Strong and muscular arms are every man’s desire, aren’t they? Even without the rest
of your body ripped, you look immediately handsome with those sculpted biceps and triceps.
Not to mention that arm strength helps a lot in everyday activities too! But what if I
told you that you could get your arms beefed up at home with just some pushups?
Now, before we proceed to the training itself, it’s important to understand how pushups
work. In general, they are perceived as chest exercise, targeting pectorals and shoulders
the most. However, pushups are much more versatile than that — it only depends on how you do
them. Performed correctly, they are beneficial almost for your entire body: abs, back muscles,
neck, and of course, arms. All you have to do is keep the right form to avoid injury
and improve your results. Today’s pushup workout will focus on making
your biceps, triceps, and shoulder muscles bulkier and more sculpted, and you’ll achieve
that in just 10 minutes a day. So let’s get started!
1. Standard pushups We’ll begin with the classic just to get
you pumped up for the workout and used to keeping the correct form.
To perform standard pushups, get into the plank position: put your palms firmly on the
floor so that your hands are directly under your shoulders. Keep your arms straight, propping
your entire upper body on them. At the same time, straighten your legs behind you and
prop them up on your toes. Your body should form a straight line from the neck down, with
your neck neutral and your core tense. Now start lowering your body by bending your
arms at the elbows. The movement should be slow and controlled. As soon as your chest
touches the floor, push yourself back up in the same manner. Don’t let your lower back
sag to the floor, it could result in back pain!
Do 3 sets of 5 reps for the first time. Trust me, that will be enough if you’re new to
this exercise. Just make sure that the rest between sets is no more than 10 seconds. Also,
if you find it too hard to do pushups from the plank position, try propping your lower
body on your knees — it’ll reduce the weight you have to lift off the ground.
2. Diamond pushups Now let’s get to those beefy arms already!
This pushup variation has a pretty name and pretty good results if you want to target
your biceps. Prop yourself in the standard plank position
and bring your hands closer together. Spread your fingers apart so that your thumbs and
index fingers make the shape of a diamond (hence the name). Now start lowering your
body to the floor. Once again, keep your back straight and only work with your arms. You
should feel the tension in both your biceps and triceps, along with your shoulders and
chest. As you go down, make sure your elbows are
parallel to your body, not pointed outwards. This way, your biceps will work harder. Try
to touch your chest to your fingers, and then go back up the same way.
Do 3 sets of 3 reps for this exercise, again resting no more than 10 seconds in-between.
It’s an advanced technique, and for an unprepared person, it might just be too tough to do more.
3. Pushups with reversed hands Now this one is a real challenge, but it will
target your biceps like nothing else. It might be a good idea to start with the knee-propped
plank from scratch because it can be super hard for a beginner. So you’ve been warned!
Stand in the initial pushup position and move your hands lower down your body, aligned with
somewhere around your mid-back. Now reverse your hands so that your fingers look at your
toes. If you’ve managed not to drop to the floor at this, you’re already doing great
job! Lower your body by bending your elbows and
tucking them to your sides. Once you nearly touch the floor with your chest, push yourself
up. With this exercise, the number of reps is
irrelevant, so just do 3 sets of as many reps as you can until you fail. Don’t worry if
it’s just a few — as you train and do it regularly, your strength and stamina will
increase, letting you do more and more reps with each try. And because of its intensity,
you’ll see your biceps and triceps grow like there’s no tomorrow!
4. Single-leg pushups This kind of pushups will not only target
your arms, chest, and back, but also improve your coordination and balance. Don’t sway!
Get into the standard plank position, stretch your legs behind you and put your hands directly
below your shoulders. Now slightly raise one foot off the ground and then do a pushup.
Upon going up, try not to wobble, and raise yourself in a steady, controlled movement.
When you’re back to the plank, switch the foot and repeat a pushup. Continue switching
feet like this with each rep. This variation makes the load on your arms
even greater thanks to the need to balance yourself. And if you want to increase the
work of your biceps and triceps, move your hands closer together, kinda combining the
exercise with diamond pushups. Do 3 sets of as many reps as you can and give
yourself a bit of well-deserved rest after you’re done!
5. Gorilla pushups Ever wanted to legitimately repeat that signature
King Kong move? Well, you’ve got it! Gorilla pushups are full of bursting feral power,
so imagine you’re a ferocious primate and get down to it!
As usual, get into the plank position with your body straight as an arrow. Now, this
is the only exercise where you don’t need to be slow — quite the contrary, in fact.
Quickly drop down to the floor and then use your arms to explode upwards and lift your
upper body off the ground. While in the air, slap your hands on your chest and put them
back down fast so as not to fall. Feeling like Monkey King yet?
This explosive exercise helps increase burst power of your arms and shoulders. Again, do
3 sets until failure. At first, you may want to give yourself a break and do no more than
3 5 reps, but as you grow in strength, make sure you do more reps too. This won’t let
your muscles get used to the workload and continue growing.
And that’s it! These 5 exercises each take no more than a minute of your time, and give
yourself another minute between them to rest — so in total, you’ll get 10 minutes a
day. Do this workout three or four times a week, giving your body a rest every other
day so that your muscles have time to grow. Also, this is kinda obvious, but still don’t
forget that proper eating is one of the key factors in building muscle mass. So if you
want your biceps big and bulky, eat more protein-rich foods like eggs, almonds (don’t be too hard
on these, though), cottage cheese, and chicken breast. Reducing your carbs intake also helps
a lot, so ditch that chocolate bar and replace it with some nuts instead.
And if you want even faster results, combine the pushups with other exercises targeting
your arm muscles. For biceps, the most effective ones are bicep curls with dumbbells and barbell
raises: they directly work these muscles, making them firm and rounded. For more prominent
triceps, try doing bench dips and dumbbell floor press.
As for your shoulders, there are dumbbell lateral and front raises as well as dumbbell
incline row. It’s important to mention that shoulders are probably the hardest to target
separately because different exercises work different shoulder muscle sections. So to
get nice and rounded shoulders, you’ll need to target each of those sections specifically.
And last but not least, don’t forget that there are two types of muscle mass you can
build: lean and bulky. If you want to stay lean, make your strength exercise routine
low-resistance, with many repetitions, and combine it with aerobic training to burn fat.
This approach will give you a slim figure without bulking muscles of a bodybuilder.
If big muscles are exactly what you aim for, though, you should do the exact opposite:
short sets of high-resistance exercises. Take heavier weights, for example, and perform
as many reps as you can, but make sure you physically can’t do more than 12 at a time.
Also, don’t forget to eat properly and mind your calorie intake.
So do you know of other short and effective workouts for big and strong arms? Share them
down in the comments! If you learned something new today, then give this video a like and
share it with a friend.
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