Best Tricep Exercises

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(Free-Press-Release.com) May 7, 2009 -- fitness program
Best Tricep Exercises

The triceps are a fairly easy muscle group to train. Their job is simply to extend the arm. Your job--as a bodybuilder--is to hammer the living daylights out of them every time you train them. Here's how.

If you do triceps after chest or shoulders, they should be pretty warmed up before you even get to your first isolation exercise. Even so, you should do on warm up set and stretch them out some before going heavy. If your triceps are lagging or you're hitting them first in your workout for some other reason, be sure to do at least two warm up sets and some light stretching before you dive into the work sets.

Once you're ready to go, I wouldn't recommend doing more than three exercises. It's really only an opinion, but volume training approaches don't tend to pay off as well as heavy duty-esque routines unless you happen to be Arnold Schwarzenegger or a direct descendant.

I always flex and hold my tricep movements for a split second before I go into the negative portion of the rep. I'm happier getting six reps with this kind of form than whipping through eight or nine slopper reps. Don't get caught up in the numbers game because you'll lose. Build your muscles not your ego.

On to the exercises...

Cable Pushdowns
Execution

Stand facing a pulley that's set to a height slightly above your shoulders. You can perform this movment with a variety of grips. The most popular ones are the straight bar, the triangular pushdown piece and the rope. To start the movement, grap hold of your grip of choice and fully extend your arms downward. If you're using the rope hammer grip, then push your hands apart at the bottom of the movement to get the full benefit of that specialized grip.

Your feet should be less than a foot back from the pulley to provide maximum leverage and stability. I always put one foot forward and lean into a little bit over the weight.

If your arms are unevenly developed then I strongly recommend isolating each arm in turn starting with the weak one by using a one-hand grip. You can opt to do the pushdowns with either a palms-up or palms-down grip, but I find it easiest to work with the one-hand grip if I use a palms-up grip. This tends to work the posterior head of the tricep a bit more, but the anterior head sees so much action during chest and shoulder movements that it doesn't really need more than five or six work sets to itself.
Muscles Worked

Triceps.
Notes

There are two heads to the tricep muscles, both of which need to be worked to achieve maximum overall development. The rope hammer grip will help you hit the posterior head as will using a reverse (palms-up) grip on the straight bar pushdowns.
Dumbbell Kickbacks
Execution

With a single light dumbbell, stand to one side of a flat bench. If you are working your [Read More]

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