Arm Toning Exercises

A lot of women and men have been asking me about what exercises best help tone the arms, especially targeting the under arms and the biceps, so guess what? This article is going to discuss not only the exercises but the entire strategy for toning up your arms.

Before I get into the exercises one of the most important points to touch upon is that spot reducing with exercises is pretty much ineffective. You can’t tell your body to specifically tone and reduce fat in a certain area, although trust me I would be helping my clients with targeting the lower abs, thighs and arms almost 90% of the time.

That being said weight training does help with generation of muscle and in turn some reduction of fat in most areas of our body. For men this is much easier to accomplish especially since most are not worried about gaining too much size in their arms. Women, on the other hand are a little more concerned about gaining too much muscle and size as they generally are trying to avoid the bulky look.

But the most important thing to tie this all together is the diet component. You aren’t going to lose fat by exercise alone, the diet is more than half the battle and unfortunately we can’t tell our body to target a specific area. What we can do is reduce our overall body fat by eating leaner and if in the case of women who don’t want to gain size they can really keep the calories low.

The thing is that it’s not that easy to pack on muscle as much as most people think it can. Just cause you lift weights doesn’t mean you will become huge and bulky, you also have to be eating tons of calories (especially protein) to help achieve this. So the easy suggestion is for men focus on the protein (definitely whey protein powder) and for the women, focus on smaller meals but more frequent spread throughout the day to keep your metabolism high.

One other way to help reduce the amount of muscle you put on is by doing extra cardio. Cardio has the great ability to keep your body burning calories especially when done at an intense level, hence why I recommend high intensity interval training for pretty much all my clients when fat loss is an objective.

But enough of that, let’s get into the arm toning exercises.

Try one of these twice a week as part of your workout routine and remember for toning we want to go higher reps in the 12-14 area and high sets at about 4 sets for each exercise.

Arm Toning Exercises #1
Biceps Curl with dumbbells (view exercise)
Rope pushdown with pulley (view exercise)
Cable hammer curl (view exercise)
Tricep extensions with dumbbells (view exercise)
Incline dumbbell curls (view exercise)
Push ups with hands close together (view exercise)

Arm Toning Exercises #2
Biceps Curl with barbell (view exercise)
Triceps extension with ezbar aka skullcrushers (view exercise)
Hammer curl cross body (view exercise)
Cable one arm pull down (view exercise)
Bicep curls facing bench (view exercise)
Dips (view exercise)

Recommended Supplements for Arm Toning Exercises

Getting lean toned arms takes a great diet, and supplementation can definitely help speed up your progress. Try these most recommended supplements:

Whey Protein for Lean Muscle Production (Try: Platinum Hydrowhey Cookies & Cream)
Thermogenic Fat Burner (Try: USPlabs OxyELITE Pro)
Fish Oil Omega’s for Optimal Energy & Focus (Try: NOW Ultra Omega-3)
Sports Drink for Motivation & Maximum Force (Try: USPLabs Jack3d)
BCAA’s for Muscle Recovery (Try: Superior Amino 2222)