The triceps are one of the least discussed muscle groups. After all, they contribute significantly more to your overall arm size than your biceps, and they are an important muscle group in all pressing exercises. Is there a lifter out there that doesn't want larger arms and a stronger bench press?
With this is in mind it should seem obvious that building your triceps should be your goal if you want to get bigger and stronger. The problem is that most bodybuilders don't know how to train their triceps correctly. You will often see bodybuilders wasting away valuable energy on things like pushdowns and kickbacks. Now, there isn't anything bad about these exercises, but the majority of your time would be much better spent on compound exercises which allow for heavy loads to be used.
In fact, you simply can't properly stimulate all of the muscle fibers in the triceps without incorporating some exercises which allow for heavy weights to be used. In general it is best to hit 1 or 2 heavy compound exercises and then move on to an isolation exercise to squeeze the last little bit out of your muscles.
With this in mind let's take a look at three fantastic exercises for your triceps:
Triceps Skullcrushers
This is probably the strength training movement with the scariest moniker. After all, who wants their skull smashed? But the exercise is perfectly named because it is done lying down on your back on a bench with a barbell at arm's length. You will then bend at the elbows and lower the bar until it touches your forehead. Obviously if you do this in an uncontrolled way it will hurt your skull!
The key to this exercise is to make sure the stress stays on the triceps. To do this you want the elbows close to the body and pointed towards the ceiling. It is important that you only bend and extend the elbows and that you do not move them forward or backward, or you will shift the stress off the triceps.
While this exercise is traditionally done by touching the bar to the forehead, you can vary the point at which you touch in order target specific areas of the triceps. In general, shifting lower on the body, such as the chin, will hit the medial head harder, while shifting higher on the body will hit the long head harder.
Tricep Dips
This is the classic triceps builder. Parallel bar dips are probably responsible for building more triceps size than any other movement. This is from the combination of heavy loading and targeted stimulation that they provide to the triceps. When you first start lifting you may have difficulty completing more than a couple of these, but as you progress it is important to continue adding weight by using a dumbbell between your feet or a specialized dip belt. The addition of external loading will allow you to continue to progress in this movement once you are capable of easily handling your body weight.
As with most triceps exercises, the key to proper performance is to keep your elbows close to the body. This means using a close grip on the dip bars. It also means that you should use an upright posture without too much forward lean. Leaning forward shifts more of the stress to the deltoids and chest, which is not what we want for our goal. Optimally, you should descend into the bottom of the exercise until your upper arms were parallel with the ground. However, this may cause shoulder pain in a good number of lifters, and in this case you should either shorten the range of movement or discard the exercise altogether.
Close grip BB Bench Press
If this isn't the undisputed king of the triceps movements, then it is pretty close. The ability to use heavy loads due to synergy from your chest and shoulders allows you to really blast the triceps and force them to get bigger. While you want to work on continually getting stronger, you should not sacrifice correct technique for weight. With this exercise it important to keep the elbows tucked into your body throughout the movement in order to keep as much stress as possible on the triceps. Even with a close grip the stress can be shifted off of the triceps muscle and put onto the elbow joints if you don't keep the elbows tucked in tight. This obviously not only hampers your muscle growth, but can lead to elbow and wrist problems as well.
As you can see proper form is crucial to your success with triceps exercises, just as it is with all exercises. You can perform exercises incorrectly and still get some of the benefit, but you will never see great results and you may just hurt yourself in the process. Because of this it is highly recommended that you learn how to do these exercises correctly from qualified professional in the field.
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