Building upper body strength at home

[geekman]

First post ever in this section!

I've noticed recently that my upper body strength is embarrassingly poor - my arms felt like they were about to drop off after carrying 2 heavy bags of shopping from the car! My nearest gym is miles away, but in the coming months I'll be having a lot of time off work, so I was hoping to find something I could do at home to build up a bit more strength. I already do quite a bit of walking and swimming so I feel like my lower body is fine: I can run fair distances and not feel out of breath.

I've always been extremely skinny, and I'm not doing this for vanity reasons - I don't really care if I end up looking more muscular or not, but I would like to be able to carry stuff / do press ups / sit ups without feeling like I'm about to die

I was thinking of maybe buying some weights to use at home, but not really sure what sort of thing is appropriate. Are there any particular exercises which would help?

Advice would be appreciated

 

[geekman]

Thanks, that's all really helpful. Just tried the initial test on the 100 pushups link, I'm rank 2

And nothing wrong with vanity reasons, I just meant that if some exercises were more vanity biased than outright strength I'd rather avoid them as my main objective here is not being ridiculously weak. If I end up ripped I obviously wouldn't be complaining