This triceps workout will teach you how to build beautiful triceps, which can sometimes be tough to grow.
In fact, figuring out what works best could take a while, requiring years of hard effort and experimentation. Luckily, though, one great trainer shared these 10 powerful strategies to help your triceps develop quickly.
1. Warm Up Well
Warming up elbows and triceps prevents injury. Always warm up twice before your first set. For example, start a workout with rope or angled bar pushdowns. Before riskier activities like extensions, warm up the elbows, tendons, and tris with pushdowns.
2. Vary Your Target Zones
If you merely consider what the triceps accomplishes, you might ignore its complexity. Each exercise addresses a particular head in the system's three divisions. Bar-based pushdowns affect my outer brains more than rope-based ones. Lying extensions with dumbbells instead of a cambered bar work my lower tris near my elbows. Perform a variety of activities to fatigue your triceps.
3. Always Lift with Correct Form
Never cheat a triceps lift -- it increases your risk of injury. All triceps exercises require stable elbows. As hinges, your elbows can only bend down. Remember: Only your forearms should move.
4. Concentrate on Contraction
Lifters often perform pushdowns and extensions without locking out. Lockout is crucial to a triceps lift because triceps only contract when arms are fully extended. Squeeze each rep's lockout position for a few seconds. The lift's negative phase should be gradual afterwards.
5. Build with Pyramids
As your program progresses, the weights and reps will increase, getting heavier and lower. This warms up your triceps for harder workouts. Pyramid each tris exercise even if you don't use much weight.
A moderate workout could begin with 15 rope pushdowns. You can then increase the weight for the second set of 12 reps. For the final 10 reps, raise the weight. Pyramiding is the best way to gain size and strength.
6. Embrace Change
Each week, do one moderate and one intensive workout. Don’t just change repetitions. Light workouts differ from intense ones. Changing your training routine keeps my muscles guessing and progressing. Repeating the same workout won't provide great results.
7. Failing Is Winning
Every set must be maxed out. Use a heavy enough weight to tire your muscles by the last few reps. Final reps are crucial.
Early reps barely tax the triceps, allowing you to thoroughly exhaust them by the end. Don't give up too soon. To advance, you must push yourself.
8. Don’t Overtrain
If you aren’t careful, you can easily overtrain your triceps. Remember, chest and shoulder presses also work tris. Avoid locking out my chest and shoulder pushes to save your tris.
Only work your triceps once a week, several days after chest and shoulder workouts, to avoid overtraining. Even if you go to failure, limit your sets.
9. Flex to Impress
Posing before a show improves your presentation and condition, plus it provides you energy to flex during prejudging. Posing brings out the three triceps heads and strengthens the brain-muscle relationship. Even if you're not going onstage, you should flex your tris for 15-20 seconds while training.
10. Log Everything
Training logs help you track your development. You can track what you've done, and how many times you've done each exercise. It also helps you keep track of what works and what doesn't for you.
Train triceps like other muscles. These records are always useful. You'll get to your destination faster if you can see where you've been.
