My mother is in her late 50's and is 5'2" at about 112lbs. She has those flapping triceps(like a turkeys gobblet) and wants to tone them up by Dec. before she goes on a cruise. She has pretty descent biceps. I know of plenty of tricep exercises she can do but she works out Mon. thru Thurs. and how many time a week can she work them out?

diet and cardio are the key to knocking down the flapping, some good low weight high reps are a nice way to peak out those tri's for your mom! And most of all plenty of water! and as far as how many times, twice a week is plenty. Most muscles need a minimum of 48 hours to recover. So again twice a week is fine.

Did you post a question earlier about alcohol and pain killers?

Hey Bro,

Exercising the triceps will only help build and tone the muscle not get rid of the flab on top. Women are prone to carrying more BF in this area just as we men are more prone to developing abdominal fat. She first needs to make sure her diet is good, then get her to undertake a resistance training program in conjunction with cardio training.

The resistance training will help her build and tone her muscles and help her permentantly elevate her basal metabolic rate (metabolism), the resistance part of the workout will also see her heart rate elevated and help her burn those unwanted calories. I would get her to do functional type exercises that mimick everyday activities, such as standing chest press on a cable machine, squats, lunges, deadlifts, etc as well as exercise that isolate the triceps. You can assure her that there is no way she is going to bulk up. Resistance training is an essential part of any weight loss program and is especially important in preventing unwanted BF gains in the future.

The cardio should follow the resistance part of the workout and should last for around 30 - 40 minutes. Aerobic interval training would be a good way to start her off, get her working at a work/rest ratio of 1:3 (minutes). For the work part of the training have her exercise at around 80% of her max HR and the rest should be around 60% of her max HR (if she is extreamly unfit you might want her to develop more of an aerobic base befor you take her to 80
% MHR). She should see some good results from this type of training, it will improve her CV fitness and help reduce BF.

Hope this helps.