Bicep & Tricep Workout For Over 50s At Home – Plant Powered Lifters (2024)

Lately, I’ve received many messages from people saying they would like to focus on their arm strength. Some of you have even gone as far as saying that you have ”two useless noodles for arms”. While I think that description is rather funny, it is a good idea to do something about that.

For that reason, I thought it was a good idea to come up with an arm workout today. This routine will mainly focus on the biceps and the triceps. I do recommend combining this routine with a shoulder workout as well, you can find one here: 20-Minute Home Shoulder Workout With Dumbbells. Luckily for us, the biceps and triceps are easy to work out and don’t need many sets. This means the routine isn’t that intense but will still strengthen your arms.

Getting Started With At-Home Workouts

Before diving into your bicep and tricep workouts, I want to clarify this workout can be done both at the gym or at home as long as you have a set of dumbbells. Depending on your strength level, you can also use water bottles for dumbbells, but there’s a good chance you’ll get too strong for those pretty quickly.

Understanding the Basics

Doing at-home workouts requires minimal equipment and space.You will need:

• Dumbbells: choose weights that challenge you without compromising form.
• Stable chair or bench: necessary for exercises like tricep dips.

Preferably, you do this routine twice a week because this allows you to see results much faster. Doing it anymore isn’t necessary. If you do this routine only once a week, you’ll still notice results, but progress will be a lot slower.

Bicep Exercises

Let’s start with the biceps. I’m pretty sure we all know where our biceps are located. These muscles are responsible for assisting in any form of pulling movement. Whether you’re picking up a coffee mug, or picking something large off the ground, you’re using your biceps.

For the biceps, I suggest you keep it simple because this is a simple muscle. It doesn’t need a lot of stimulation to get stronger. Therefore, we’re going with a good old-fashioned bicep curl.

Chair-Assisted Bicep Curl

To perform achair-assisted bicep curl, you’ll need a sturdy chair without arms. Sit straight with your feet flat on the floor.

1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand with palms facing up.
2. Bend your elbows and curl your hands towards your shoulders.
3. Slowly lower them back down. Don’t rush this part, try to resist the dumbbell.

Recommended sets:

• Warm-up: 2 sets of 15 repetitions with a lighter weight
• 3-6 sets of 8–10 repetitions

Make sure the last repetitions of the sets that aren’t a warm-up are difficult to do. This is how you know you have the right weight. If it’s too easy, increase the weight. This is how you get stronger every week.

Whether you do 3, 4, 5 or 6 sets depends on your fitness level. If you’re new to fitness, I recommend starting with 3 sets and adding one set each week. Once you can do 6 sets, you can start to increase the weight.

Tricep Exercises

Triceps are a key muscle group vital for upper body strength. That’s because the triceps are involved in any form of pushing motion. Whether you’re closing your car door or moving a chair across the living room, you’re using your triceps.

Chair Dip

Find a sturdy table, chair, or bench. Sit on the edge with your hands next to your thighs. If you’re doing this for the first time, I suggest using a higher table to see if you can even do the exercise. A chair or bench are typically lower, and therefore these exercises are harder to perform.

1. Slide your butt off the table/chair /bench with your legs extended.
2. Lower your body by bending your elbows to about a 90-degree angle.
3. Push back up to the start position.

Recommended sets:

• Warm-up: 2 sets of 15 repetitions with a lighter weight
• 3 sets of 8–10 repetitions

Once again, we need to warm up the triceps before we do anything else. After that, I recommend you do three sets of this exercise, while making sure the last repetitions of each exercise are difficult to do. The reason we’re only doing three sets here is because we do have one more tricep exercise to go through.

Overhead Dumbbell Extension

The dumbbell extensions is another great exercise that I’m going to put in here because it directly works the triceps. Also, this exercise is less tiring than doing tricep dips. This means it’s best done after dips when your triceps are already a bit tired, and you’re trying to get the most out of them.

1. Stand or sit with your back straight, holding a dumbbell with both hands.
2. Raise the dumbbell over your head until your arms are fully extended.
3. Lower the dumbbell behind your head by bending your elbows.
4. Extend your arms to return to the start position.

Recommended sets:

• 3 sets of 8–10 repetitions

In this case, no warm-up sets are needed because the triceps are already warmed up.