Build your arm muscle strength through the practice of yoga poses. We all want nice toned arms, practicing these regularly will give you just that!
Yoga’s weight-bearing poses are a great way to tone your biceps and triceps for strong, sleek arms.
Unlike weight lifting, which tends to contract and shorten muscles, creating a bulkier look, yoga develops a long, defined and fluid physique through isometric poses that activate muscles while maintaining their length. This kind of resistance work encourages lean, toned arms.
The triceps, biceps and deltoids are the most visual muscles in the arms. Biceps run along the front of the upper arms and help you bend your elbow; triceps run along the back of the upper arms and help extend the elbow; and deltoids, the outer layer of the upper arms, allow you to lift your arms to the side, front and back, as well as rotate them inward and outward.
Here are some yoga poses that are great for arm workouts for you and are also great fun to do with your children! Getting children involved in yoga with you is a great way to bond and enjoy something you can both do and benefit from.
Downward Dog:
Benefit: Releases stiffness in the shoulder joints and slows the heart rate. It rejuvenates the brain cells and invigorates the brain by relieving fatigue.
How to do it: We start this posture from all fours. We press firmly down into all of our fingers and keep our arms strong and shoulders away from our ears. We push our heels down into the floor and remember to keep lifting our bottoms towards the ceiling whilst keeping our arms and legs strong. Our neck is soft at all times and we look back between our ankles. We can choose to do a lamppost dog, taking all of our weight on one leg whilst lifting the other. We must always remember to do both legs, as balanced yoga dogs would.
Aeroplane:
Benefit: strengthens arms, wrists, shoulders, torso and thighs.
How to do it: The best way to approach this posture is from the dog pose. We place the outside of our left foot on the floor and bring the right leg over, while raising the right arm towards the ceiling and turning (when balanced) to look up at it. Repeat this on the other side.
Dolphin:
Benefit: strengthens the upper arm muscles and releases tightness in the shoulders.
How to do it: This pose can be modified with bent knees. We begin on all fours and then bend out elbows bringing them to the floor. We interlace our fingers and take a breath in, we prepare to do a gentle dice forwards towards our hands and as we breathe out, we lower our body down to the floor. We might dive through the waves.
Hare:
Benefit: Good release in the shoulders and restful in the lower back area.
How to do it: This position starts in the same way as mouse, with our bottom on our heels, our arms by our sides and our forehead down. Now we interlace our fingers behind our back and bring our arms over towards the floor in front of us (like the ears of a hare).
Plank:
Benefit: Excellent for the core stabilising muscles of the abdomen and lower back. This is a very strong posture, which also makes us feel really strong.
How to do it: We start on all fours and then stretch our legs out straight so that we feel the weight between our hands and our feet with our toes curled underneath us. We feel our tummies and our legs working very hard, and our wrists and arms getting stronger.
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