Upper Body Strength & Mobility Workout | SilverSneakers

Improving strength and mobility in your upper body will help to prevent injuries, improve functional ability in daily activities and recreational pursuits, help with your balance and coordination, and may even improve bone density. You can do these exercises seated or standing. If you're just starting an exercise routine, lighter weights work well as you learn the exercise technique and see how you feel. The last four repetitions should feel challenging and doable. Increase your weight as you get stronger. All right, let's get going. For our workout, we'll be alternating between upper body mobility without weights and the exercise with weights. So if you choose a seated position, you might like to have a second chair that you can have your weights on top of to make the transition a little bit easier for you. Whatever you choose, if you're seated, sit forward in your chair. We all have our chest up nice and tall and we'll roll our shoulders up, back and down. Do that again. Up, back and down. Two more times. We'll come up. Ah, big shoulder roll. One more time. And then let's roll back with the right shoulder and the left shoulder. Maybe start turning your heart to the right and your heart to the left. Lift your elbow when you feel like you're ready for that. I'm going to make my arm even a little bit bigger. Takes the work out of the shoulder and into the torso. Last one. Now turn your palms to me, bend at the elbow, come up to your shoulder and down and then rotate out. We'll come up, down and rotate in. So this gets us ready for our first weighted exercise, which will be for biceps. There's a nice rotation here through the elbow right here and the shoulder just a little bit and then we'll lift and release. All right, last time. One more in each direction. And then we'll release all the way down. Reset posture and grab weights that would be appropriate for you for some bicep exercises. Roll your shoulders back and down. Turn your palms to me. We'll lift up halfway and then release all the way down and then come all the way up to your shoulders and all the way down. So we'll do that again. Halfway up, release, all the way up, all the way down. So with this exercise, we want to engage our back muscles to keep our chest up nice and tall and we want to stay strong through the wrists. We'll only do two more. Release all the way down. Turn your palms in. I always like to reset my posture and then we'll put the weights down in the chair. The next exercise, we'll start by lifting our elbows up and down and then just roll your right shoulder back. Come back to center. Elbows lift up and down and then we'll lift left elbow back. Lift up, down, right shoulder, up, down, left shoulder. All right, one more time. Each little movement that we have here, relax through the shoulders and I'm going to roll back on the left. All right, so grab weights that are appropriate for you. I'm going to go with my lighter weights, I think, on this one. So again, standing tall, reset posture. I'm going to bend my elbows 90 degrees, palms are facing one another, thumbs are up, and we'll take our elbows out to the sides, release down, rotate palms up and open out, keeping your elbows in by your sides, thumbs up. Rotate, lift, release, rotate palms up and then out and in. There, you got it. Lift, lower, rotate, out and in. We'll just do two more sets. Take it easy on the range of motion. All right, this is the last one. We'll come out and in and then release the arms all the way down and you go ahead and put your weights in the chair. Next exercise, we're going to add a hip hinge. So if you're seated, you might want to be on the corner of your chair, feet are a comfortable distance apart. Standing position, you push your hips back and then we all come forward from the hip. We'll open, close, push through your feet, stand tall and roll your shoulders back. One more time. All right, let's smooth out the edges and put this together. So we've got a little tip and hinge, open, squeeze the shoulder blades, close and stand tall and do it again. You don't have to go too far through your hip hinge. I would like you to think about your core muscles, everything around your belly button. Tuck them in, draw them up and then think about opening through your chest. Can we do two more? Hips go back, open wide. This is nice to really work on increasing your range of motion because when we do this exercise with weights, well, you might not have as much range of motion. All right, we're going to pause here, roll your shoulders. I would grab lighter weights. You can always go heavier if you feel this is an easy exercise for you. We'll hinge and we're going to hold the hinge. So make sure this is something you can maintain. Tuck your core muscles in and then open slowly out to the sides. Lead with your elbow and slowly release down. Now think about this count. Come up four, three, two. Little pause at the top and then four, three, two. So I'd like us to stay slow. Just lift where it's comfortable for you. Think about leading with your elbow. Stay strong out to your wrist. Lengthen through your spine and then look out in front of your feet, just a couple of feet. Can we do one more? Take your time with this. Open up, little pause at the top, release down. All right, tuck your hips in, lift up nice and tall, roll your shoulders back and down. We'll put our weights down, move on to our next exercise. Once you're up nice and tall, we'll open our heart and then bring your hands in front and then just round your upper back. So we'll lift tall and open, bring the arms in front, stack your hands, round the upper back, let your chin just fall to your chest. How about one more time? So we'll open up here and then round through the upper back. Come up nice and tall and release the arms down. Grab your weights and we're going to do an exercise that I hope will target our chest as well as our shoulders. Turn your palms towards me. Imagine that you had a cable pulling your arms out and pause here halfway. Now you pull in or resist that cable, come in front of your hips, lift up in front and bring the heads of weights together, squeezing your pectoral muscles together, then release the weights down to your hips and out to the side. So we come in, squeeze in through the pecs, just lift up partway, release down and out. So yes, I know shoulder muscles are working, you feel that too. We do want to think about the back muscles being up nice and tall, drawing our shoulders back and down, but I want us to focus on the pectoral muscles. And if we do think about squeezing them, drawing them in, lifting up, we can engage them. We'll do two more. Maybe you exhale here, inhale as you come down, release. One more time, squeeze, squeeze, perfect. And then release and then that cable draws you out and then you'll release. Does make a difference when we are putting in our own body weight resistance even with the weights. All right, next exercise, we're going to do a shoulder shrug up down and then right shoulder back. So we'll go up, down, left shoulder roll back. Try that again. Up, down, roll. Up, down, roll. And then you could even make this a little bit bigger, rotating through the heart. Now relax your shoulders, relax the muscles in your chest. We don't have to contract here. Up, down. All right, one more time. All right, pause here and grab your weights. So we've got two exercises we're going to put together. We've got a shoulder shrug up down and then I want you to hinge just a little bit. Palms are in, straight arm back where you can go, release down to your hips and stand up nice and tall. Shoulder shrug, up, down and then hinge and then push back. Pause at your hips, lift up tall. Up, down and then just a little hinge. We press back where we can go, release and up tall. Take your time. All right, lift your chest. Straight arm. All right, one more time. And then chest up. Nice. All right, we'll go ahead and put the weights down. Let me see what we have next. Oh, I like this one. So I'm going to do a straight arm up, lift my heart and then straight arm down and push back right where we just were with the weights. Lifting up, maybe lift your heart just a little bit and then hands come down and then press back. You might find that you have a little bit more range of motion without the weight. Relax the shoulders, press back. Last time. All right, go ahead and release. We're going into a tricep extension, so choose a weight that you might feel is appropriate for your triceps. Smaller muscle groups in the back of your upper arm. All right, I'm going to hinge forward from the hips. Start by pushing your hips back, just a slight lean so we can work with gravity. Lift your elbows up and we'll extend back from the elbow and then bend at the elbow, stop at your hips. Press back, gently contract the muscles in the back of your upper arm. And again, we're drawing our core muscles in, we're looking out in front. Keep a nice long spine from your neck down into your hips. Can we do two more? Last time. Pause here, straighten your arm down, push through your feet, lift and rise and then we'll put our shoulders back and down. Last pairing of exercises I have for us. We're going to reach across. There, just release, get a little rotation. I have a relaxed fist, palm is down, rings are reaching to the side wall. You're welcome to stay here or I'm taking this up to the corners. Lift, lower. Last one and release. Grab weights that are going to work for a hammer curl and a diagonal overhead press. Standing nice and tall, reset your posture, take a deep breath, inhale, exhale. We'll bend at the elbows, right arm reaches across, come down and then unfold and we'll do it again on the other side. Bend your elbows, weights in your heels, left arm across on the diagonal, pull down and release. Nice. So I'm going to pull, get a little bit of rotation. You do not need to fully extend the arm. Relax through the elbow, weight slightly in front. Maybe you can see it in your peripheral vision. All right, we're almost there. One more time. Release. All right, let's put our weights down in the chair and then let's finish. Shoulder rolls back and down, open your arms out to the side, take a nice deep breath right here, stretch up, pull your shoulders down, exhale out and down. Great job. By adding these moves into your routine, you can make upper body strength and mobility training a consistent part of your workout. You don't need to do a lot. You just need to be consistent, appreciating what you can do today. Thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you next time.