What Alice Has Done For Her Arms

Whenever I show a picture of my bare arms, people ask me what I do to get them looking they do, which is flattering, but it’s something I’m a bit shy about answering. Why? Because, while it’s true that I do a good deal of exercise, I reckon luck and genes play a large part. Still, when I said this in the hearing of one friend, she shot back: ‘You’ve had a lifelong exercise habit, you watch what you eat, those arms are no accident, own it!’ So, for those who want to know, here’s what I do – plus the arm-toning tweakment that I’ve tried.

Shedloads of exercise to hone arm muscles.

School and college sports, 80s aerobics and gym, 90s pilates, Noughties yoga… I’ve done it all – at first for fun, next for fitness, then to manage an increasingly bad back. Now, I do yoga two or three times a week, and weights twice a week and it’s as much for the mind space as to stave off the muscle loss which otherwise creeps in with age.

Which arm exercises do I do?

Some or all of these:

• Bicep curls, overhead tricep press, tricep dips (on the edge of a stair, or the bath).
• Shoulder press (elbows up at shoulder level, forward of head, hands above elbows)
• Upright rows (hands together by hips, raising the weights from hip level to the chin).
• Push-ups: As many as I can, then rest, then do another set, either full push-ups or from my knees. Or tricep press-ups, starting with my hands shoulder width, for variety.

For each, as taught by Zana Morris over the past decade, I’ll do half a dozen repetitions, using as heavy a weight as I can manage with good form. I’ll rest a bit, then repeat the set, decreasing or abandoning the weight as I lose power. For fun (honest) and as an incentive to keep going, I book a training session every few weeks with Ketan Shah.

This arm tweakment worked for me: Profhilo Body

Slack, crepey skin on the inner arms is one of the great banes of the ageing body (it just ‘goes’, as it does on the inner thighs, as collagen levels in the skin drop, particularly around menopause). You can firm it up with energy treatments like RF needling or ultrasound. The arm tweak I’ve tried is Profhilo Body, which involves two rounds of injections into the soft skin on the inner-upper arms. (here’s my video about Profhilo Body)

I had this treatment with Dr Preema Vig and when I went back for assessment a month after the second treatment, I was amazed to find how much firmer the skin was. This wasn’t something I’d noticed in the interim, since it was winter and I wasn’t paying much attention to the inner aspects of my arms, but Preema had before and after videos which showed that my skin was much more resilient and less floppy. Result!

Tweakments for bingo wings

These aren’t my problem, but if bingo wings are something that bothers you, there are surgical and semi-surgical ways of contouring the upper arms and removing fat, treatments like AirSculpt, Endolift and BodyTite, which don’t leave you with a whopping great scar from armpit to elbow like a brachioplasty, or surgical arm lift, would. They’re not cheap and there is recovery time but they can give fab results. Take a look at the section on bingo wings for details.

The luck factor

Why I say I’m lucky with my arms is that I know plenty of women around my age who work out with weights and are far stronger than I am, but whose arms for some reason don’t show the muscle definition that mine do. Look, we’re all build differently. Surely this is where genes come in. Also, I’m fairly lean, so what muscle tone I have shows up.

For more body-related content, including solutions for your arms, head to our body concerns section.