It is time for another Exercise of the Week to increase your overall body health. This week I will focus on the tricep, the muscle directly opposite the bicep located on the underside of the arm. This exercise is sometimes called tricep dips. This is a compound exercise that uses more than one joint/muscle to do properly. You are going to need a dip machine or dip bars to elevate yourself and do this exercise correctly. But once that is taken care of here is how you perform this exercise:
- Stand between the dip bars and firmly grasp each with your arms.
- Push yourself up off the ground and make sure your arms are straight.
- Now slowly lower yourself while still holding the bars until your upper arm is at a 90 degree angle from the forearm. Be sure to keep your torso upright and your triceps close to your body to better focus the work on your triceps. Now, push up until your arms are straight again. Repeat as necessary and be sure to inhale on the way down and exhale on the way up.
- Optional: If you are looking to increase the challenge, you can use a weight belt and add extra weight to it as necessary.
This is one of the best ways to work out your triceps and is great fun to do. For the sake of wellness, remember to stay hydrated!
Fitness, Fitness Tips
body health, tricep dips, tricep exercise, wellness
Healthy living and staying fit is important to many people. We want to take care of ourselves and improve our physique. In this series of posts I will be recommending exercises and workouts that could help you reach your goals. This week I will be focusing on a bicep exercise called concentration curls. This is known as an isolation exercise, which means you only use one joint or one muscle group to perform the exercise.
This is how you perform concentration curls:
- Sit on the edge of a chair or bench and lean slightly forward. Make sure your arm is fully extended with the dumbbell grasped in your hand and brace your elbow on your leg. (Your palm should be facing you.)
- Once you are ready, slowly and carefully curl your arm toward you; this is where the “concentration” comes from. Once you reach the top of the curl hold for 1 full second then slowly bring it down. You must not use any other part of that arm to lift but if you must, you can use your free hand to finish a rep.
- Do that for as many reps as recommended and in as many sets as recommended for one arm.
- Switch to the other arm and repeat.
This is an excellent exercise for building strength and increasing the mass of your bicep. Remember, for the sake of wellness always keep yourself hydrated and do not overexert yourself!
Fitness, Fitness Tips, Health
concentration curls, exercises, healthy living, wellness
This past week, for the first time in almost ten years, I started indoor rock climbing again. As you can imagine there is a lot of grabbing onto rocks and climbing up dozens of feet to reach the top. Getting into it again after so long a time away from it was, needless to say, quite the wake up call. Regardless, it was still fun to do.
In the rock gym I go to there are two types of rock climbing: bouldering and belaying. Bouldering requires a person to climb without the safety of a rope. Belaying uses a rope to stop a potential fall and requires some training to participate in. Since I was comfortable with bouldering I decided to do that. Much like swimming, rock climbing is a total body workout. Not only does it work out your forearms – in fact, my forearms are still sore from Saturday’s excursion – it works out other parts of your arms, your legs, your core and back. Besides gripping the handholds you are also pushing and pulling yourself thereby working out your biceps and triceps. Since you have to keep a careful and firm footing with your legs and occasionally push yourself off a wall, you are working your entire leg structure. By pulling yourself up and close to the wall, as well as manipulating your body to traverse it, you are building your back and core strength. Not to mention, your are building muscle and doing major cardio work.
Besides the obvious workout rock climbing offers, it is just plain fun! When climbing be sure to have a partner available to spot you and keep you safe.
Fitness, Health
belaying, bouldering, cardio, rock climbing, total body workout, workout
