Upper Body Blast // Arm Workouts for Brides

Written with love, by Nikki Lian

When we’re out of time and ideas to maintain a good fitness routine, sometimes we prioritize our cardio exercises and abdominal workout.  If this is you, chances are your upper body isn’t getting the attention it needs.  The majority of my clients come to me wanting to strengthen their upper body and get that shapely-arm look so they can feel confident in their sleeveless tops.   Here are some easy, anywhere upper body movements you can add to your workout to tone those triceps, biceps and shoulders so you can look great in your strapless gown!

1. Bicep Curls into A Shoulder Press

Start off with lighter weight dumbbells and work your way up.  Stand with your feet shoulder width apart holding your weights palms up.  Curl both weights at the same time, and then press the weights over your head.  Bring the weights back down to your sides.  Repeat 12-15 times.  This is actually a compound exercise.  So if you already do these two exercises in your arm routine, put them together for more of a challenge.  It also helps to get your heart rate up and move your workout along faster when you’re pressed for time.

2.  Walk Outs with A Push-Up

Start with your feet shoulder with apart.  Squat and walk your hands out into a plank.  Once you are in a straight-armed plank position, do the greatest push-up you can possibly do.  If it’s all the way to the floor--fantastic!  If it’s a decent, half-pushup, you’re doing great!  Once you complete your pushup, walk your hands all the way back to your feet and stand up straight.  Repeat 10 times at your own pace.

3.  Shoulder Crosses

Again, start off with a lighter weight on this one.  5 lbs can get heavy really fast when you’re working on your shoulders.  Holding a dumbbell face down in each hand with your arms straightened, raise your arms shoulder level.  Keeping your arms straight and palms down and shoulder-level, bring them out to the side.  Once your arms are out to the side, reverse the movement until your arms are back down to your sides again.  Repeat 8-10 times at your own pace.

4.  Weight Jacks

Using 3-5 pound weights, simple do jumping jacks while you’re hold the weights.  However, keep your arms slightly bent and control the movement.  This is important because if you let your arms flail around with weights in your hand you may hurt yourself.  You can alternate this exercise with one of the exercises above.

When you are trying to tone up, it’s best to do higher repetitions with lighter weights.  I would recommend 3 sets of each exercise at 12-15 reps.  If your arms are lagging and you really want to step it up a notch, you can use any of these exercises and incorporate them in any of your fitness routines.  Bring some weights along on a hike, do them when you wake up in the morning or before you go to bed at night, or before or after your ab routine!!

When exercise feels like Mount Everest...

Written with love, by Nikki Lian

I was inspired to write this blog by one of my amazing clients that has been with me for four years.  She has overcome a lot of hurdles since we have been working together.  Once down almost 50 pounds, an absolute tragedy in her life occurred and she lost someone she was extremely close to too soon.  That caused her to gain all of her weight back in a matter of a month, and although this happened over two years ago, she still struggles with getting back on track.

She has a full time job, is a full time grad student as well as a full time fiancé.  She always has good energy that she brings to her workouts, and has a long term goal of getting pregnant by next October.  We’ve both discussed that in order for her to avoid risks such as gestational diabetes, she needs to lose about 70-80 pounds within the next year. 

This seems like Mount Everest. 

A lot of you have long-term goals, such as your wedding may be in six months or a year, and you want to be in the greatest shape of your life and look your absolute best.  Long-term goals may work great for some people, but as my client and I discussed, we need to make shorter term goals to climb that mountain. 

Every week my client comes in and says “Oh I have this idea.  I’m gonna juice for 5 days to jumpstart my diet!” or “I’m using this app to track my workouts!” and by the time I see her again her idea for getting started has flopped in a day.  So in our last I finally got through to her. 

She started to tell me that she got a great deal on a Hawaiian vacation, and that she really wanted to do a certain hike while she was out there.  Her vacation is in August.  Perfect.  Here is a short-term goal we can definitely work with.  Knowing her habits, I made another suggestion.

“Why don’t you start with trying to get to the gym twice this week.  Twice, besides this session.  Get an hour of a workout in.”

This is her very short-term goal.  How can someone lose 80 pounds if meeting with their trainer once a week is the only workout they get?

So we agreed upon shortening up her goals.  Short-term goals are not as intimidating!!  We are all running the marathon of life, and it is definitely not a sprint.  We are overwhelmed by a lot of other aspects in our life, so why try to overwhelm ourselves with something we should be enjoying—like exercising or being able to finish a hike?

Here are a few examples of some short, as well as very short-term goal ideas to make your journey up the mountain a little bit easier:

1.  Cutting out the soda/fast food/anything you are consuming that you need to stop:

A perfect example of very short term goals are cutting out, let’s say, soda.  For someone who drinks three cans of soda a day, you can’t just tell them to stop drinking soda.  Start with going down to two cans a day per week.  Then maybe a can, then maybe a can every other day.  Obviously this is going to take will power and consistency, but will definitely be easier than stopping cold turkey a habit that you’ve been used to most of your life.

2. Find a race: 

We’re not talking Ninja Warrior here (unless you are at that fitness level).  There are 5/10ks all the time, Color runs, Spartan races—that will take place before the top of the mountain.  Join one with a friend, and know you have to be in a certain shape to finish that race!  That may be a considered a short term goal.  And when you are finished with that one, plan another!

3.  Running a mile in under 15 minutes: 

Again, maybe you can do this already, which is fantastic.  But maybe you can’t, and this is something you’d like to work toward.  Maybe you can only do the stair climber for 5 minutes and you want to increase your time.  Make that goal of hitting 10, 15 and then 20 minutes, and it will happen.

4.  Exercise Frequency: 

Have you joined a gym recently but haven’t been able to go, whether it is because you are too busy, too intimidated or just too exhausted?  Just like my client agreed with, start with twice a week for a half hour or so.  Then maybe three times a week, and then four.  You’ll start to feel changes in your body, and want to keep up.  Eventually, the length of your workouts will change as well, and time will all of a sudden become available.

When you complete a very-short term goal you feel a sense of accomplishment.  If you slip up, you’re not falling very far and it’s easier to get right back up and continue.  You’re also less likely to lose your momentum before you reach the peak of the mountain. 

Can't find your abs? Try out a new routine!

Written with love, by Nikki Lian

My number one complaint from clients --

“My arms and legs are getting buff, but my belly is still there” or “I’ve been working out so hard…where’s my flat stomach?” 

My response is usually somewhere along the lines of “Okay.  What exactly have you been eating?”  Having fab abs starts in the kitchen!!  Eating right, staying away from refined sugar, eating fresh, non-processed food and veggies,  and drinking enough water are a few things you have to add to your routine.  Once you’ve conquered that, you will start to see results.

When you come to the understanding that crunches aren’t going to get you far if your eating is not intact, then you can start analyzing your workouts.  If you’re getting bored with your same old ab routine, here are a few exercises that can be added or can replace the ones in your workout:

Ball Exchange

Lie flat on your back with a stability ball between your ankles.  Keeping your legs straight and lift them up (while holding the ball) and grab the ball with your hands.  While the ball is in your hands, extend your arms above your head while bringing your straightened legs an inch above the floor. 

Lifting your legs again, grab the ball from your hands with your ankles.  This is a difficult exercise and does some serious work on your lower abs, so start out with as many as you can do and work your way up.

Crunches

Ahhh good old crunches.  With your feet flat on the floor, knees bent and hands behind your head, lift your abdomen up toward the ceiling, keeping your elbows back. Then lower back down to the ground. 

After you do 20 repetitions, keeping them together, swing your knees to one side, and continue to lift your abs toward the ceiling.  When you finish 20 reps on one side you can finish up your crunches on the other. 

Alphabets

Lying on your back and keeping your legs straight, pretend as if your legs are a marker or pen and write out the alphabet with your legs, keeping your feet off the floor.  This is another difficult one, so try A-M first, rest, and then N-Z.

Sit Ups with Punches

With your feet flat on the floor and a weight in each hand (3-5lbs is sufficient), do a full sit up and punch with each hand off to the side (right arm punches over to the left side, left arm punches to the right side) so you get a full range of motion on your obliques.  Think like Rocky!!  Sit up, punch, punch, back down.  Remember to punch to the side and not straight forward so you can get that twist in.

Kickboxing + Boxing

If you can get ahold of a heavy bag, boxing is a great full body workout.  Why do boxers have such great abs? Because they can burn up to 1000 calories in an hour right on the bag.  When you’re punching, a majority of your power is coming from your legs and abs, so you’re getting those body parts in as well.  If your gym has heavy bags, then it most likely has a group fitness boxing or kickboxing class.  You can explore a few of those and then make up your own routine!

It’s hard to see the first thing you want to go be the last!  Be patient, and keep changing up your routine so you don’t get bored.  And remember, getting the stomach you want isn’t about doing crunches all day.  This routine should be supplemented with a healthy diet, a full workout routine, and plenty of cardio and rest.

Good luck on your ab quest!