Quick at home circuit for the Upper Body

Today I have put together a quick at home circuit for the upper body (last week I posted one for the Lower body) that you can do from the comfort of your own warm home, for those times when you just don’t want to leave the house to make it to the gym or to head out for a nice long run or walk.

You can do all of the exercises without any special equipment, other than a towel for the towel curls and something heavy from your pantry (canned food or full milk bottles) for the overhead press and side raises, so what are you waiting for?

Perform each exercise 15 times (each side for single arm exercises), before moving on to the next exercise, take a 1 minute water break after each circuit (take 2-3 minutes if you are struggling) and complete the full circuit three times – it should take you approximately 20-25 minutes depending on how long you take for water breaks.

Push-ups – There are many variations of the push-up, we will start with the standard ‘female’ push-up on your knees – If you find these too easy move into the full push-up on your toes – and if this is too easy raise your feet slightly to perform the push-up (put them on a step, ledge or even a book – anything slightly raised that you won’t slip off). Complete 15 push-ups of whatever style push-up you are doing, take a short break if you can’t do the full 15 to begin with. If you find the push-up on your knees too difficult, perform it against a wall, your hands will be on the wall in the push-up position, feet slightly away from the wall and lean in towards the wall then push away from the wall.

Tricep Dips  – Perform the tricep dips against a chair, put your hands on the edge of the chair and dip your body weight downwards. Begin with your legs in a 90 degree angle as pictured and lower yourself down as far as it feels comfortable. If this is too easy take your legs out straight in front of you and perform the dip.

Head to your pantry and grab something that is easy to hold on to but not too heavy (sauce containers, salt and pepper shakers (so long as they won’t spill everywhere – you don’t want to be cleaning up after your workout) tin cans) – you will need two items to make sure they are similar size and weight – if you can’t find anything just perform the movement without the weight as you don’t need a lot of weight for these to be affective. To perform the Side Raise, you are simply raising and lowering your arms out to the side – as you reach the top of the movement your pinky fingers should be facing upwards slightly and thumb slightly down, make it a nice controlled slow movement and don’t rush this one, you can do both arms at once which speeds up the workout.

For the Overhead Press you also want to grab something out of your pantry, you can use the same item you had before or milk containers filled up with water (or milk if they are full) work quite well for this exercise as well – you could also use a dining room chair if you want something heavier – hold it by either two of the legs or underneath so the legs are hanging down around you when in the starting position (make sure it isn’t going to hit either the roof or yourself during the movement first though please!). You are simply standing with your feet shoulder width apart, lift your arms up to shoulder height with your palm facing either forward or towards your face (whatever is easier depending on what you are using as your weight in this instance) and then pushing both arms up towards the sky until they are relatively straight up (we don’t want your arms locking out so keep an ever so slight bend in your arms) then come back down, complete 15 of these.

Next we have Arm Circles which are exactly what they sound like and will work on your shoulders. Simply stand with your feet shoulder width apart and arms out to the side and then make circles with your arms. Complete 15 going one direction and then stop and reverse the direction of the circles and complete 15 the other way. If these are too easy for you grab the weight you were using for the overhead press and side raises and hold these while doing the arm circles. Keep the movement nice and controlled and don’t go super quickly.

Towel Curls – Hold a towel either around your knee as pictured, under your hamstring or under your foot (depending on the length of your towel). Curl your arms upwards with a little bit of force on the towel with your foot or knee for resistance, your arms should come to roughly 90 degree and then lower back down again.

There we have it, a quick easy at home workout you can perform without any special equipment! I might even do a quick workout for the core as well if there is interest for it.

I’d love to know what you think about the exercises if you give them a go, please do come back and leave a comment 🙂