1. Melt the Fat Hiding Your Muscle
That means you’ll need to do regular cardio workouts and eat right, eating six small, healthy meals a day comprised of fruit, veggies, fiber and lean protein.
2. Build Muscle by Increasing Your Weight
You won’t get too bulky by lifting heavier weights, but if you never move beyond five-pound weights you won’t see much definition. So your goal should be to increase the weight by two pounds each week. Work on your arm muscles three times a week (with a rest day in between). Aim for 8 reps your first day, 10 the next and 12 the last day.
3. Work the Different Fibers in Your Muscles by Hitting Them From Different Angles
Try these moves in succession: outside biceps curls (place your elbows by your sides with a weight in each hand, keeping your arms straight, lift hands away from you and out to your sides, then keep lifting them up to your shoulders), forward curls, hammer curls, preacher curls and cross curls (bring weights across your body from left hip to right shoulder and repeat on other side).
4. Make Your Triceps a Triple Threat With These Moves
French presses (hands together overhead holding both weights, lower the weights behind your head, keeping your elbows pointing to the ceiling, and lift the weights back up), kickbacks (lean your upper body forward, lift elbows up near your rib cage and lower the weights from your shoulders to your hips and back to shoulders) and dips (sit on a bench, hands at your sides and lift your butt off the bench, lower down toward the floor until elbows are bent at 90 degrees and lift yourself back up by pressing through the palms).
5. Push That Weight Off Your Shoulders
Do overhead presses lifting your arms straight up from your shoulders and back down so that the weights are facing your ears. Do front and side extensions by keeping arms straight and lifting the weights away from your body straight in front of you. Then lift them straight out to your sides. Bonus: Throw some yoga moves, like plank and downward dog, into your routine to help define those delts.
6. Keep At It
If you can’t get to the gym or are traveling, push-ups work your entire arm -- sans equipment.
Nestpert: Nicole Glor, aka NikkiFitness (NikkiFitness.com), is an AFAA-certified personal trainer, group fitness instructor at Crunch in Manhattan and fitness columnist for Military.com.
-- Samantha Leal