How to Beat the Depression over Your Flabby Arms

What you need is a sure-fire way to conquer “Flabby Arm Depression.”

You don’t have to have flabby arms. Why should other women have tight, toned arms while YOU get stuck with flabby arms?

It’s time to take action and change your mindset. As a former personal trainer, one of the most striking phenomena I’ve ever noticed is that women with flabby arms almost always—more like universally—did two things at the gym:

• Used much lighter weight than they were capable of
• Did not push hard

The formula for getting rid of flabby arms, and the depression that comes with them, is as follows:

• Embrace the idea of getting STRONG. Have you ever seen a woman with strong but flabby arms? I know I haven’t.

I don’t mean overweight arms that have hidden muscle. I mean truly flabby, mushy and shapeless arms.

Compare the big arms of a typical overweight shopper at Walmart with those of someone who does powerlifting at a gym. BIG DIFFERENCE.

• Understand that getting strong doesn’t necessarily mean getting huge muscles. The woman below is deadlifting an impressive amount of weight but has lean toned arms without an ounce of flab.

Deadlift. Shutterstock/sportpoint

• Welcome the idea of pushing very hard in your workouts, learning to love the burning of fatigued muscles.

• Focus on compound exercises rather than isolation exercises.

• Stop underestimating how much you can lift. Are you still folding up like an accordion for bench dips despite having been doing these for six months?

• The amount of weight should allow you to complete at least eight reps but not more than 12. If you can do more than 12, the weight is too light.

Best Chest Exercise for Beating Arm Flab and Depression.

Shutterstock/Depositphotos.com

• Bench press. I rarely see women doing the bench press. I’m guessing this is because they’re afraid of getting big muscles.

Why is this? Is it because the bench press is considered the king of upper body exercises and is used by men to compare their strength?

• Start benching, ladies. Of the small number of women I’ve ever seen bench pressing, quite a few had a tentative approach to it, almost as though they were intimidated.

• I’ve seen young women requiring a man to hover over them and spot them for bench pressing JUST the Olympic bar (which is only 45 pounds).

Shutterstock/nazarovsergey

They ended up pressing it like 15 times, so obviously, the bar wasn’t too heavy, so what was with the tentativeness and the hovering man? See the next point!

• Do not fear bench pressing. Make this exercise your best friend. It will obliterate arm flab. I have yet to see a woman who’s bench pressing 95 pounds with flabby arms.

Best Back Exercise for Flabby Arms

• I rarely see women using an Olympic bar for the deadlift. Many women who deadlift use the pre-weighted, shorter barbells.

• Sticking to the pre-weighted, short barbells encourages women NOT to increase the weight, because if they want to use a heavier, pre-weighted barbell, they must remove it from the rack where they are usually kept.

If it’s high up on the rack, they won’t want to struggle with the removal.

• Thus, I advise you to abandon the pre-weighted barbell rack and head to the squat rack and work with the Olympic bar, where you can load it with ease while it rests on a platform.

• And what’s with the 45 pound deadlifts anyways? I’ll see women doing scads of reps using light barbells.

• To tighten and tone and shape the arms, you must work heavy. There’s no way around it.

• I have never seen a woman with flabby arms deadlifting 135 pounds. Every woman I’ve ever seen deadlifting 135 pounds (like four in the past two years) had tight, toned arms.

Some of these arms may have been “overweight” or “heavy,” BUT … they had that firm, trained look, not that doughy, shapeless Walmart look.

• Though the deadlift is considered a back exercise, you can’t work your middle back without using your arms.