At the Olympia Gym strength training exercises are prescribed for women in order to keep illnesses like osteo-arthritis and osteoporosis at bay; Pic by Jagan Negi

So you have been gawking enviously at First Lady Michelle Obama’s perfectly sculpted arms? Well, those toned arms — complimenting an enviable line-up of sleeveless designer dresses — are courtesy a lot of hard work, as the mistress of the White House will have you believe.

The hard work that she speaks of involves a daily routine of big compound movements including pushing and pulling exercises. This regimen is rounded off with workouts like triceps pushdowns (a drill using a cable and pulleymachine with weights loaded onto it) and hammer curls (a routine involving lifting of dumbbells to shoulder level).

According to fitness expert Ranadeep Moitra, certain core exercises for the upper body are the only way to get fabulous arms rather than isolated routines that address specific body parts. One should do a mix of pushing and pulling exercises for maximum benefit.

“Go for any equipment like the bench press, chest press, dumbbell press, military press or the overhead dumbbell press for those pushing exercises,” he says adding that these routines work on the back and shoulders. He believes that a powerful shoulders and back go a long way in transforming those sagging arms into ultra-toned ones.

At Mumbai’s swanky gym, Leena Mogre’s Fitness, Mogre emphasises that there are no quick-fix solutions to achieving those uber sexy upper limbs: “You need to persistently follow an upper body workout routine and get rid of that body fat fast,” she says. She advocates a rigorous cardio workout to banish layers of fat in that region.

Mogre recommends routines involving a whole body workout with special emphasis on the shoulders for shapely arms. “If you don’t strengthen your shoulders, you can forget about toned arms,” she admonishes.

An instructor at Fitness First does the cable curl drill to tone up the arms; Pic by Rupinder Sharma ; (Above) A model performs core exercises for the upper body to get those super sculpted arms as advised by Ranadeep Moitra; Pic by Anindya Shankar Ray

She asks women to go for the dumbbell lateral raise where the dumbbells have to be grasped in front of the thighs with elbows slightly bent. This movement should be followed by bending over with hips and knees bent ever so slightly. Subsequently one should raise the upper arms so that the elbows are at the same height as shoulders. One should maintain the height of the elbow either on par or above the wrists. The arms should then be lowered and the movement repeated.

Apart from this, Mogre recommends other arm contouring exercises such as the dumbbell hammer curl (raising the dumbbells until the forearms are vertical), dumbbell triceps kickback (a triceps strengthening exercise) and bicep curls (where the weight is moved through an arc-like motion).

Moitra too roots for a comprehensive drill for both the arms and shoulders. He stresses on seated rows (a back and bicep training exercise), bent over rows (weight training discipline using barbells or dumbbells) or reverse fly routines (rear shoulder and upper back workouts) as part of one’s daily dose of pulling exercises. “These exercises make for a high-intensity workout which burns calories and also shapes the upper body,” he says.

However, he cautions against overdoing the rigorous exercises. He says: “Try and give a gap of at least 36 to 40 hours between each type of body movement so as to allow the specific muscles used in those workouts to heal.” He adds that under no circumstances should the routine be done more than five times a week.

Some instructors are swearing by strength training exercises. Devashish Singh, fitness manager at Fitness First in Delhi, maintains that the basic principle on which arm exercises work is overload which implies lifting more weight than your muscles can handle under normal circumstances. “It adds definition to your arm muscles preventing them from hanging loosely,” he explains.

A model tries out a workout routine with special emphasis on the shoulders at Leena Mogre’s Fitness

Singh prescribes strength training workouts using external weights. Since these workouts are earmarked for women, he advises using weights that are not too high or too low. “The duration of the drill needs to be short and precise in order to be effective,” he says. However, for women who avoid weight training as they don’t want a muscular look, Singh recommends exercises using thera-tubes or resistance tubes for toned arms.

Along with triceps pushdown and hammer curls, Singh rattles off similar exercises like bicep curls using either dumbbells or barbells. Says Singh, weight training should be around 45 minutes to 60 minutes duration done twice or thrice weekly.

If such punishing schedules are a big put-off, here’s something to cheer you up. Weight training leads to a high BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate, which means that this discipline helps you to reduce body fat.

If that’s good news, there’s more in store. Rahul Narang, owner and fitness consultant at Olympia gym claims that strength training exercises keep illnesses plaguing women, like osteo-arthritis and osteoporosis, at bay. Says Narang: “Some of the workouts increase bone density and hence prevents such afflictions. Women already afflicted can at least resort to damage control.”