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As we grow older, our arms often reflect the toll of years spent in sedentary positions, repeating the same motions, and gradually adopting poor posture habits. Many people over 50 face challenges with arm strength, largely because of inactivity, repetitive strain injuries, and poor posture. Simply put, the less you move and challenge your arms, the less strength your muscles can develop and maintain. Those with desk jobs are particularly prone to repetitive motion strains, which can impact the nerves in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, eventually leading to muscle weakness and loss of mass. As we age, our posture tends to become more rounded and slumped, compressing the nerves and vascular systems in the arms and further contributing to muscle decline.
Fortunately, there is a straightforward and effective solution to combat these issues. As a fitness coach with expertise in functional strength training, I’ve developed a method to rejuvenate arm strength using nothing more than your kitchen counter. The best part? This revitalizing routine takes just eight minutes of your day.
Why Your Kitchen Counter Beats the Gym for Arm Strength
Eight minutes in the kitchen can be more effective than 30 minutes in the gym for this age group due to the fact that this eight-minute routine is arm-specific. This routine is designed to keep eight minutes of constant time under tension on the various muscles of the arm. This ensures that the arms are being fully stimulated for the entire eight minutes. Oftentimes in the gym, we will spend too much time resting, chatting, or simply not keeping tension on the muscles long enough. In addition, using the towel allows us to work both arms at the same time, but for different muscle groups. This hyper-focusing on maintaining tension on the arms makes this workout more valuable than 30 minutes at the gym.
How to Do Towel Curls and Tricep Extensions
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This exercise works both the biceps and the triceps at the same time. One muscle group provides the resistance for the opposite muscle group. So in this particular case, when you are performing the curl with the right arm, you are working the left tricep extension exercise, and vice versa. This is not only an efficient way to utilize your time, but a very effective way to maintain tension in both muscle groups.
How to Do It:
- Start by grasping the towel in both hands
- Adjust the distance between your hands until you can create what you feel to be an appropriate amount of tension while allowing for a full range of motion on both arms
- Perform a bicep curl with the right hand by thinking about pinching the elbow while resisting that motion with the left arm
- Once you’ve completed the curl with the right arm, try to then straighten the left arm while you resist with the right arm
- Repeat this for 60 continuous seconds while maintaining as much tension as possible in both arms
- After completing the 60 seconds, immediately switch to the other side
Avoid These Mistakes:
- Do not provide too little resistance with the opposite arm
- Do not skip a full range of motion
- Do not let your posture slouch
How to Do the Towel Rotator Cuff Exercise
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How to Do It:
- Begin by gripping the towel in both hands
- Create a 90° angle at your right elbow, then raise your arm up so that your elbow is parallel to your shoulder
- Provide resistance with the left arm as you go into external rotation of the right arm
- This simply means you’re going to have your right palm go from facing the floor to facing the wall in front of you as you rotate your elbow underneath your shoulder in the finished position
- Use the left arm to pull down on the towel and resist with the right arm until you have returned to the beginning position
- Repeat for 60 seconds then immediately switch sides
What You Can Expect in 30 and 60 Days
You could do this routine up to three times a week. Make sure you take at least 1 to 2 days’ rest in between to allow the muscles to grow. You should perform the exercises in order and repeat the circuit twice to get the full eight-minute workout. For beginners, start with just one round or a four-minute workout and build your way up to eight minutes over a 3 to 4 weeks span.
In the first 30 days, you should start to notice not only an increase in strength, but also a vast improvement of the coordination of the exercises. By 60 days, you should have noticed an increase in muscle mass, a general increase in strength, and an improvement in joint health.
TJ Pierce, BS, LMT, CHEK III, ELDOA
