Baring arms for summer

<p>When Betsy Smith's son announced one January he was getting married in August, she set herself a goal: Eight months to get her arms ready for a mother-of-the-groom dress with spaghetti straps.</p><p>"I went to a trainer and said I refuse to have old-lady arms," said Smith, a grade school teacher in Rohnert Park and part-time fitness instructor.</p><p>She worked on special arm exercises with weights and machines three days a week, started to see some bicep and tricep muscle definition by six months and still brags about herself in the wedding photos.</p><p>It made her even more sympathetic to her own exercise students who complain to her about that pesky body part.</p><p>"Upper arms, with that little bit of flab, are always a concern for women," said Smith.</p><p>Add to that the summer season calling for skimpy tops that expose the arms and now, a new standard of upper arm fitness coming from the White House. With first lady Michelle Obama drawing commentary for her sleeveless dresses that reveal strong firm arms, the pressure is on.</p><p>The first lady even won a presidential endorsement for her toned triceps when Barack Obama said at the White House Correspondents dinner, "No matter which party you belong to, we can all agree that Michelle has the right to bare arms."</p><p>Nadine Soffer (cq), a personal trainer at Coaches Corner in Sebastopol, appreciates that Obama's athletic body puts emphasis on not only attractive but strong arms.</p><p>"I think her arms are a metaphor for her own strength and independence," said Soffer, who is in her 50s and grew up when "little girls were told they should never be stronger than boys."</p><p>She thinks it's time women's arms be admired not just for how they look but for what they can physically do.</p><p>"If you're strong, you can pick up your child, load your own groceries, stack your own firewood, haul your mulch and put your suitcase up in the overhead compartment by yourself."</p><p>Arm emphasis</p><p>Some athletes come by strong arms automatically. Soffer names tennis, golf and swimming as sports that can automatically sculpt and strengthen arms.</p><p>Everyone else has to work on it, including Michelle Obama whom Soffer said "probably works really hard to have that arm definition."</p><p>For upper arm emphasis, Soffer recommends strength training, 25 minutes to an hour three to four days a week. She advises choosing exercises that work on all three areas -- triceps, biceps and shoulders.</p><p>"You need all three. You might have nice shoulders or upper arms but if the skin underneath is soft you need to also concentrate on your triceps," she said. Triceps are the trickiest, she said, because there's naturally more body fat in that part of the arm.</p><p>Some of her favorite arm exercises include the tricep kickback, pushups, simple bicep curls and the cat bow and dolphin movements in yoga.</p><p>When using weights it's important, she said, to squeeze the muscle and relax the grip on the weight itself. "Make every repetition count and visualize the muscle as you do it."</p><p>Avoid "locking out" the joints, protect the lower back and neck, suck in the stomach, don't compete with the 30-year-old next to you and keep the spine in a neutral position. Then, stretch when you're finished.</p><p>The pay-off, she said, is "you feel like you're superwoman. Tiny arms on pretty thin women were the old standard. And thin is not necessarily strong."</p><p>Sports medicine doctor Todd Weitzenberg(cq) agrees. "With Michelle Obama, we're looking at toning. Shapely looking arms that are strong in a healthy way."</p><p>Target excess fat</p><p>The Kaiser doctor said it's possible for women and men of any age to improve tone, but that often means working on excess fat first.</p><p>"Every one of us has a sleek looking arm in us. It's just how much fat you have hiding it. Get into a sustained aerobic exercise program to burn fat -- and everything will look better," he said, including your arms.</p><p>Then, he said, to focus on biceps and triceps, "You want a combination of low weight and high frequency exercises. They'll put less stress on the joints and cause less injury." Instead of using a 25-pound weight and doing five bicep curls, he said it's better to take a five-pound weight and do 25 repetitions.</p><p>While arms may be thought to be more of a concern to women -- there's the old joke about what part of grandma keeps waving even after she stops waving goodbye -- men also have their upper-arm worries.</p><p>Testosterone in men holds muscle mass and allows them to generally stay leaner longer than women, said Weitzenberg. "But after a certain age the natural testosterone level decreases and men begin to lose a certain percentage of lean muscle mass."</p><p>To them and all his patients who fret over signs of aging, he says, "It's not how strong or fast you are now compared to what you used to be. But being the best you can be now."</p><p>Rejuvenate muscles</p><p>In its encouraging studies on exercise, the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato found that strength training can rejuvenate muscle tissue in healthy older adults.</p><p>That is what Smith, 56, found out. To prepare for her son's wedding, she worked out three days a week doing pushups, chest presses and other arm movements using the exercise ball, stretch bands and weight-resistance machines.</p><p>After the wedding, even as she continued to exercise in a general way she backed off on the arm routines and said, "Now, I still have a little bit hanging. You have to keep at it. As we get older and the hormones and the gravity and our bones do their thing, we have to fight back."</p><p>She tells her students to just keep moving, whether the results are visible or not.</p><p>"If you're working out that means your blood pressure is probably going down and you're losing some weight," she said. "If that's happening, I say, mission accomplished. Even if you don't have Michelle Obama arms."</p><p>Susan Swartz is a freelance writer and author based in Sonoma County. Contact her at susan@juicytomatoes.com.</p>