Exercises To Do at Home When You Are Busy with a New Baby-Upper Body

at 9:15 AM

After having a baby, you feel like you never have enough time for anything and being sleep-deprived doesn't help the situation.  But once you get the OK of your doctor to resume your exercises, there are a number of workout routines you can do in the comfort of your home.  These are probably the same ones I have talked about before in the context of travel/hotel workout but it's always good to have a refresher and know that these exercises are excellent in getting your heart rate up (if you do them long enough) and great for toning and building stronger muscles.  Before I go on, let me again emphasize that it is a total myth that you will get bigger if you lift weights or do any kind of strength training.  You will get bigger only if you are putting on weight from eating too much and too many refined carbs or if you are taking a synthetic androgen (i.e. testosterone)- other than that if you gaining weight blame the donuts not the weight lifting.

For working our your upper body, I can not stress enough how wonderful and effective the push-up is.  If you are a beginner you can start doing push ups on your knees, then as you get stronger take those knees off the floor and keep going...  There are a number of variations to the classic push up.  At first, when you have your knees off the floor, don't feel like you have to go down, until your nose is touching the floor, even a few inches is working your chest, shoulders and triceps and of course abdominals.

You can also put your feet on a chair or bench to give your shoulders more of workout.  This is a more challenging push up but excellent for building strength in basically all your upper body muscles.

If you don't have any dumbbells around the house you can always use cans or small water bottles.  But it's good to invest in a few dumbbells.  They are not expensive, especially the lighter ones, and once you get back to the gym, there will be days that you may want to workout at home due to the little baby being sick or other unforeseen circumstances.  And you don't have to get a whole bunch at the same time.  Just start with a pair that are light enough to do 10-12 reps and then it should get harder.  If you can still do 20 reps or so and don't feel a thing, the weights are too light.  Dumbbell curls are great for the biceps and easy to learn.  Just make sure you are not throwing them up; do slow curls with attention to good form.

One of my favorite exercise for upper body is the shoulder press.  You can do this exercise with a barbell or dumbbells or cans and water bottles.

Of course the bench push up is also great for shoulders.  If the push ups are still difficult for you, you can always start out by doing wall push ups or with your knees on the floor.  As the name suggest, you are standing agains the wall with your hands at chest level and pushing against the wall.  I don't have a picture for this one, but I will have one soon.

The key to your success after having a baby is being consistant.  Have a goal, write down the number of reps and sets that you do each time.  You can count the reps as you do them or you can set up a circuit and do each exercise for a set amount  of time (30 min) with out rest.

Remember that as soon as an exercise become easier for you, you need to make it more challenging for yourself, either by using more weight, or simply doing more reps.  Your body responds to the challenge and it will get stronger and leaner.  Stay tuned for great lower body exercises you can do at home while the baby is taking a nap!