The PERFECT Science Based Tricep Workout (SETS AND REPS INCLUDED)

what's up guys Jeff Cavalier aex.com do you remember the perfect workouts they became the most popular workout series ever here on YouTube and I have you to thank for that and to show my thanks guess what I'm bringing them back by popular demand the perfect tricep workout continues our series here today for 2025 and Beyond now when it comes to a perfect workout or in this case A Perfect science-based workout I think it's important to understand that there is no perfect science so any workout that is actually recommended to you based on the latest in

science alone is not really going to cut it see here as we've always done we rely on the Sciences of anatomy and physiology and Kinesiology and we put it all together in a workout that actually makes sense and we're going to do the same thing for you here we're going to sprinkle in what we know now to be the most effective techniques to employ when we're trying to build bigger triceps but not just for today but for the Long Haul right longevity and joint health is also going to be a big concern of mine as

a physical therapist and it's not just because I'm an anatomy nerd that this stuff matters to me it's because I know when you're trying to build a muscle this stuff will matter to everyone and when we're talking about the triceps we're talking about a three-headed muscle the first two of which the lateral IMM medial head are responsible for getting those elbows extended out in front of our body so we need exercises that do that the same token the third head here the long head is probably most responsible for the overall size of your arm accounting

for 2/3 of the size of the triceps itself now how do we do that well a lot of times people don't do all the exercises needed because you can't just focus on those that get those elbows up in that tricep long head in a stretch position but ones that also put it in its fully contracted position but of course we're going to cover all those in our workout now while I say the perfect tricep workout what I actually mean is not just one tricep workout but really two and the reason for that is while there's

a lot that we disagree on when it comes to the science of training the one thing we can pretty much all agree on is that it seems to be that training a muscle group twice a week is more beneficial than training it just once and that's because we know that there's a possibility to restimulate a muscle every 72 hours or so that gives us another growth opportunity if we take it that being said a lot of that goes hand inand with the amount of effort and intensity that you're willing to train with if you're going

to train really really really hard Think Like Mike mener then you're not going to be able to train that muscle twice a week and in that case if you're looking for a workout like that I have it it's called The 100 arm workout that you're going to want to check out but if you're like most of us that want to put in a good solid effort and want to see the best results for it then you're going to be able to split the workouts up into two separate ones but again you're going to equate the

volume that you normally would do in just that one workout and split it up over two the good news there is the work us will become shorter and because of that as I mentioned before you're going to be able to train another muscle on that day allowing us to hit all the muscle groups in this Perfect workout twice a week now this is the first time that we're covering a muscle that actually gets to be on the back end of one of your training days in this case every time we train chest now the number

of sets that you're going to perform in either of these two tricep workouts will be heavily dependent upon whether you're treating it like a standalone or whether you're going to pair it up with one of these up here but in order to figure out what that's going to be like or look like for you we should actually start looking at the workouts and tricep workout number one looks like this just four simple exercises and it starts off with a basic movement it's the tricep push down and I think one of the big things that we

don't do here is take advantage of the fact that we can load this exercise up quite heavily here in the 6 to8 rep range and then push it to failure again without bastardizing the exercise or turning it into what I call a jackhammer push down you still want to Target the triceps and most importantly here you're hitting that medial lateral head by getting your arms out in front of your body now ironically here another good exercise would be or could be a close grip bench press in this spot but if we are doing this as

I mentioned before along with the perfect chest workout I don't really need to have you bench pressing again okay we could do this exercise treat it the way I just said and get good results for it again two to three sets 6 to8 reps using your 6 to eight rep max next we have a lion dumbbell extension now I mentioned before about the importance of the long head in terms of the allocation of size of the arm when it comes to that long head of the triceps it's really important but how you train it matters

are you training it through that stretch position or are you training it in that contracted position and as I mentioned before you're going to have to do both however we're going to take it even a step further we're not just going to do two to three sets of 8 to 10 using our 8 to 10 rep max but we're going to do this in a way that allows us to ch sheet beyond go to and through failure so we can perform some Ecentric only repetitions where we can drive even more growth and that's where we

actually want to make sure that we're using the dumbbells here rather than an easy curl bar because I love doing this exercise with an easy curl bar but you're not going to be able to do the cheat to put yourself into the Ecentric only reps as easily if you don't use dumbbells well as you see here when I reach concentric failure I want to still perform these Ecentric only repetitions well that's where you're just going to drag them across your shoulders low to put you in a position to press them back up to the top

basically a close grip bench press but this time this going be a weight that you can easily handle and like I said again this would be very challenging if you had an easy bar that kept banging against the back of your head the dumbbells allow you to do this much easier without that risk of concussion now we're looking again at two to three sets of 8 to 10 repetitions again allowing for those Ecentric only repetitions at the end now the third exercise up here is going to complement what we just did remember last time we

focused on that stretch position of the long head to get that long head fully contracted State you want to get that elbow back behind your body with the elbow extended as well well that's where we do something like the dumbbell or cable tricep Kickback and I know this exercise takes a lot of because people say it's not worthwhile to do I disagree completely as a matter of fact it's one of the only exercises one of only a very few select that allow us to get into this fully contracted position and that's why you need to

start making sure you do it now while the cable might provide a more balanced resistance curve throughout the range of motion I certainly don't think that the dumbbell is a bad option or one to be avoided remember it's one of those only opportunities to get fully back behind your body and extended to really get that good tricep contraction and therefore it's one that I want to make sure that you're doing when you reach failure here you can continue to kind of rep out even a little bit more and push those boundaries of growth even further

by doing a few partial repetitions on the exercise again 10 to 12 repetitions here to Max on two to three sets the last exercise is really one that we do with all of our workouts that is we try to end with some form of a body weight exercise I like to say command your body in space especially when you're training athletes you want to make sure that there's something involved that allows you to move your body around here we're looking at targeting the triceps and we take a push-up as our Focus but we actually change

the exercise up a little bit to put more of the focus on the triceps and rather than doing just a diamond push-up the Cobra push-up allows us to get those arms back again a little bit closer towards extending behind the body so we can further hit this tricep long head in this fully contracted position so you're looking at one set to failure of this body weight burnout now in terms of the recommended set volume that's best for you it goes back to my original question of whether you intended to do this alongside the perfect chest

workout or do it as a standalone workout if you decide to do it on the same day with your perfect chest workout then I would Veer to the left side here of the set total so that your total volume is only 2 4 6 7 total sets and that's again based on the fact that we're already using our triceps in the chest portion of the workout if you're going to do this as a standalone then you certainly can go on the higher end we're looking at 3 6 9 10 total sets again the option is

up to you it depends upon what your overall plan is and that brings us to tricep workout number two and here we start off with another compound exercise that's probably not done that often but should be we call it the pjr pullover now it looks like a pullover to some but it's not and believe me the range of motion needs to be cut short you don't want to be pulling a dumbbell all the way up over your chest like you would with let's say a regular lat pullover but but your lats will help you here

to handle much heavier loads than you might be accustomed to and this is where the tricep growth capacity comes in because you're going to use a weight that causes 6 to eight rep form failure and you allow for that deep stretch behind the head and as you come up stop the dumbbell about halfway and really focus on extending the rest of the way with the elbows this should be an elbow focused exercise don't think about moving your elbows through space as much as you would on a pullover think about extending the elbows and allowing them

to bend and flex to make sure the tri are doing the work the next exercise up here is the cable tricep push away now I talked about those exercises that do a good job like the first one of putting that long head on stretch to help to recruit and stimulate that muscle for growth well here the tricep push away is one that's another great option it's another one that gets that stretch but what a lot of people do wrong here is they anchor it too low they end in a position where the push away is

out in front of their body from here what that does is basically cause the cable to be parallel to the arm arm in its contracted position you sort of lose some of the effect of that contraction instead I want you to do it like this where we have our arms high up over our head you can see there's much more perpendicularity between that cable and your forearms in the contracted position meaning there'll be a lot more work being done but again if we do this exercise with a decent enough amount of weight here 10 to

12 rep range and we take it not just to failure but again utilize partial repetitions to go past failure we're not just getting a good stretch exercise but we're one that allows us to up the intensity level to a degree that maybe you haven't been experiencing right now that allows for more tricep overall growth the next exercise up here is going to do the opposite once again let's work on getting those triceps into that fully contracted position here we have something called The X push down and I have to admit I love this exercise and

whether or not you have access to a cable machine or not you can hook a couple bands up to a pull-up bar and do this at home that way too so don't avoid this exercise especially given what it provides That's Unique among the other exercises and that is that fully contracted triceps in order to get there again you can see you want those arms back behind your body the way to do this is to take that cross-handed grip with the right grabbing the left and the left grabbing the right and then driving those elbows back

behind the body and then extending them and you'll feel this one trust me you'll feel an intense contraction almost bald up if you do it properly you want to make sure that you don't just get in there and get out Revel in that contraction Revel in that bald up kind of cramped up discomfort and you know you're doing the right thing and and again we don't have to just stop at 10 to 12 rep max right we're going to use that weight but we can continue to go through failure by just cranking out a few

extra partials in that until we know that we've reached failure and reached our limit and then lastly we did as we did the last time we're going to finish up with a body weight exercise this time the bench dip and yet again it's another exercise that I think gives us that great opportunity to get in that fully contracted state of the triceps by getting the elbows back behind the body and pushing those elbows all the way down until they're straightened out now what are we looking for here to do these right because this exercise can

be a shoulder killer if you do them incorrectly and the worst way to do it is with your hands pointed forward and your shoulders rounding out as you dip down to the bottom of every rep instead what you want to do is open up the chest by opening up the Palms turn your hands out on the bench and as you go down work on keeping the chest up high and you'll see that you get all the benefits that you're looking for on the triceps without all those detrimental side effects to the shoulder joint here again

we're just doing one set one set to allout failure as a body weight burnout now as I mentioned before it depends on whether or not you're following the perfect workout schedule where you're doing this on your second chest workout day if that's the case here Veer towards the left side of the volume with 2 four six seven total sets as the target if you're going to do this as a standalone you just want to do a regular tricep workout then feel free to kind of go to the other side here and do 10 sets total

whichever way you decide to do these tricep workouts whether with chest or on its own it will work for you I promise and now I'm going to make your job even easier cuz I'm going to allow you these screenshots that you can take so you can print them bring them to the gym with you and make sure you don't miss a beat guys if you want to follow the entire series here we actually have the chess workout that you're going to want to do alongside this one or here's the whole playlist so you can watch

all the workouts in the perfect series if you're looking for full workouts guys meal plans and supplements we have them athlet next.com if you haven't already done so make sure you click subscribe turn your notifications so you never miss a video not just in this perfect series but any others we do on this channel all right guys good luck see you soon