Show of Hands

Turning attention to your hands will bring you both cosmetic and health benefits. From the lofty perspective, hands are a symbol of social and intimate relations, spiritual connection, work, progress and protection. Contemplating all that hands can represent, we can say they are truly a universal metaphor. There’s like a good neighbor, I wanna hold your hand, let’s shake on it, lend me a hand, raise your hand, greasing his palms, blood on her hands, a clenched fist, a gentle caress, stop in the name of love, peek a boo, applause applause, high fives, pointing fingers, all hands in a cheer of team unity. Do we agree? Let’s have a show of hands.

Pick Two Things (& Ten Things): Your Hands (& Fingers)
Hands are one of the most used parts of your body for active everyday living, so the way they feel and the way they look is likely to vary depending on what you do with them. Over time, hands will have seen a lot of sun on top of a lot of action. So they do tend to reveal our age, along with our habits and activities. There are some things you might want to do to help your hands out in the cosmetic department. Then again, not all hands are meant to be models.

Guitar players have beloved calluses on their fingers, for example, and if they play Spanish guitar, they have long nails on the string-plucking hand and short nails on the other. Carpenters and outdoors men tend to have rough hands, with calluses on the palms. You can tell the difference when you shake a rock climbers hand versus a pianists hand. People without a lot of body fat might have rather veiny hands, especially as they get older and their skin thins; while people with extra body fat might have plump hands with hardly any lines at all. All that falls in the range of good and fine, but for those who want to go a bit further, I do have a couple of ideas that can help anyone along with the appearance of their hands.

Handy Suggestions
~My sister in law donned those big yellow gloves for washing dishes and other harsher household chores for years. We’re the same age, but her hands look way better than mine.

~ My friend swears by cuticle oil. In fact, she is addicted to it. It became a self-care ritual for her to use cuticle oil to soften and push back her cuticles, and then to moisturize and give gleam to her nails. Gotta admit, she has nice looking, handsomely groomed nails that even a truck driver could benefit from.

~ If you put lotion with sunscreen on your face each day as prevention, why not rub it on your hands, too? If you have a nighttime anti-aging routine for your face, you could use that on your hands as well.

~ Quit biting your nails and biting your skin. One great way to break the habit is to start taking care of your hands. With the soft skin and cuticle oil and lotion tricks mentioned above, you’ll find that it’s nice to look down and see good hands, instead stubby ragged ones. I used a mental tricks to help me quit. First, every time I caught myself biting my nails or skin, I stopped, rested my hands in my lap and thought, “hands, be still, be cool.”

That was what I wanted to feel and how I wanted to look, so it worked to remind me of what my intentions were. I kept thinking how bad it looked if I were caught gnawing away at my hands, say… in a waiting room for a job interview, or by a cute guy from across the room (I was young and single then). It really worked.

The Hand You’re Dealt
Can you improve your hands in any way besides cosmetically? Sure you can, at least a little.

~ You can strengthen your grip and squeeze strength. Functional movements will do this to a certain extent, as in tennis players and roofers tend to have strong hands. But simple gripping and squeezing exercises will work for those wanting something extra. Say, you want to register your hands as lethal weapons. Or you want to rip a deck of cards in half. Check out a training forum specifically for strong hands (and forearms, because those are related): http://www.bccorefitness.com/seriouslystronghands.html

~ You can increase the agility and quickness of your hands, too. Again, practice makes perfect. Take up guitar or piano or a woodwind instrument like clarinet or flute. You’ll get better at it the better your hands get at moving about quickly in a relatively small span of space and time.

~ Artsy endeavors beyond music will also help you with your hands. Hair braiding can encourage hand finesse, as can crocheting and knitting, paper crafting, oil painting, and calligraphy.

~ How about court reporters and data entry personnel? Them are fast hands. Learning to type and typing often helps keep your finger joints fluid.

On the other hand, there’s that darn repetitive motion syndrome to consider. And good ole arthritis. Joint pain, swelling, numbness, vascular constriction—all of these are the unfortunate symptoms of the dark side of having skilled and active hands.

Helping Hands
~ I started taking a couple of triple strength glucosamine and chondroitin tablets, once a day, a few years ago, and my hands are VERY much better off for it. I had early onset (in my 40s) of arthritis pain, stiffness and swelling in my knuckles and thumb joints, to the point where waking up some mornings I looked like I had been the product of a human/lobster mating. The glucosamine might not have tons of university research proving its effectiveness in humans, but it definitely works for dogs, and for me, so if you (or your dogs) suffer, maybe give it a try.

~ I also recently began supplementing with daily digestive enzymes. For digestion aid, mostly, but in particular I wanted to be more efficient in digesting proteins. And now, I’m certain I am. The addition of bromelein and papain further relieved my joint and hand pain (and my wrists, and knees and neck feel better too, by the way) to the point of I hardly remember that I have this arthritis to deal with. (Except I still stink at tennis.)

I now recover from my workouts better and feel better in my tummy when I eat extra protein. All good. I can’t vouch for these things medically, as I’m not a doctor, but I can tell you they help me. Enough to make me want to learn more about how and why and what else we can do with natural enzymes at our fingertips.

Here’s a book that leads to a list of others that I’ll be checking out in the next year: http://www.amazon.com/Enzymes-Digestive-Health-Nutritional-Wealth/dp/0972591869

In the meantime, put your hands in your own good hands. Pamper them a little, or pump them up, or both. They help you hold on to all good things in your life.

You're In The Arms-ies Now

I love when people start to get into their arms, because it’s easy for me to help them make a plan and help them see results. Plus, I like arms. I like guys’ forearms enough to have apparently steered my younger dating life toward only guitar players. Married one, too. (I didn’t marry Keith Urban, I’m just sayin’ he’s got nice forearms. Like my husband.)


In girls, I really dig shoulders, but who can resist a strong-armed woman ala
“Yes We Can”? Arms and a working bandana?

Sign me up.

Everyone can answer the call to arms with relative ease. Although, please note that not everyone gets dealt the cards for wonderfully-defined arms. You have no control over the insertion points of your muscles, so if your biceps are an inch longer than the guy next to you, you can do the same workouts and drink the same shakes all you like, but his muscles might still be shorter/rounder, and thus have more bulge.

Same is true if you carry extra body fat in the arms—ladies, this point is for you. Some women will never have the defined triceps they have long admired in Madonna,

or their yoga instructor,


or boxer Laila Ali (yep, that Ali).

Not because their arms can’t make it past Olive Oyl,but because in the end, the shapes of our bodies do depend on several factors, not the least of which is special locations of fat cell storage and body type and muscle fiber type distribution and on and on.
Now, never mind all that. There is PLENTY you can do with your arms to help them be all that they can be. And you should do plenty, because the results always show and they look so good. I’ve polled a bunch of fitness-minded friends and found out what they like about arms, how they prefer to take care of their arm strengthening and shaping, and I’ve added a few of my own favorite approaches as well.

If you Pick One Thing and that Thing is Your Arms…

I suggest you select simple, accessible mix of exercises that you can repeat a few times a week. Get real good at them. Take a couple of “before” pictures, flexing, from different angles, too. Get some shadows on those arms. When you see the difference, oh, say as soon as six or eight weeks from now, you’ll realize it, clear as anything: Your arms are hot. So here’s a laundry list of ideas for the care and keeping of your arms, and why that might be important to you. Take those flexy pics and go.

“I've been having fun with ropes workouts lately … been doing a little something at least once a week … great for the arms, and really seem to do a number on the wrists & forearms which I've always had a hard time figuring out a way to work….Right now I'm focused on whole body compound movements for the most part, but I still like to tack on a little extra arm work at the end. The usual 'Guy Stuff' like curls, dips, tri kickbacks etc. Pull ups and chin ups too, all different grips to hit different parts equally.”

“I'm a sucker for pushups. I like doing them, I like being able to do them, and I like my arms (and chest) from them. I like them with my feet elevated, with just one arm elevated on a medicine ball... I also like my slosh tube and inverted shoulder presses.

“Triceps dips, skull crushers, hammer curls and pull ups are some of my favorites...really anything that gives me the results I am looking for I have a thing for great arms and shoulders…it is usually the first thing I notice when I look at someone”

“My favorites: rows, deadlifts and chest presses. These three have helped me build stronger and leaner arms. Compound movements…My favorite part of my arms on me is my forearms. I have popping veins in them now.” (that's girl talk, by the way)

“Lateral shoulder raises, military shoulder press, and triceps dips (whether for dip bars or bench [weighted on a bench though]. I got to play on TRX ropes today, and the dips from those were amazing. I think hammer curls are fun vanity exercises, for what it's worth.”

“My favorite arm exercises are hammer curls and one arm triceps extensions (on a cable machine) and bench presses, which also mess with the triceps. My (and my wife’s) favorite arm parts are my forearms. Though the hammer curls and other curling exercises aid my forearms, a continued diet of regular and reverse wrist curls (both of which are my least favorite arm exercise) are what keeps them the way they are.”

“I do military press & deadlift but it's not until I do about 150 - 200 push ups every other day that I start noticing how much firmer and defined my triceps & biceps are. Think the best workouts for me (body weight - no equipment) are Intense Push Ups and Chin Ups or Pull Ups. With equipment: Push Press or Military Presses, and Bench Press (although since I do Push Ups, I don't do this anymore).”

“I like Push ups, Dips, Plank Ups, Dive Bomber Push ups and Pike Presses...do 'em every day...in some form or another.”

“It took my trainer months, maybe a year, to make me forget about my arms and just do compound movements. She promised me my arms would not get smaller. A couple years later after mostly compound movements, my arms are a lot stronger. I can't say they bulked up or anything. But I just recently decided to try arm exercises again and I'm way ahead of where I left off a couple years ago on arm exercises. So I am a huge proponent of compound, functional lifts in place of isolation exercises. Arms, legs, shoulders - doesn't matter. I like compound best.”

“Here is one isolation exercise I can vouch for. It is a rotational exercise for the forearms. So many forearm exercises are curls. These are not curls. I discovered this while doing rehab work for bicep tendonitis. It happened to do very good things to my forearms. This is a movement that doesn't get much work in compound exercises. It also does a lot to strengthen the muscles that are attached to the tendons leading to the biceps.”

“Weighted tricep dips, military press, tricep pushups (ouch). Also yoga. Dolphin = amazing. And, I never use a supermarket trolley: take a basket every time, carry it round the store, carry your groceries to the car, etc. Your arms will love you for it!”

From Faith: Add to the above shopping basket tip—carrying around babies does some great things to baby-mama arms, that’s for sure.

And, although I don’t do it, I admire rowing as a sport and wish I had those skills. And arms. One thing that I always think of high rows and low rows--I do a lot on the TRX straps and those row movements (along with tri presses) are so killer with body weight hanging out there like that. However, I was just thinking of a rowing machine as well. Don’t have access to one, but functionally, people who row…well, they have such great bodies, and their arms are beautiful.

These pics are from the World Rowing Network site and US Olympic site...now let's get to work.