All posts tagged: upper

Strengthen your upper body with just a resistance band and this trainer’s five exercises

Strengthen your upper body with just a resistance band and this trainer’s five exercises

Don’t have room for a set of weights at home? Try resistance bands instead. These versatile training tools allow you to build muscle from the comfort of your home but can be easily stored away. What’s more, in our investigations into resistance bands vs weights, we found that you can actually achieve similar strength gains with either tool.   Personal trainer Andrew Watkinson of Fitagain has put this workout together exclusively for Fit&Well, which uses a looped resistance band. Beginners should opt for a lighter resistance band when they do it, but you can increase the challenge with a heavier option if you need to.  If you’re looking for a full-body routine, try our full-body resistance band workout instead, or check out our resistance band leg workout, to build lower-body strength. Andrew Watkinson Social Links Navigation Personal Trainer Andrew Watkinson is a Master PT with a level 4 back care qualification. He’s also the founder of Fitagain, the only dedicated personal training gym in Devon, UK.  Upper-body resistance band workout Front raises 3×12 Chest Press 3×12 Single-arm …

Sculpt and strengthen your upper body in 10 minutes with this super-efficient four-move dumbbell routine

Sculpt and strengthen your upper body in 10 minutes with this super-efficient four-move dumbbell routine

Don’t have much time to work out? Never fear. Trainers Mr. and Mrs. Muscle have perfected the art of squeezing an intense workout into a short space of time.  Their workouts use the super-efficient format of high-intensity resistance training (HIRT), which features quick bursts of focused strength work interspersed with short periods of rest.  Working to a timer instead of a rep count means you can push yourself on each round before you move on to the next exercise. Just remember to keep perfect form with each move, even when you’re doing them quickly.  You’ll need some dumbbells to do the routine. You might find that you need a heavier set for certain moves, and a lighter option for others. Have a look at our guide to the best adjustable dumbbells, if you need a compact multi-weight tool to use in routines like this one.  How to do the workout Box row to bear hold 3-4×30 seconds Rotating chest press 3-4×30 seconds Tricep kickback ight row to front raise 3-4×30 seconds  Tricep kickback 3-4×30 seconds …

A trainer reveals how to train like Jessica Alba to build core stability and strengthen your upper body

A trainer reveals how to train like Jessica Alba to build core stability and strengthen your upper body

Jessica Alba is no stranger to training hard, recently giving Instagram fans a sneak peek into her fully-stocked home gym by sharing one of the rigorous workouts.  But most of us (celebs aside) don’t have a gym’s worth of equipment in our house. So I set Trainer Academy expert Domenic Angelino a challenge: Design an Alba-inspired dumbbell workout for Fit&Well readers to try at home.  Like Alba’s session, his workout focuses on strengthening your shoulders and back, but it uses minimal equipment. It also includes plenty of core stability work, which Angelino says is a consistent feature of the Fantastic Four star’s training.  The Jessica Alba workout 1. Warm-up (Image credit: Getty / Vgajic) Get your blood pumping with a brisk walk. This can be done on a treadmill or outside. Immediately after the walk, run at a slow, comfortable pace for two-and-a-half minutes.  You may also want to take a look at some of the dynamic stretches in our warm-up feature to prime your muscles for the moves ahead.   2. Dumbbell Pendlay row …

Try Roxanne Russell’s new kettlebell workout and tone your abs and upper body in just 30 minutes

Try Roxanne Russell’s new kettlebell workout and tone your abs and upper body in just 30 minutes

We’re big fans of Roxanne Russell at Fit&Well. Also known as Workout with Roxanne on YouTube and Instagram, she regularly posts accessible, fun workouts that take just over half an hour. This new kettlebell routine from the certified trainer will challenge your abs and upper body. It’s made up of a series of supersets, which means that you’ll be working on opposing muscle groups with little to no rest in between.  You can watch the video below and work out alongside Roxanne as she completes the 30 minute session. The trainer also includes a warm-up and cool-down section, which will boost your mobility and keep you feeling limber. How to do the workout The workout alternates between 60 seconds of upper-body strength exercises and 30 seconds of ab exercises, which is followed by 30 seconds of rest.  “The exercises throughout this session target the chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps and abs,” writes Russell in the caption of her workout video. “This workout is targeted at an intermediate level kettlebell user, but can be manageable for …

Four stretches you need to try if tension in your upper back and shoulders is bothering you

Four stretches you need to try if tension in your upper back and shoulders is bothering you

Most of us spend more time than we realize holding tension in our shoulders and upper body. If you try to relax your shoulders now, you may notice that you are hunching them up towards your ears without noticing. If you work a desk job then you might be even more prone to aches and pains in your upper body, especially if you’re hunched over your laptop or computer for long periods of time. The best antidote to desk job niggles is some targeted stretching and mobility work. Stretching your muscles will help you relax them, especially if they’re tight, while improving your mobility through dynamic movements will protect your joints and keep you feeling limber.  Yoga teacher Mara Cimatoribus has shared a simple routine to help you do this. All you need to do it is a resistance band for the side bends, but you can also use a towel for this. Watch Maria Cimatoribus’ upper-body stretching routine Practice each move for around 10 to 15 seconds, breathing in and out slowly to help …

Rubbing testosterone gel on men’s upper arms eliminates the audience effect, study finds

Rubbing testosterone gel on men’s upper arms eliminates the audience effect, study finds

An experimental study conducted on healthy young men found that applying 150 mg of testosterone gel to their upper arms eliminated their strategic prosocial behavior, which is the tendency to act more prosocially when observed by others. The paper was published in Neuropsychopharmacology. Prosocial behavior refers to voluntary actions that are intended to benefit or help others, often without direct personal gain. It encompasses a wide range of activities, such as sharing, comforting, rescuing, and cooperating. It is motivated by empathy, moral principles, or a desire to comply with social norms. Prosocial behavior plays a crucial role in fostering positive social interactions, strengthening community bonds, and promoting social harmony. It is considered a fundamental aspect of human social life and is generally encouraged and rewarded in various cultural, educational, and organizational settings. However, humans often exhibit more prosocial behavior when they are observed by others. This phenomenon, demonstrated across various social behaviors including blood donations and charitable contributions, is known as the audience effect. From an evolutionary perspective, making one’s generosity visible to others is …

Russia Regains Upper Hand in Ukraine’s East as Kyiv’s Troops Flag

Russia Regains Upper Hand in Ukraine’s East as Kyiv’s Troops Flag

The Ukrainian soldier stared at the Russian tank. It was destroyed over a year ago in the country’s east and now sat far from the front line. He shrugged and cut into its rusted hull with a gas torch. The soldier was not there for the tank’s engine or turret or treads. Those had already been salvaged. He was there for its thick armor. The metal would be cut and strapped as protection to Ukrainian armored personnel carriers defending the embattled town of Avdiivka, around 65 miles away. The need to cannibalize a destroyed Russian vehicle to help protect Ukraine’s dwindling supply of equipment underscores Kyiv’s current challenges on the battlefield as it prepares for another year of pitched combat. “If our international partners moved faster, we would have kicked their ass in the first three or four months so hard that we would have gotten over it already. We’d be sowing fields and raising children,” said the soldier, who went by the call sign Jaeger, in keeping with military protocol. “We’d be sending bread …

US weather service warns travelers as upper midwest hit by freezing weather | US weather

Snow, freezing rain and high winds are hitting the northern plains and upper midwest states, with the National Weather Service warning that “blizzard conditions for central South Dakota into parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado [are] resulting in difficult to near impossible travel” soon after Christmas. Parts of South Dakota were expected to receive up to 13in of snow, with wind gusts as high as 55 mph, according to the weather forecasting agency. The conditions affecting more than a million people could last through early Wednesday, forecasters said. Four inches of snow had fallen in parts of Nebraska and South Dakota by early Tuesday, the day after Christmas, with some towns in south-eastern South Dakota already receiving up to 1ft of snow, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). A blizzard warning affecting 583,000 people was issued in parts of five states – Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. A separate ice storm advisory was also sent to almost half a million more people. The South Dakota department of transportation said that …

Has Putin got the upper hand in Ukraine? – podcast | World news

This summer, hopes were high that Ukraine could use western weapons to claim back big cities, liberate hundreds of miles of territory and maybe even cut off Russian forces inside the country. That has not happened. Instead the war’s progress has slowed to an agonising pace. Drones mean both sides have impressive intelligence of what their enemies are doing and breakthroughs are hard to come by. And the world’s attention being on the Middle East is a dangerous situation for Ukraine – will it lose the financial support of its western backers, such as the US? The possible re-election of Donald Trump, who is thought to be even less keen on financing Ukrainian efforts, is looming. But, Luke Harding tells Michael Safi, morale is still surprisingly high in Ukraine. And counting them out now would be a mistake. Photograph: Kateryna Klochko/EPA Support The Guardian The Guardian is editorially independent. And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all. But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work. Support The Guardian Source …

The pre-seed market is recovering, but investors increasingly have the upper hand

The pre-seed market is recovering, but investors increasingly have the upper hand

While it’s often held that the early-stage investing market has generally fared better in this funding slowdown of the last 18 months or so, things haven’t actually been very good for pre-seed startups trying to raise money. Thankfully, it appears the pre-seed market is starting to recover, per new data from Carta, which provides cap table management software for startups. More: 5 founders discuss why SAFEs are better for early-stage and bridge rounds The news is not all good, though — for founders, at least. The data indicates investor-friendly terms are becoming more common, which is not entirely unexpected. As the venture market has cooled and investors became pickier, founders have found it more difficult to bargain for clean term sheets or aggressive valuations. So, what can founders expect if they’re looking to raise their first round of capital these days? Let’s find out. Shameless plug: The Builders stage at Disrupt this year is going to have a lot of related material on fundraising and scaling startups. Come hang out! The good, the bad, the …