I’m a Trainer: This 3-Move Finisher Makes My Clients Feel Jacked in 5 Minutes Flat

Most upper body workouts end the same way: One last set of curls, a quick wipe of the bench, and you’re out the door, done and dusted!

But if you’re skipping those final few minutes, you might be leaving some serious gains on the table.

And that’s where finishers come in.

Finishers are short “mini workouts” designed to wring that last bit of energy from your muscles. Short, focused, but deceptively effective, a good finisher amplifies the effects of your training and primes your body to adapt and grow.

A good finisher is like the icing on a cake.

These final bursts of effort flood your system with feel-good hormones like dopamine, endorphins, and adrenaline. You leave the gym not just physically spent, but mentally sharper and more satisfied. Plus, you build mental toughness by pushing through when it would be easier to call it quits.

The best finishers are simple, short, and targeted, just like the three-move upper body blast I’m going to share in this article.

So, whether you’re chasing a better pump, improved endurance, or just want to end your session on a high, give this finisher a try. It only takes five minutes, but your chest, shoulders, and arms will be eternally grateful.

Are you ready to accept the challenge? Then let’s do it!

Related: The Best Workout Finishers for Every Muscle Group

Why Finishers Deserve a Place in Your Workouts

While finishers are far from compulsory, and you can have a great workout without them, adding an extra burst of exercise to your training session offers several advantages and benefits. These include:

Increased Mental Toughness

As a former British Royal Marine Commando, finishers (known as sickeners in the corps) were a fact of life in military training. To make hard situations worse, our training team used finishers to teach the troops that, even when you were exhausted, you still had more to give, and quitting was not an option.

For example:

• A planned eight-mile ruck turned into a 12 miler with extra weight added to packs partway around the route.
• Seven days of field maneuvers became a 10-day exercise, with the last three being an unscheduled “escape and evade” scenario.
  Gym-based workouts ended with the infamous “mud run,” where troops did sprints and calisthenics for an hour or more in the nearby estuary.

At the time, these finishers were most unwelcome, but they developed mental toughness like nothing else ever could.

Salvage a Sub-Par Workout

Train for long enough and eventually you’ll experience the unthinkable—a workout that doesn’t go as planned. Maybe the gym was too busy, you kept getting distracted and interrupted, or your pre-workout failed to kick in at the right time. Or maybe you just felt, “meh,” and couldn’t find your groove.

Whatever the reason, poor workouts can leave a nasty taste in your mouth, and the last thing you want to do is leave the gym feeling like you’ve wasted your time. After all, time is the most precious commodity, and that means you can’t afford to waste it.

Adding a finisher to the end of your workout provides a way to “redeem” yourself and end your workout on a high note. Regardless of what you did before, a 5 to 10-minute finisher is the clean slate you need to turn a poor workout into one that wasn’t a waste of time.

A Dopamine High

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter—a type of chemical messenger in the brain. It’s often called the “feel-good” hormone, but that’s an oversimplification. Dopamine plays a key role in:

• Motivation and reward
• Focus and attention
• Movement regulation
• Habit formation

When dopamine levels rise, you tend to feel more energized, alert, and driven. It’s heavily involved in the brain’s reward system, helping reinforce behaviors that feel good or are perceived as beneficial—like finishing a tough workout.

Adding a finisher to your workout, especially one that’s high intensity, creates one final surge of dopamine (1). Combined with a rush of endorphins, serotonin, and norepinephrine, you’ve got a potent cocktail of mood-enhancing hormones that will leave you riding high for hours afterward.

A Bigger Pump

While there are cardio finishers, in this article, I’m focusing on finishers for muscle strength and growth. One of the benefits of this type of finisher is a bigger, more powerful pump effect.

The pump describes how blood is preferentially driven into your muscles, engorging them with oxygen and nutrients. This, bodybuilders believe, helps maximize hypertrophy or muscle growth, and some research also supports this notion (2).

Finishers for hypertrophy invariably involve doing a lot of reps in a short time, usually focusing on a small number of muscle groups. Needless to say, this approach results in a HUGE pump, and your muscles will immediately show the results of your extra effort.

Related: The Science Behind Muscle Pumps: Why Your Muscles Feel Swollen During a Workout

Finishers are Fun!

While finishers are meant to be hard, that doesn’t mean they aren’t enjoyable and rewarding. Challenging yourself with a few minutes of additional intense exercise, especially with lesser-used movements, can provide you with an escape from the strict framework of your workout.

Think of finishers as the sprint for home at the end of a run and enjoy the feeling of moving fast as the wind ruffles your hair!

Sold on finishers? Next, I share a five-minute three-move finisher I use to close out my client’s upper body workouts.

Three-Move Finisher for Upper Body Workouts

Whatever upper body workout you’ve got planned, you can elevate it with this tried-and-tested finisher. It’s super-simple, only takes five minutes, but I guarantee you’ll love the results. It’s based on the Tabata training method, but instead of targeting your cardiorespiratory fitness, it challenges your chest, shoulders, and arms.

Simply do three laps of the following sequence. Keep the weights/resistance light and pump out as many reps as you can in the allotted time.

1. 20 seconds of push-ups
2. Rest 10 seconds
3. 20 seconds of dumbbell/resistance band lateral raises
4. Rest 10 seconds
5. 20 seconds of dumbbell/resistance band biceps curls
6. Rest 10 seconds
7. Repeat the entire sequence twice more

Got more than five minutes? Do a couple more laps! Each round takes 90 seconds.

Exercise Instructions

Just because finishers are fun and fast-paced doesn’t mean that proper exercise technique doesn’t matter. In fact, as you’ll already be somewhat fatigued from your workout, good form is arguably more important than ever.

So, to that end, here are step-by-step instructions for the exercises in this three-move upper body blaster.

1. Push-Ups

The humble push-up is one of the most potent upper body exercises you can do. Targeting your chest and triceps, they provide a great way to pump up your pecs and arms without equipment. They also provide an indirect workout for your abs as they’re basically a moving plank.

How to do it:

1. Squat down and place your hands on the floor, shoulder-width apart.
2. Brace your core and walk your feet out and back and into a high plank position.
3. Bend your arms and lower your chest to within an inch of the floor.
4. Drive your palms into the floor and push yourself back up until your elbows are straight but not locked.
5. Repeat briskly for 20 seconds and then move to the next exercise.

Pro-Trainer Tips:

• Bend your legs and rest on your knees if you are unable to do/continue doing push-ups with straight legs.
• Experiment with your hand position—wider push-ups work your chest more, while bringing your hands in hits your triceps harder.
• Inhale as you descend and exhale as you come back up. Imagine you are “blowing the floor away.”

2. Lateral Raises

Lateral raises target your medial or side deltoid, which is the muscle that gives your shoulders their width. Push-ups work your deltoids but tend to emphasize the front of your shoulders. Lateral raises are one of the few exercises that preferentially target the sides of your shoulders.

How to do it:

1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. Hold a light dumbbell in each hand or loop a resistance band under your feet and grip the handles.
2. Starting with your arms by your sides, elbows slightly bent, raise your arms out to the side until your hands are roughly level with your shoulders.
3. Lower your arms under control.
4. Repeat briskly for 20 seconds and then move to the next exercise.

Pro-Trainer Tips:

• Avoid raising your hands above shoulder height, as doing so may cause joint stress and pain.
• Lift your arms slightly forward—called scaption—if raising your arms to the side bothers your shoulders.
• Keep your shoulders down and back to optimize joint mechanics and ensure your deltoids are doing all the work rather than your upper trapezius.

3. Biceps Curls

No upper body workout is complete without a good biceps pump! This final exercise will fill your biceps with blood and nutrients and may even make your biceps veins more visible. It doesn’t matter if you use dumbbells or a resistance band for this exercise, as both options work brilliantly.

How to do it:

1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent.
2. Hold a light dumbbell in each hand or loop a resistance band under your feet and grip the handles.
3. Starting with your arms by your sides and palms facing forward, bend your arms and curl your hands up to shoulder level.
4. Lower your hands back down to your sides.
5. Repeat briskly for 20 seconds and then return to the first exercise.

Pro-Trainer Tips:

• Avoid using too much “body English” as swaying and jerking takes work away from your biceps and places it on your back.
• Pause briefly at the top of each rep to maximally contract your biceps and make this exercise even more effective.
• Turn your palms inward for a neutral or hammer grip that’ll hit your forearms a little harder.

Closing Thoughts

Finishers only take a few minutes, but they can deliver serious results.

Whether you’re chasing a bigger pump, want to finish your workout on a high, or need to salvage a sub-par session, this simple three-move upper body blast gets the job done. It fires up your muscles, floods your brain with feel-good hormones, and builds the kind of grit and determination that carries over to life outside the gym.

So, next time you’re tempted to skip the last five minutes of your workout—don’t. Use that time to squeeze in a little more work and get a lot more return.

But don’t take my word for it; give this finisher a go, and experience for yourself how a short, sharp burst at the end can leave you walking out of the gym feeling pumped, focused, and ready for more.

Try it today and feel the difference. Five minutes is all it takes.

References:

1. Tyler J, Podaras M, Richardson B, Roeder N, Hammond N, Hamilton J, Blum K, Gold M, Baron DA, Thanos PK. High-intensity interval training exercise increases dopamine D2 levels and modulates brain dopamine signaling. Front Public Health. 2023 Dec 19;11:1257629. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1257629. PMID: 38192549; PMCID: PMC10773799.
2. de Freitas MC, Gerosa-Neto J, Zanchi NE, Lira FS, Rossi FE. Role of metabolic stress for enhancing muscle adaptations: Practical applications. World J Methodol. 2017 Jun 26;7(2):46-54. doi: 10.5662/wjm. v7.i2.46. PMID: 28706859; PMCID: PMC5489423.

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