Arms (Triceps/Biceps)

I am going to finish up this series of exercise descriptions with arms, before moving on to help you put together your first workout plan. I have split up arms into two categories: triceps and biceps. Let's begin with triceps. 

The first and best exercise I suggest for triceps is dips. This is the "pull up" of triceps. Brace your body on two parallel bars by locking your arms and allowing your feet to hang loose below you. You may use the assist machine if this exercise is too difficult to preform at first.

Lower your body by letting your arms slowly bend until your upper arms are parallel to the ground as seen above. Try not to let your body move or angle to the front too much. Dips are a great burnout exercise.

Push downs are the exercise seen above. They are a form of triceps extension and work very well with a rope handle. Keep all of your body still and do not rock back and forth while pushing the rope down. Also, keep your elbows stationary and bend your hands out to the side as you push down (also seen above). Your feet should be kept about shoulder length apart as usual.

The last triceps exercise is called a skull crusher. The name makes it sound a lot scarier than it is. As you can see above, the beginning to this exercise is almost identical to that of the bench press. The difference is that the grip is narrower (about shoulder width or even a little narrower). To preform this exercise, lower the weight slowly down to right above your head (behind it if you want to make it more difficult). Keep your elbows in and stationary during this exercise or you will be wasting your time.

Lets move on to biceps exercises. The first of these two bicep exercises is the reverse grip curl. Start by holding the bar as you would at the end of a dead lift but with a little narrower grip (palms facing towards you). Then, to preform the exercise, lift the bar by bending your arms until you've full flexed your biceps. Note: do not rest the bar on your wrists by bending them as seen in the picture above. You want the stress on your biceps at all times. While a great exercise for your biceps, this exercise also works your forearms a great deal. Make sure to, again, keep your elbows stationary and do not rock your body at all.

 The last of these exercises is the traditional curl (palms face the opposite way as reverse curls). Curls are commonly wasted by using sloppy form. Don't use sloppy form. Just like the reverse curl, keep your elbows stationary, don't rock your body and lift the bar until your arm is fully flexed. When brining the bar back down after each rep, do not fully extend your arm so as to maintain constant stress on your muscles.

I hope these arm exercises will come in handy as you begin to feel more comfortable with the other muscle groups and want to add more to your workouts.