Quick Fit with Cassy

- Hi there, I'm Cassy Vieth, and this is Quick Fit , your place to stretch, strengthen, and relieve pain.

The muscles of your upper arms and upper back work together to keep your spine erect and allow for good heart and lung function.

Arms that appear toned are the added bonus.

Have a chair handy and get ready to feel great.

[upbeat music] Stand nice and tall.

Have a good, wide base with your feet and just lift those arms up higher than your heart.

Big inhale, [inhales] lengthen through your spine.

And now let's stretch the arms towards the back.

Okay, those muscles on the front of your shoulders get tight and they tend to add to the poor posture by constantly pulling you forward.

So let's do another one.

Inhale, [inhales] exhale, turning away.

[exhales] Enjoy that.

Other arm, lift.

[inhales and exhales] Open the chest.

Resist the urge to follow.

Okay, open that chest.

One more, two arms.

Lift and hold it open, pulling your arms back a little further than your chest if you can.

All right, two arms up.

Let's bend at the wrists, fingers up, and do some nice, tight circles.

Okay, small, small, small.

And each time, think about bringing your arms further to the back or it'll be easy for you to start getting closer and closer forward, but don't; open the chest.

Okay, so we're doing two things at once.

We're stretching as well as strengthening.

Now let's go the other way, small, tight circles, and you can control these circles better if you tighten all the muscles from your hands to your shoulders; do that by bending the wrists, extending the elbows all the way.

I see a lot of not completely opened arms when I teach classes, so have the arms straight out from your shoulders, look and see.

All right, tight circles, reverse.

All right, keep it going, keep it going.

Now we're going to press down and imagine that there's something pushing up against your arms and you have to tighten your muscles to press to create force, to press against it.

As long as you don't have any pain anywhere, use force as you do these workouts.

Now, if you're experiencing some pain or spasm or something that just doesn't feel good, you're just going to go through the moves without force.

Just real gently.

All right, now let's press to the back and I'd like you to activate your back muscles.

Squeeze those shoulder blades together to pull the arms back, back, back.

Maybe lift your arms up a little higher.

Maybe they've started to drop or go too far towards the front.

And remember, this is about stretching, using the upper back muscles to pull the arms back.

At the same time, lift your chest.

Are you standing saggy?

Also, take care that you don't the head forward, okay?

That's not what we want.

Keep circling.

And I know your arms and shoulders are starting to get tired.

That's by design.

Keep it going.

Keep it going.

Circles, circle backs.

Circle back.

Good, press it down again.

[exhales] And if you started to notice that your heart rate's getting a little higher or your breathing's coming a little faster, that's okay.

Take a deeper breath.

[inhales] Take a longer exhale.

We need to supply oxygen to all these working muscles.

Now I'm gonna turn sideways and I'm gonna show you.

I'm gonna adjust my stance a little, slight forward hinge at the hips.

Bring those elbows back.

And now extend your arms all the way.

Now I don't want you to be hunched over, okay?

Being in a comfortable position.

Stomach's in, arms are behind you.

All right, without moving your elbows, bend your elbows, but don't drop them.

Okay, stretch.

We're not just stretching.

We're actually pressing with force.

If you want a little extra challenge, you can have some dumbbells in your arm, in your hands to work your arms a little more.

Threes are really, really effective because of all the repetitions we've been doing.

Press, maybe a couple of soup cans.

It doesn't have to cost you any money.

Just add a little more resistance.

But the key is to really squeeze your muscles.

And if you don't feel like you can tell if you're squeezing your muscles, you can take your other hand and push against them and see if those muscles are engaged.

That'll help reconnect the muscles with your brain.

Press, all right, lift, lift, lift, lift.

Keep it going.

[inhales] It doesn't take a lot of weight, but a lot of easy repetitions.

These exercises aren't hard, they're easy.

All right, now together, together.

[inhales and exhales] Exhale.

Keep it going.

You can see that you can easily do these exercises every day.

Just a simple routine to strengthen those weak upper arms and saggy, the saggy muscles of the upper arm.

Okay, lift, lift, lift.

All right, and shake it off.

Next, we're gonna use the chair.

So just have a seat handy and have one hand supporting your body and the other arm, reach it over the chair back.

This is where we start working your upper back.

Lift, lift.

Maybe you have to start from here.

That's okay.

Try to get the arm off and then try to get it as high as you can without twisting.

Okay, [inhales] lift and lift.

Now, press it down.

Can you feel those muscles in your upper back activate?

Now lift.

You might find that one easier.

Lift and lift, one more time.

Press, press, down, down, down, down, and lift, lift.

Now if your hamstrings or your legs are feeling funny or your back, adjust your stance.

Lift, lift, and lift.

All right, stand up, shake it off.

And we'll get to the other arm.

One hand on the seat.

The other arm is extended, stomach's in.

Lift, as high as you can.

Lift, lift, and down.

[exhales] Inhale.

[inhales] Lift, lift, lift, lift, couple more.

And then we're going to press that arm down into your seat, and you can feel these muscles activate.

You can feel your lats, your shoulder blade.

Stomach's in [exhales] and lift, lift, lift.

One more time, we'll press it down into the chair back.

All right, release and lift, lift, lift, and down.

Let's just round your back, release some of that tension that we just created.

[inhales and exhales] All right, so now we're going to sit, so.

Make sure you have a chair with no wheels, hopefully no arms.

It just gives you a little bit more room to move.

And I'd like you just to start with sitting forward on the chair and having your knees fairly wide, and press your wrists right down against the top of your thighs or against your knees.

And what this is going to do is it activates your lats and your triceps.

So the muscles down through here in your back that connect up behind your armpit and the back of your upper arm, your triceps.

And that's the target area for today.

So by pressing down, squeeze those shoulder blades together, press your shoulders down.

It's going to activate them, even if you can't feel it.

It'll take a few weeks before you start really feeling that you have control over those muscles, but you'll get it.

And it'll be really, really a good feeling when you finally realize that you have control over those muscles.

Okay, release, shoulders up, sit up tall, press down.

It's as if you're pressing and kind of pulling towards you.

Press it down, press it down.

Press.

I know that area behind the armpit is a real sore spot for women.

They always ask me what they can do about it.

All right.

Round your shoulders just to relieve some of that tension.

Push.

All right.

All right, hands on your seat.

First thing we're going to do is stretch your legs out just a little bit.

Not too far.

Don't have your ankles too far forward of your knee.

I want you to lift through your chest, put your weight on your hands, and just try to lift your hips off the seat.

Remember, you can use your feet to help you get your hind end up off the chair.

So we're just gonna hold it here.

We don't have to do repetitions to strengthen your arms for this.

Now, if you're struggling to hold your hips off the seat, you can do reps. You can drop and lift, drop and lift.

But if you can hold, then hold it.

I know some of you too, just don't have the shoulders or the length of the arms or something to actually get your hips off the seat.

And that's okay, don't feel bad.

I've seen it a lot, but just push down through your arms and that will activate your muscles.

And that's what we're looking for.

All right, let's change it a little bit.

Put your hands more towards the corner, front corner of the chair, scoot your feet out a little further.

And if the hold above the chair, you felt comfortable, then try this.

If not, do the hold again.

But if you felt comfortable with the hold and you want more of a challenge, let's scoot your weight out off the front of the seat and just do a little dip.

Don't go very far.

Don't let your shoulders get lower than your elbows.

Press, press until those elbows are straight.

And down.

Lift through the chest, [inhales and exhales] dip off the front of the seat.

Lift.

Now remember, you can use your feet to help by pushing through your legs.

All right, the further away you get your legs, the more your arms have to do.

So find what the challenging point for yourself.

Don't give up and say it's too hard.

Find a modification.

But if that modification's too easy, do something harder.

I like to try to offer something for everybody.

All right, we're gonna scoot back onto the seat, shake it off just a little bit.

[inhales] Hands once again, closer to the back of the seat, and hold your weight up.

Now, your arms are probably either tired or waking up.

If they're super tired, keep your feet like this.

If you feel like, "Hmm, I almost feel stronger," then stretch your legs out, lift through the chest, and hold.

[inhales and exhales] Some of you will have muscles that will be so happy to be doing work.

And some of them are gonna need a little bit more convincing.

That's okay.

[inhales and exhales] It won't take long, and they'll be super happy that you found them again.

Ah, all right.

Really stretch that out.

Shake it out.

And now I'd like you to take your left arm, just mirror me and cross it across your body.

Good.

Take your other hand and behind the elbow, pull that across.

Inhale, [inhales] exhale.

[exhales] That's really nice.

It feels good.

Lift the shoulder and press it down.

You can feel that all the way through your back.

Let's do the other side, bring it across, reach just above the elbow, and pull.

Inhale, [inhales and exhales] exhale.

Good.

Lift the shoulder up, press it down.

All right, one arm up.

[inhales] Let the hand drop behind the neck.

Keeping that elbow up to the ceiling.

Reach across if you can, and gently pull.

[exhales] Inhale, [inhales] lift the chin, lift the chest.

[exhales] And one more time.

Other arm up, [inhales] I hope you are sitting tall, even though we're almost done and we're stretching.

Lift the chin, lift the chest.

Can you believe that time is up already?

That's because you were having fun, right?

Of course you were!

So just hit replay and enjoy it all over again.

That's the beauty of following along online here at pbswisconsin.org/quickfit where my goal is to keep you loose, strong, and pain-free because life is movement.