In this 15‑minute workout video, JJ Virgin explains why traditional isolation moves like tricep extensions and bicep curls are less effective for women over 40 seeking toned, strong arms. She advocates big, metabolically demanding compound movements that engage the triceps, biceps, and supporting muscle groups. The tutorial walks through three upper‑body pushing exercises—bench push‑ups, tricep dips, and overhead dumbbell presses—detailing proper alignment, core engagement, hand/foot positioning, and progressive modifications for beginners to advanced trainees. It then covers three pulling movements—bent‑over rows, assisted pull‑ups/flexed‑arm hangs (using a resistance band), and upright rows—again providing cue‑by‑cue form instructions and ways to scale difficulty. JJ outlines three programming structures: traditional sets/reps (8‑12 reps, 2‑4 sets, 90‑second rest), mini‑circuits of only push or pull moves, and alternating push‑pull supersets to keep the heart rate up. She stresses consistency, progressive overload, and the importance of never letting the workout become “easy.” Finally, she invites viewers to join her Facebook community for support and to subscribe to her channel. The video blends instructional detail with motivational encouragement tailored to women over 40.
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Everybody wants toned arms, and here's what might be a shocker for you. It is not about doing tricep extensions and bicep curls. You will rarely, if ever, see me do them. It's about doing big compound metabolically costly exercises that involve your triceps and biceps that make all the difference. So I'm gonna show you my favorite upper body pushing and upper body pulling exercises that will get you the toned arms you want. And help you get stronger all over too. We're gonna start out with a pushup against a bench. Now I promise that you get stronger all over doing upper body. How could that be? Well, the reality is when you do a pushup off a bench, you also have to pull in your core. His core is another thing I don't do much of. So with this, I'm gonna show you how to do this and how to modify it depending on how strong you are. So the difference with a pushup on a bench versus on the floor is a little bit different. Angle that you're hitting with your chest. And the important thing here is this is not what I'm doing, right? I've got my hips lifted a little bit. Now, if you are not as strong, what you do is you just lift your hips up more. This will make it easier. You'll have your butt near in the air. And you can even go all the way down to your knees and do it this way to start. So there's a variety of different ways. I'll show you all of them to modify it. But I'm going to start out with the position I typically do them in. And again, I've got I've got my arms wider than shoulder width apart. I've got my hips lifted, belly button pulled into the spine, and I'm going to open my feet up a little bit and I'm going to come down and my elbows are going to point backwards as I do this. And I'm bringing my chest to the bench. Don't let your head sag. So none of this, right? Don't let your hips sag. Now, how could I make this a little easier? I could pull my butt up a little bit more. I take a little bit of weight off. How could I make it easier still? I can come all the way down to my knees and start here. Here's the thing, doesn't matter where you start, it matters where you end, right? So the most important thing is that you can do this in good form. If you start on your knees and then after a month you go up onto your toes, go you, just get started. That's the most important thing. I love compound movements because they're more metabolically costly. When you pull in more muscles, you're going to burn more calories, right? And you're going to get more muscles firing and working and communicating together. Also in life, that's how we do things. We don't typically do this, right? So this is a tricep dip. One of the things I love about a tricep dip is in life you have to push yourself up, right? So that's what this is going to mimic. I'm going to show you how to do this the easy way, and then I'll show you how to make it harder. The most important thing about a tricep dip is your hands are right by your hips. Your elbows are pointing backwards, and you're going to keep your hips— think of arching your back towards the, the bench, and you're going to skim your back against the bench. So you're not pulling your hips out, your hips stay towards the bench, slightly arch back, chest and chin are up, and you keep your back towards the bench the whole time. If you can't do this, do not walk your feet out farther. This is the easy position right here. With my elbows pointing back. I'm coming down to a right angle. You can make it harder the more you walk your feet away, but you never change what's happening with your hips. You're always angling your glutes back towards the bench, and the hardest is to bring it all the way here. But again, my hips are angled back and I'm coming down to a right angle. Keeping my chest up, chin up. So the third upper body pushing exercise is an overhead press. Now I mentioned all of your body. One of the things I love about an overhead press is we are going to stand when we're doing this because I want you to load the hips and spine and have to involve a little bit of balance. And I have a very specific way that I like you to have your hands so that you don't put any pressure stress on your shoulder joints. So your knees are slightly bent, belly button to the spine, and you're going to bring your thumbs to your shoulders and you're going to push straight up. And when you do this, your hands should be in your peripheral vision, meaning you don't have your hands going behind your head, so you're not putting any strain on your neck. So I'm going to show you what this looks like to the side. And again, what's great here is I'm loading my spine as well. So I'm loading my hips, my loading my spine, good for bone mineral density. So that is an overhead dumbbell press. All 3 of those are upper body pushing. The push-up focused on chest and triceps. The dip really heavy on the triceps, a little chest, a little, a little lats. And the overhead press, upper back, shoulders, triceps. But again, common factor here, because it's a pushing exercise, is they all are triceps. Now we're gonna do upper body pulling. And one of my favorite upper body pulling exercises is the bent-over row. To get into the right position, what you're gonna do is hip hinge back, belly button to spine, strong back, lift your chest, lift your head. So see the position I'm in? Then you're gonna drop your hands and you're gonna go with your palms facing your knees. They're gonna rotate up and they're gonna cup your chest. So rotate up and the movement is not in your back. Your back is extended. You're isometrically contracting your quads, your glutes, your back. The movement is in your shoulder blades and you're using the back of your shoulders, lats, and the biceps. So again, knees are bent, hip hinge back, and then roll up. And you're exhaling on the exertion, which is the way up. And that little supination, or rotation, that we're doing with the hands actually pulls in more of your biceps. Next up is the thing that you're going to tell me you can't do, but I'm going to show you how you can. And that is a pull-up and/or a flexed arm hang. And you're going to say, I can't do a pull-up. And I'm going to say, yes you can, because I've got the cheat codes. So this here that I put on this is the cheat code. And this is a big band. I actually got this from my buddy Aaron Alexander. So all I did was wrap it around. So any type of a pull-up bar, you can hang this. And basically what this is going to do is give you a little assist. Now if you have a partner around, maybe they can give you a little assist. But if not, the band will do it for you. Let me show you how. And the hardest part of this is getting your foot in the band. Now, to start on a pull-up, here's the easy way to do it. So just start out easy. You don't have to make it hard on yourself. And you may just want to even start out with just a little bit of a hang. And that's fine too. But this thing will assist you to be able to go up and down. Right? But if all you started out with just a little bit of a hang, that's fine too. Your goal is to get to a point with this where you can do 8 to 12 in a row. Maybe you can do them without the band. If you want to make it harder, this is easier because this involves more of your bicep. As you go wider, you pull more of your lats in and it gets harder because you have less leverage through your elbows and your bicep. This is easier, more leverage. This is harder, less leverage, less being able to use your biceps. If all you do to start is come with a little bit of a flexed arm hang, fantastic. Maybe you eek out one. These are super fun. I know they don't seem fun, but what's fun about them is maybe you start and you go, I got one. And then the next time you come in, you get 2, and then the week later you've got 4, and all of a sudden, next thing you know, you're showing off to all your friends. Yes, it's possible. So this is either the flexed arm hang or the assisted pull-up, with the goal being unassisted pull-ups. Totally possible. And I don't want to hear that I'm too old. No, you're not. Last one is an upright row. Now this one, the form is super important. I'm going to show you the form actually before I grab those dumbbells, because what I want you to do is I want you to feel like you have an imaginary line and that you're going to bring your elbows, elbows up. Your thumbs are coming around long for the ride, and you do it with your thumbs pointing upward. This is really important to keep that AC joint open. So I'm just doing this. I'm tracking that line and see, I'm only coming up. So my elbows are about a little below shoulder level. So hands over the chest, super simple. And when you start with this one, again, knees are bent slightly, and then just thumbs up, lead with those thumbs. Upright row. I had to do this the other day with my suitcase, 70 pounds. I was very happy I'd trained this. And you're going to exhale on the way up. That's the hard part. Inhale on the way down. I'm keeping myself upright, I'm not bending forward. Belly button to spine, knees a little bit soft, using the glutes. So again, everybody's— everything is working here. All right, upright row. That is your shoulders and your biceps. So we started with the bent-over row where you had a lot of your core and your lower body having to hold you steady, but you were focused on your lats, rear delts, biceps. Then we moved into your new favorite, the lat pulldown or the flexed arm hang with more of a focus on the biceps, but that also uses the lats, of course. And then we came over to the upright row that is heavy on the shoulders and trap muscles, the upper back muscles and the biceps. So those are your 3 upper body pulling exercises. Let's talk about how to put this all together, 'cause you've got choices here. So you could just say, you know what, I'm just gonna come in and I'm gonna do 2 to 4 sets of each exercise, rest 90 seconds in between, do sets anywhere probably in the 8 to 12 rep range. Or you could do a little mini circuit of pushing. You do a set of push-ups, rest, set of dips, rest, set of overhead presses, rest, repeat. And then you could do the same thing with your pulling circuit. Or if you are short on time, you can blow the rest out, make it a little bit more cardiovascular as well, and do superset circuits. Here's how that works. You alternate a push with the pull, and when you be resting from your push, you're not resting, you're pulling. So maybe you're doing a push-up and you alternate the push-up with the bent-over row, back and forth, back and forth. Then you do a dip and you alternate it with a pull-up, back and forth, back and forth. Then you do an overhead press and you alternate it with a bent— an upright row. So 3 different ways that you can go and do this so you will never get bored. The most important thing is that, number 1, You do it and you do it consistently. One day in the gym, it's not going to change your life. Two days in the gym every week, totally a game changer in so many different ways. And that— and the number two thing is that it never should get easier because you're getting stronger. So what you're always doing is continuing to progress. Maybe you add an extra set, maybe you add more reps, maybe you add more weight, maybe you speed it up a bit, but you're always continuing to push it as you go, because the way that your body gets stronger is you push past what you're used to, so your body has to adapt and get stronger. Now, if you've loved this and you cannot wait to get started, I highly recommend joining my Facebook group. It's the JJ Virgin Lifestyle Community, where we can cheer you on. You can get support, ask questions. I even have my clone in there, and my clone is actually, I think, more accurate than me at this point, and she's always available. So jump on into that Facebook community, we'd love to see you there. And if you've loved this video, be sure to subscribe and like it and hang out for the next video.
