Home Upper Body Workout (HIIT!)

You’re not always going to have a gym to go to. In fact, you may not even be subscribed to a gym right now! It’s important to have your own personal arsenal of home workouts and exercises. This is a great workout for everybody and anybody! Some people (women especially) choose to ignore strengthening their upper body. And why? We should keep our whole body strong! For this workout, all you need is a pair of light weights and a resistance band. Let’s do it.

Boxing (with 5lb weights) for 1 min

Jamie, the star of our last guest blog post!

Biceps Curls (with whichever weight you can do) for 1 min
Triceps Extensions (with whichever weight you can do) for 1 min
Boxing for 1 min
Rear Delt Flyes for 1 min
Shoulder Press (with whatever weight you can do) for 1 min
Boxing for 1 min
Push-ups for 1 min

Dips for 1 min
Boxing for 1 min
Face pulls for 1 min
Reverse Curls (with whatever weight you can do) for 1 min

Now take a break for crying out loud! Our next and final “set” is going to be faster pace, shorter time, and increased intensity. Try going with some heavier weights than before since you will be doing it for half the time.

Boxing (same 5lb weight) for 30s
Biceps Curls for 30s
Jumping Jacks for 1 min
Triceps Extensions for 30s
Boxing for 30s
Rear delt flyes for 30s

High knees for 1 min
Shoulder Press for 30s
Boxing for 30s
Push-ups for 30s
Quick toes for 1 min
Dips for 30s

Boxing for 30s
Face Pulls for 30s
Jump Rope for 1min
Reverse Curls for 30s

And that, my friends, is a great upper body workout for your muscles and your heart! Jamie and I were sweating and aching by the end of it. This particular upper body workout took us around 40 minutes in total, but you can trim things down or buff them up how you’d like. Make sure you have a reliable timer nearby to count each segment. Try to push yourself through each part even though your muscles are screaming at you. Fight til the end! Do this upper body home workout to stay hungry and fit!

BONUS KITTY PIC

Silly Sajah

Aug022013

15-Minute Upper Body Home Workout

Ever since the completion of the contest, I haven’t done any hardcore or intense workouts. I’ve done some running, yoga, and light weights. I plan to get back to heavy lifting soon, because I miss it! Anyhow, after work one day, I was feeling sluggish and I knew a fast-paced light-weight circuit would give me that pick-me-up and turn on the sweat. All you need are some dumbbells and an elevated surface such as a chair, bench, couch, or bed. Repeat this circuit 3-6x as time allows. Each set is until failure, meaning that your muscles are too tired to complete another rep.

Disclaimer: Pics were taken after the home workout as they are obviously taken in a gym 😛

1. Elevated crunches. Put your legs up on the elevated surface, contract your abs, and crunch. Don’t pull your neck, but use the core to crunch up, creating that contraction and eventual burn of your soon-to-be six-pack. Use weight if you want to challenge yourself further.

2. Concentration curls. Sit down on your bench, chair, couch–whatever it is that you have. Lean your elbow on your leg, bend forward, but keep your shoulders back and curl one at a time. Then switch to other arm.

3. Triceps extension. Grab your dumbbells and stay seated. Lift up your arms and hold your hands behind your head with the weights in them. Lift up vertically until your arms are straight then come down to the bent-arm position behind your head.

4. Shoulder press. Hold dumbbells at shoulder level, so that your body almost looks like a T. Press up and almost touch the weights, then come back to starting position.

Coworker making me laugh…

5. Dips. Use that elevated surface and place your hands on the edge, fingers facing forward. Have your legs out straight and bend the elbows, lowering your body. Then raise up to starting position (do not sit in between).

Again, repeat 3-6x. The more times, the better. This will hit core, biceps, triceps, shoulders, and a little bit of chest. Not a bad upper body workout if you’re short on time. All you need are dumbbells and an elevated surface. Let us know how this goes! Stay strong. Use this workout to stay hungry and fit!

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BONUS KITTY PIC

Teehee, caught sleeping

Oct242012

Work Those Push Muscles: Chest and Triceps Workout

So there are some workout match-ups that tend to be our favorites. One of those favorites is the sweet chest and triceps pair. It’s a great combination and leaves you exhausted afterwards (my arms are very upset with me now that I am typing). So Alana, you’re probably saying, why is it a good combination? Lemme spit some reasons at ya (not literally, come on).

Triceps brachii

1. Convenience: being able to do your chest and triceps at once can really open your workout schedule. This is especially for the people who tend to try to workout every day or every other day. It gives you a few days to work on other muscle groups without worrying about overworking those muscles. Because ultimately, that will lead to injury. And that’s a no-no.

2. Effective: you’re going to get a much better chest and triceps workout if you work them together. If you’re doing it properly, every chest exercise you do will work your triceps a bit and every triceps exercise will work your chest. That’s just how our body works.

3. Power: it makes you feel huge. Think about the strength, effort, and power that goes into benching.

Anyhow, there’s a few reasons for you. Now let’s get to our actual workout. We have a few pictures for you of yours truly.

1. We started out with a super-set (one exercise after the other, no rest) of push-ups and triangle push-ups, working our chest in the first and triceps in the latter. You don’t need any equipment for this, so no excuses! Go until failure.

2. Our next super-set was incline chest press and incline pec fly. This really requires good strength and power (especially chest press). Unforunately, no pictures of us doing this. For chest press, you sit on the inclined bench, and push your arms straight up.

For pec fly, get in the same seated position. But start your arms out, like you’re going to give a tree a hug, and bring inwards (you tree-hugger!).

3. For this we didn’t do a super-set, because we wanted to spot each other for bench press. Personally, I’ve lost a lot of my strength, and can’t bench nearly what I used to (you’ll see low weight in the picture, the bar = 45 lbs). It’s just good to be there and spot for each other to get the weight up and getting help getting it down. We did decline bench press. Go for a good weight and, as usual, go til failure.

4. For our last super-set we combined triceps cable press and double-hand triceps extension. This really killed our triceps (in a good way!). For anyone uncomfortable with triceps exercises, I find that the cable press is an easy pathway to get comfy with working those triceps. You position yourself with the feet shoulder-width apart, facing the cable, and press down the steel triangle or horse rope down and bring your arms back to 90 degrees.

For triceps extension, grab a good weight and place behind your head and do vertical raises.

5. And lastly, to end our muscle workout, we did a cable cross-press. This will get a good pinching burn in your chest and triceps. We juiced out the rest of our strength through these. Always go to the end of your workout. Never stop pushing. Unless you feel sharp pains, THEN STOP. Stand away from the cables, grab each cable in each hand and cross over your hands.

For this entire workout, we did four sets of everything and pushed to failure. It could range from 8 to 100, it’s up to your body and your strength. We ended it with some excellent twenty-minute bouldering where Chris finished a new route that had been challenging him for weeks!

Please let us know if you have any questions! Cheers!