degrees increases the likelihood of irritating the glenohumeral and acromioclavicular joints substantially.

The Fairbairn Press

The Fairbairn Press is named, well, after myself, and is something I came up with during a Grade 2 AC joint separation after a few scrimmages of rugby in undergrad. I desperately wanted to bench press again and work on my weaker of my two arm muscles.

With an unstable shoulder, I couldn’t afford to cause further injury so I looked at the range of motion of the floor press and the standard cable rope triceps extension and jerry-rigged something together.

1. Utilize a cable rope, medium straight bar, or a W-bar (as seen in the video). I personally prefer the W-bar because as I rotate around the axis of my elbow so, too, does the bar. Moreover, without risking hyperextension I can get a better peak contraction.
2. Choose a full grip if you have the wrist and shoulder flexibility—if not, choose to utilize a thumbs-over grip or unfairly coined “suicide” grip.
3. Stand at an angle to the cable machine such that your abs and lats are engaged with bent arms.
4. Extend down and away from you. This should bring you to what imitates the lockout of a bench press or a poorly executed tricep pulldown exercise.
5. Keep your chest up and scapula retracted as you push your elbows behind the body, thusly bending the arms once again. Your rhomboids and deeper rotator cuff muscles will be at work and should remind you of the lower phase of a bench press. This phase ends as you’ll feel a stretch along the medial head of the tricep and a portion of the long head.
6. Push your arms straight forward to return to the previous position. End by bending your arms once again to mimic the starting position.
7. Note: this can be modified to be a kneeling exercise (lighter weights must be used, especially if thoracic extension or core stability is not considered strong). This exercise can be further modified by taking a reverse grip similar to a one-armed reverse grip tricep pressdown/extension exercise.
8. This is technically more taxing because it requires a two-step approach, but it helps to keep you aware during the movement such that the carryover to a bench press is greater. The world-renowned JM press and California press, in my humble opinion, do not have great carry over to the bench press due to positioning and stress but are a great addition to triceps development.

Lift with love my friends!

The post Triceps Training for Pressing Power appeared first on Breaking Muscle.