I'll give you the perfect triceps training which came to be with a lot of science and trial and error that I had for over 20 years. The triceps are the biggest muscles in your arms. Many people like to show their biceps to show how big they are, but when you compare the biceps' volume to the entire triceps, see how huge it is.
Gigantic! If you want big arms, you need to give it some attention. And for the perfect triceps workout, we need to think about many things.
This muscle goes from your shoulder to your elbow. So, doing an exercise here and here, the stimuli are different. Also, to get the most hypertrophy, you need three important stimulation points: mechanical tension, muscular hypoxia, and tissue damage.
Throughout all my years, I understood which triceps exercise emphasize more on or another point, and what is the perfect order. The first exercise is the triceps push-down, with the rope or the bar. I could have told you to do the lying triceps extension, but the push-down is more comfortable for your joints which is not the same for the lying triceps extension, but we'll get to it.
The triceps push-down also enables you to use a lot of weight, and here we are talking about the first thing which we'll get to, the mechanical tension. The bigger the load, the bigger the tension, and your nervous system turns on its motor units, and this is important to get in the beginning of the workout. You need to be careful with the push-down so that you can get all that.
Tuck in your elbows, closing your armpit. If you move your elbows away, the work goes to the chest, and you lose what we talked about so far. Another interesting point.
Where is the arm? Beside the body. If it's there, the triceps long head is shortened.
Another important point is the range of motion. Bend and extend your elbows as much as possible, leading to more work throught the entire arc of movement. The range is important.
3 to 4 sets are good. How many reps? No reps.
Just to give you an idea, though, you won't do more than 10 reps in this first exercise. I want you to rev this nervous system, to push it hard, and for that we need a heavier load, but less reps. Let's go to the second exercise.
The cable rope high pulley triceps extension. You'll have your back against the pulley, and you will tilt your body around 45°, because this angle will give you the support for the exercise, and your arms will be beside your face. What's important is the range of motion, extending as most as possible, holding for 1 to 2 seconds, and then you stretch as much as possible, almost tearing your arm off.
What's the idea behind this exercise? First, didn't you do push-down here? With the high pulley, you are stretching the long head.
It changes the mechanic of the exercise. And why a rope? It will provide you with something which is peak contraction.
You do the movement and squeeze at the end, so in this way you are increasing time under tension, and in this case the muscle consumes the oxygen there, getting into our second point, which is the muscular hypoxia, the lack of oxygen there, so your muscle needs to be stronger. Damn, I suck! Now you see why we used the rope.
But why the high pulley, and not lying down on the bench? The triceps extension is, according to electromyography, the best triceps exercise. However, it takes its toll on your joints, demanding a lot from your elbow.
One thing I noticed by doing it with the high pulley, it's easier on the joints. You demand less and have an equally great exercise, and even using the rope which has that bonus. And joints are very important, because if you hurt them, how's the intensity like?
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Let's keep doing 3 sets for this exercise. Check this out, you can already increase the number of reps, at around 12 to 15 reps, we need to keep this muscle tensed up as much a possible. The third exercise!
First, we loaded up with the push-down, for the mechanical tension. Then, we went to the high pulley triceps extension, which led to muscular hypoxia. Now, this one is sublime: we'll get this tensed up muscle, which is shortened, and will stretch it.
When we stretch this muscle, specially in this situation, we'll stimulate the third point, which is tissue damage. To do this, we move to the French press. Here, the triceps is shortened.
Here, it's on the halfway point. The French press goes here to give you as much tissue damage as possible. To give you the most stretching, you'll notice that you move the weight behind your head and add a slight rotation to enable it to go even lower.
This bench, as it is smaller, enables that extra stretching, and it's also interesting to not move completely up, because your joints will lock, and the muscles rest. It's good form keeping your arms beside your ears, because you can direct all the torque with your arm's lever to the triceps. If you incline your arm, the exercise becomes easier and weaker and of course, will give less stimulus.
You can do it with both arms or unilaterally. Do it unilaterally, you can explore and reap more benefits like this. We'll keep the 3 sets, and also we'll keep the reps in the 12-15 range.
We'll stretch this muscle, and the more the reps, the more you stimulate that stretching. Focus on stretching the triceps. Now, the fourth exercise in our workout.
You did one here, one here, and the third was here. This means that you went through all the angles of your shoulder. Doing any exercise on these angles will lead to a "repetition" of sorts.
How do we proceed? - I dunno. - Science shows that this exercise works the lower part of your triceps, which we call the distal portion.
It rules, as it sticks out when you wear a tee. We'll do a close grip bench press. You'll focus on changing your arm's position.
It's important to bring your elbows close to your body, almost scraping your torso. You'll direct the weight on top of the force vector, which works your triceps. You can bring the barbell on your upper abs, which is not wrong, or on your nipples, because that is an extra elongation.
And let me tell ya, I want more reps. I want you to make that muscle work, I want that pump. Do over 20 reps, and if push-ups are good, do that close grip press with a light weight.
Three sets, and there you have it. Here, we have a science-based biceps workout. I'll teach you how to get that nice peak and a wider aspect.
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