Shoulders are the unsung hero when it comes to men and women. Tone shoulders make every shirt or dress look better. Not to mention they are a great muscle group to start with while trying to get back into shape after the holiday cookies and big meals. So here are three exercises that will help you get those shoulders under control and you can do them all from the comfort of your own home.

The first exercise is one that my Tae Kwon Do instructor would make us do when he wanted us “to get back to the basics” and it is the “Edward Alphabet-hands” exercise. Stretch both arms out so they are parallel to the ground and extend your pointer finger. From here you are going to move your whole arm to write the letters of the alphabet in the air. Penmanship is not important and most of the time the letters are backwards. The point is to keep the arms moving. Some people just can’t get past the fact the letters are not proper, for you just make figure eights over and over for 26 reps.

Next, pike push ups are calling your name. To do these get into a push up position and put your butt way up in the air. Keep your arms and your legs straight and your body should be in an upside-down ‘V’. This is a pike. From here, slowly do 10 push ups.

The last exercise is the monkey push up. If you could not tell from this or my previous article, I am a push up master. Our martial arts instructor used to dedicate two-hour classes to different variations of push ups and trust me…I could write a book on them; however, back to monkeying around. To do this exercise, stand with your feet a little wider than shoulder-width and squat down to place your hand right next to your feet on the inside of your legs. Now, jump while keeping your hands on the ground and extend your legs straight back to a traditional push position. Do one push up and jump back to the starting point. If it is too hard to jump, you can walk your feet into position and walk them back. Again, 10 reps are one complete set.

For the workout, do a set of Edward Alphabet-hands to warm up. Then one set of pike push ups. After this, do another set of alphabet-hands and move right into the monkey push ups. Top it all off with one more set of alphabet-hands. Now, take a minute break and do two more rotations for a total of three rounds.