Three essential exercises for a triceps workout. And the triceps is a muscle that makes up two-thirds of your arm. If your idea is to have bigger arms, it is very important that you pay attention to this guy and there is nothing better than knowing what the main exercises are for you to have your workout.
The first on our list is the tricep pushdown, which you're super used to doing. It is one of the exercises that requires the least amount of strain on your elbow. So this already helps a lot, both for you to prevent any problems, and for those people who already have a bit of a sore elbow.
He will serve you very well. And it works in a very interesting way, all the heads of your triceps. That's why we call it triceps.
The biceps are two heads, the triceps are three. And the quadriceps, huh? That's right.
Now there are some points here that are important for you to avoid making mistakes and others to make this exercise more intense and bring you more answers. The first is, your elbow needs to be at your side. It's very common to see people doing the tricep pushdown and the elbow floating back and forth.
So you are dissipating the work of the triceps. This way, you are doing a less effective exercise. Now, another point that is very, very, very common Is to keep your elbow close to your body.
This is ideal. What often happens is that people move their elbow a little away. It's natural for this to happen.
Because if you move your elbow away, it becomes easier. Your body will always find an easier way to do the exercise. And then he will walk away.
The next time you do your tricep pushdown, your elbow should stay close to your body so that it doesn't move forward or to the side. Now I'm going to bring you those points that will make the exercise more intense, bringing you more results. The first is, when you go up, let it go up as much as you can.
There is a line of teaching that says to keep the elbow at 90 degrees. Reach 90 degrees then descend. If you do this, you will be failing to stretch these muscles as much as possible.
And we know that stretching is very important for hypertrophy. Of course. If you feel that the muscle is relaxing at the end of the exercise, at the end of the movement, then you stop a moment before, like a centimeter before.
And vice versa. When you go down, stretch as much as you can to feel the muscle shortening in its entirety. And this will bring you more optimized exercise work.
Now I'm going to give you some tricks to help you get better results doing this exercise. It will be working your triceps as a whole in a greater shortening. We call it short length.
This is important and you will see that the next exercises have different lengths and in the end they kind of complement each other. This means thinking about training in a smarter way, looking at each exercise with its peculiarities and putting this puzzle together. If you put two exercises in your workout that have the same fiber length, you are missing out on the opportunity to make your workout more effective in the sense of being more complete.
So if I'm telling you that it's a tricep pushdown with a barbell, it doesn't make sense for you to include a tricep pushdown with a rope in the same workout. You will change the accessory there, change some things, but the length of the fiber is the same. You are missing out on another exercise that will add more to your workout.
Start thinking about training more strategically. I call this smart training. It's not just exercise and muscle.
There is a whole logic, a strategy, an intelligence behind it. The second essential exercise that is mandatory in your training is the French. It is on this list because it works your muscle in long length.
The more stretched the muscle is being worked, the more hypertrophy is being generated. In other words, more stimulus for this muscle to grow is happening. And if you think about the French press, you will identify that it is exactly the same position that is used to stretch the triceps.
So, it is a very indispensable exercise in training. You can do it unilaterally to optimize this stretch. And if you have both arms holding a dumbbell, you will stretch your triceps a lot.
But if you're doing it unilaterally, you can make movements in your arm and even in your hand that allow you to stretch this guy even more. Here comes a bit of a bonus tip, right? Always have some unilateral exercise in your training.
It's not specifically a rule, but it will add a lot to your training. And because it works your triceps more elongated, it will generate greater hypertrophy in the long head of the triceps. Which, by the way, is the biggest of them.
That's why it's long. It will generate more hypertrophy in the long head, which is the largest of the triceps, and the triceps is the largest muscle in the arm. You've already noticed, right?
But you can make some mistakes in this exercise that make you lose all this characteristic that it has. One of them is to move your arm in a way that makes the exercise lighter. The purpose of the exercise is to keep the arm as vertical as possible.
It is very common for people to end up letting their arm droop. And this way, the arm on a diagonal makes the exercise easier. Biomechanical analysis questions indeed.
So when you go to do it, be careful about this. Always keep your arm as vertical as possible. When you go down, you will stretch your triceps.
When going up, there is a detail here. If you reach the end of the exercise with your arm completely straight, with your hand facing the ceiling, you will lose tension in your muscles. Because you will align the weight exactly with your joint, with the axis of work.
And we don't want that. Now I'm going to bring you that trick to make the exercise better, giving you more results. What is this guy's main characteristic?
Stretch more. So we're going to intensify the stretching. And the way we're going to do this is, when you go down, you're going to be doing it unilaterally, you're going to notice that the weight is going to hit your back.
When it hits your back, you will rotate your wrist a little, Move your thumb To the back You're going to be moving your thumb down like this. You will take your thumb back a little. This slight twist that you are going to do will already free up space to go down further and stretch the muscles even more.
You will be intensifying the strong point of the exercise. And what you're seeing here is that I look at each exercise in a very strategic way, understanding what its characteristics are, what peculiarities it delivers to the workout I combine all these peculiarities to form a perfect workout that meets all the needs so that the muscle is stimulated in the best way and in the greatest way. That's what I do.
Imagine having access to the programs I created for you, taking all these things into consideration, not for a workout, but for the entire periodization with progression, etc. And I'll also add my personal trainers, nutritionists and physiotherapists to your WhatsApp. To give you all the support.
This is what my students get and you are about to get it too. There is a link below for you to learn more about the work we do. Take a look there.
This third one will make a big difference in your arm and it is very rare for people to do it. It will further develop the lower part of your triceps. Your arms will look bigger just because you have this guy on your workout list.
I'm talking to you about the supinated triceps. Some people also call it a close-grip bench press. Basically, this exercise is very interesting for two reasons.
The first one you already understood. We have a study showing that it hypertrophies this lower region of the triceps more. It's the only exercise that provides this for us.
It's mandatory then, right? The other point, when you did the tricep pushdown, do you agree that your arm was stationary and your forearm was moving? If you do any other triceps exercise, you will notice that your upper arm will be stationary and your forearm will be moving.
Now, in the triceps, here that I'm telling you, supinated, that's not what happens. You also have arm movement. Both are in motion.
And that brings us something different. The fact that you put this exercise in, you are diversifying the stimulus. But you may also be making some mistakes in this exercise and ending up losing its effectiveness.
The main thing here is to move your elbow away. The further you move your elbow away, the more work is directed to your chest. It starts to look more like a bench press.
And that's not the proposal. The closed elbow will direct the work towards the triceps. End of story.
When you reach the upper end of the exercise, when you extend your arm, you also run the risk of relaxing your muscles. And you've already seen that this isn't interesting, because the time under tension, that is, the time you remain with the muscle contracted, is valid even as a training variable to further develop the muscle. If you stretch, rest, contract, rest, you are losing this variable and with that also losing stimulus for hypertrophy.
Then run away from it. When going up, keep your elbow slightly bent. Enough to maintain tension in the muscles.
And now I'm going to teach you a strategy I discovered to make the exercise even more powerful. Normally, you lower the bar in a straight line. And it will find more or less down there the upper part of your abdomen.
The exercise in this way will be done very well. Didn't I tell you that the more stretched the muscle is, the more work it has to do, the more hypertrophy stimulus it receives? So, you won't lower the bar straight down.
You will lower the bar towards your nipple. The bar will touch your chest. So she won't make that move.
She's gonna make that move. Kind of a diagonal. This will give you a greater stretch of your triceps precisely because you will flex your elbow more when the bar is reaching your chest.
This will change the exercise, practically making it different. Guys, I chose this exercise because it is the only one that addresses this issue I am telling you about. And I could only choose three exercises for this video.
But another exercise that is also very good and you will see me recommending it very intensely, both here on YouTube and on Instagram, is the cable rope grip skull crusher on the pulley. But again, I had to choose three and these were them. Now I'm going to leave you with this video here, which is the essential chest exercises.
After all, bro, having a big arm is good, but having that respectable chest is essential.
