As we age, our arms often bear the brunt of decades spent sitting at desks, repeating the same motions day after day, and gradually slumping into poor posture. The common arm strength challenges people over 50 face are largely due to a lack of activity, repetitive motion strains, and poor posture. A lack of activity speaks for itself. Essentially, the less you move your arms, the less opportunity the muscles have to build and maintain strength. Repetitive motion strains are common, especially for people with desk jobs. These repetitive strains can often affect the nerves of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. This decreased functioning of the nerve can, in turn, lead to a loss of muscle mass and strength. Lastly, as we age, we tend to get more of a rounded or slumped posture. This posture can compress the nerves and vascular system of the arms, again leading to weakness and a general loss of muscle mass and strength. As a fitness coach specializing in functional strength training, I’ve developed a solution that addresses all these challenges. The good news? You can rebuild that arm strength right at your kitchen counter—and it only takes 8 minutes.
Why Your Kitchen Counter Beats the Gym for Arm Strength
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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
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
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
TJ Pierce is the Owner, Head Therapist, and Certified Fitness Coach at Pierce Family Wellness, specializing in pain-free movement and performance. Read more about TJ
