Get your body right series: How towel exercise can help tone arms
In the second week of the Get Your Body Right series we concentrate on the upper body to help you get toned arms and better posture.
Strength Training
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A simple push up can do a world of good for your chest, shoulders and arms, but experts warn 90 per cent of people are doing it with the wrong technique.
After last week concentrating on the legs and learning about the benefits of squats, the second instalment of the six-week Get Your Body Right series is all about the upper body.
And it can be revealed a simple towel can be used in your routine to tone your arms, get stronger and have better posture.
It’s outlined in the workout routine below created by exercise scientists Deb Lawrence and Bill Dooley.
Rick Martin, strength and conditioning co-ordinator at Bond University’s High Performance Training Centre in Queensland, said push ups were a great exercise to do from home as they worked your deltoid, tricep and pectoral muscles as well as your core.
There were also many variations to make it easy or harder, he said.
“It’s a very good chest exercise to strengthen the chest and tricep muscles and it’s very simple to modify if someone can’t do it using their full body weight on the floor,” he said.
“Definitely one of the best exercises for someone to start at home.”
But he said nine out of 10 people he saw usually did push ups wrong.
This included arching the lower back, letting the belly sag down, flaring out the elbows and not having the chin in the right position.
“You need to make sure it’s done properly by keeping the elbows in by your side, you should keep them at a 45 degree angle, and don’t drop your chin,” he said.
“You should also make sure you’re not dipping in the lower back.”
Mr Martin warned it was important to also prioritise a pulling exercise to go with push ups to make sure you didn’t get a rounded back and bad posture.
“You want to be balanced, you want to make sure that if you are doing a chest exercise then you do a back exercise to balance it out,” he said.
“You’ll find a lot of guys in gyms these days do bench presses and push ups and they do a predominance of pushing exercises and not enough pulling exercises to balance that out.
“The consequence of this is it affects your posture, you get those rounded shoulders because the chest muscles become very tight.
“You want to strengthen the chest, strengthen the back and do some flexibility exercises as well.”
Ms Lawrence said a towel was a great household item to help you do a seated row – which involves pulling as opposed to pushing – to achieve that balance.
“You get a nice bit of forearm strength from gripping the towel, but you can really feel your biceps working as well as your upper back,” she said.
“It’s a really great thing to use a towel when you don’t have anything at home.”
She said it was important to prioritise upper body strength because arms were so important for daily tasks.
“So simply getting out of a chair, carrying our groceries inside the house,” she said.
Week two workout:
WALK:
After last week doing 4000 steps, aim for 5000, or 30 minutes of walking per day when factoring in your other incidental exercise.
UPPER BODY EXERCISES:
BEGINNER: 8 to 12 repetitions
INTERMEDIATE: 20 repetitions
ADVANCED: Go beyond until fatigued
DIPS
For beginners: Find a step and sit on the floor with your back to it. Have your feet on the ground with your legs bent and tucked in. Push through your arms and lift and hold. Then lower your arms back down again. To make it harder, straighten your legs and repeat.
If you want a harder version: Put a chair up against a wall. Sit on it and hold on to the edge of the seat or the handles of the chair and bend your legs at 90 degrees. Drop down and push up again with your elbows angled backwards.
PUSH UP
For beginners: Stand at arm’s length from a wall facing it. Put your hands against it. Get up onto your tiptoes. While chest proud, slowly bring yourself towards the wall by bending your arms, then slowly push away, remaining on your toes the whole time. To make it more difficult take a further step away and do it from that distance.
If you want a harder version: Fold a towel and lay it on the floor to protect your knees. For the easiest version, get on your hands and knees and drop your weight into your arms. Your hips can remain up the whole time. Lower down slowly and then lift back up.
To progress it, move your arms further away from your knees and come forward with your upper body, keeping it as straight as possible. Lower down to the floor with your elbows at 45 degrees and then slowly push back up.
For an advanced version: Move up onto your toes into a plank position, keeping a straight line with your body. Go as close as you can to the floor, then push back up slowly with your knees off the entire time and your hips remaining flat with your torso.
SEATED ROW (TOWEL VERSION)
Sit on the floor with your back against a wall. Have your legs slightly bent and hook the towel over your feet. Go chest proud and pull the towel back while squeezing your shoulder blades. Keep squeezing and holding for 30 seconds, then rest and repeat.
LYING SHOULDER RAISE
Lie down – on the floor or your bed – face down and have your arms bent out in a W position. Then squeeze your shoulder blades together and lift your arms parallel to the ground. Hold the lift. Then lower and relax. Repeat.
WRIST EXERCISE
You can use a broom or mop handle. A small water bottle or can of soup from the pantry is also fine. Start with your arms out in front holding the object like in the photo. Then dip one hand down. Squeeze back with the other so the weight of the object is in that arm. Then swap positions. You can do up to 40 repetitions because these muscles are quite strong.
MOBILITY
WRIST FLEXION
Hold your wrist out in front and bend it up and then down both ways. Repeat 20 times on each hand.
Then hold one hand out again and bend it to the right and left, or laterally, 20 times.
Lastly rotate your wrists in circles clockwise and anticlockwise 20 times.
SHOULDER ROTATIONS WITH LOW HANDS
Stand up and have your hands done by your side facing inward. Then rotate your shoulders out, opening out your chest, with your hands facing outwards and slightly behind your body. Keep your shoulders down. Repeat 20 times to help your shoulders and posture.
Who are our experts?
Deb Lawrence is an experienced exercise scientist and sports scientist at Kieser in Melbourne. She is passionate about strength longevity, injury prevention and loves sports like futsal, hockey and soccer.
Bill Dooley is a clinical exercise scientist, which he says is just a fancy way of saying he helps people with exercise. His interest is in helping people to exercise for the first time at any age, or helping people get back into exercise later in life.
FOLLOW ALONG
Respected journalist Anthony Dowsley followed last week’s workout plan as he trains for his upcoming trek of Machu Picchu. This is how he found it.
Was it Rod Stewart who sang the first squat is the deepest?
I may have that lyric a little wrong, but my first week of the Get Your Body Right series took me places I haven’t been for a long time.
I hate leg exercises almost as much as core exercises like sit-ups.
The issue is that I find them boring and a bit painful. I’d much prefer going for a walk or jog.
But I know the benefits of working to strengthen my legs will be critical in getting me fit enough to trek the Inca Trail, which winds through the Andes to one of the world’s great sights, Machu Picchu.
So for the past week I’ve been doing squats, calf raises, leg swings, step-ups, ankle rolls and the ever painful wall sit.
I incorporate it into my daily walk-jog in the morning, mostly around Melbourne’s iconic Tan track.
It’s a steady start of 12 repetitions of each exercise in sets of two.
The pay-off?
A much easier climb at another Melbourne go-to destination – the Kokoda Track Memorial Walk.
Also known as the 1000 Steps, it is one of Melbourne’s most popular bush walks and is just 35km east of Melbourne.
Not only did the exercises help me climb the steps alongside intrepid reporter Ashley Argoon, (who kept yelling at me to keep going), I felt a lot more stable on the walk back down.
Next up …
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Originally published as Get your body right series: How towel exercise can help tone arms
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