Is there a lifter out there that doesn't want larger arms and a bigger bench press? The triceps are one of the least discussed muscle groups. After all, they contribute significantly more to your overall arm size than your biceps, and they are an important muscle group in all pressing exercises.
With this is in mind it should seem obvious that building your triceps should be your goal if you want to get bigger and stronger. The problem is that most lifters do not know how to train their triceps properly. You will often see bodybuilders using valuable energy on things like pushdowns and kickbacks. Now, there isn't anything bad about these exercises, but the majority of your time would be much better spent on compound exercises which allow for heavy loads to be used.
In fact, you simply can't properly stimulate all of the muscle fibers in the triceps without incorporating some exercises which allow for heavy loads to be used. In general it is best to hit 1 or 2 heavy compound exercises and then move on to an isolation exercise to squeeze the last little bit out of your muscles.
With this in mind let's take a look at three great exercises for your triceps:
Triceps Skullcrushers
This is probably the strength training movement with the scariest moniker. After all, who wants their head smashed? But the exercise is perfectly named because it is performed lying down on your back on a bench with a barbell at arm's length. You will then bend at the elbows and lower the bar until it touches your forehead. Obviously if you do this in an uncontrolled way it will hurt your skull!
The key to this exercise is to make sure the tension stays on the triceps. To do this you want the elbows close to the body and pointed towards the ceiling. It is essential that you only bend and straighten the elbows and that you do not move them forward or backward, or you will shift the tension off the triceps.
While this exercise is usually done by touching the bar to the forehead, you can vary the point at which you touch in order target specific areas of the triceps. In general, shifting lower on the body, such as the chin, will hit the medial head harder, while shifting higher on the body will hit the long head harder.
Tricep Dips
This is the classic triceps mass builder. Dips are probably responsible for building more triceps msucle mass than any other movement. This is from the combination of heavy weights and targeted stimulation that they provide to the triceps. When you first begin lifting you may have trouble performing more than a couple of these, but as you progress it is vital to continue adding weight by using a dumbbell between your feet or a specialized dip belt. The addition of external loading will allow you to continue to progress in this movement once you are capable of easily handling your body weight.
As with most triceps exercises, the key to proper performance is to keep your elbows tight to the body. This means using a close grip on the dip bars. It also means that you should use an upright posture without too much forward lean. Leaning forward shifts more of the tension to the deltoids and pectorals, which is not what we want for our purposes. Optimally, you should descend into the bottom of the exercise until your upper arms were parallel with the ground. However, this will cause shoulder pain in a good percentage of lifters, and in this case you should either shorten the range of motion or discard the exercise altogether.
Close grip Barbell Bench Press
If this isn't the king of the triceps movements, then it is pretty close. The ability to use heavy loads due to synergy from your chest and front deltoids allows you to completely blast the triceps and force them to grow. While you want to work on continually getting stronger, you should never sacrifice correct form for weight. With this exercise it important to keep the elbows near your body throughout the movement in order to keep as much tension as possible on the triceps. Even with a close grip the tension can be shifted off of the triceps muscle and put onto the elbow joint if you do not keep the elbows tucked in tight. This obviously not only hurts your muscle growth, but can lead to elbow and wrist injuries as well.
As you can see good form is critical to your success with triceps exercises, just as it is with all exercises. You can perform exercises with bad technique and still get some of the benefit, but you will never see great results and you may just injure yourself in the process. Because of this it is highly recommended that you learn how to do these exercises properly from an expert in the field.
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