While that may seem like no big deal, to work it you have to position your arm or arms overhead. Only in this position can it fully stretch, and a muscle that's fully stretched first is capable of a stronger contraction.
Overhead triceps movements done with EZ-bars, dumbbells, or cables all directly emphasize the long head. Including an overhead movement in each triceps workout therefore ensures you're targeting the long head for growth and maximizing arm girth. Or you can do all overhead movements for a change of pace to really smack the long head for maximal stimulation. Bring your arms down to your sides, as you would for press-downs, and the emphasis shifts to the lateral head of the triceps, which is the outermost head.
The lateral head also gets a lot of work when doing close-grip benches and bench dips, as well as triceps dip machines, kickbacks, and skullcrushers.
The medial head is the smallest of the three triceps heads. It stabilizes the elbow joint and is involved to some degree in all triceps movements. While you can't isolate it, you can emphasize it by using a reverse grip. Whether it's on press-downs, close-grip benches, or lying extensions, simply turn your hands over from your normal grip. Be forewarned: You won't be able to use much weight, so this kind of exercise is best done near the end of your triceps routine.
Whether you're doing press-downs, overhead extensions, dips, close-grip benches, or skullcrushers, keep your elbows in tight rather than allowing them to flare out. Often this is easier said than done.
When your elbows flare out, your other muscle groups—namely the chest and shoulders—join in, reducing the effectiveness of the exercise. Keep those elbows in tight! When doing close-grip bench presses, don't use a grip that's too close.
Besides making it harder to balance, an extremely close grip also puts more pressure on your wrists. What's more, closer doesn't mean that any more emphasis is placed on the triceps, either. When doing this movement, keep your hands about 8 inches apart, just inside shoulder width. You'll find it stresses the wrists less and you'll be better able to balance the bar.
One of the easiest supersets you can put together involves the skullcrusher and close-grip bench press. With just a flat bench and loaded EZ-bar, start with the skullcrusher. When you reach failure, go right into a set of close-grip benches. Because the former is a single-joint exercise and the latter is a multijoint move, your pec muscles will help kick in to help you pound out those reps at the end of the exercise pairing.
For a slightly different feel, try the superset on a slightly inclined or declined bench, which shifts the emphasis just slightly. Dumbbell and cable kick-backs are a common triceps exercise, yet they're often done incorrectly. Here's what to watch for: the elbow. Keep your working-side elbow pinned by your side; don't allow it to drop on the negative rep and then raise back up as you compete the positive.
Finish with unilateral one-arm or cable exercises. You can change the preceding order on occasion, but stick to it for most tri workouts.
Solutions Do a compound exercise one that also involves the chest and shoulders in each tri workout. Examples include close-grip bench presses, upright dips and bench dips with your hands behind your back. Do at least one EZ-curl bar or dumbbell extension in each tri workout. Examples include lying EZ-curl bar triceps extensions, two-arm dumbbell overhead extensions and one-arm dumbbell overhead extensions. If you do two pushdown exercises, one should be done with an overhand or parallel grip to emphasize the lateral heads and the other should be underhand to emphasize the medial heads.
Solutions Lock your elbows in place for all reps until you reach failure. For pushdowns this is easy to do by pressing your elbows against your sides and not allowing them to deviate from that position. After reaching failure with strict reps, you can then loosen your form to eke out a few more reps. Do this by moving your elbows forward during the negative half of the rep and backward during the positive half.
Cheat as little as you must to keep the set going. Similar to the triceps, the key with biceps training for maximizing muscle growth is maximizing the range of motion and tension placed on the muscle. It is key that the muscular fatigue occurs within the biceps. Below are five important factors to consider when looking to optimize your arm training routine.
Training too little will result in little growth, justlike training too often as your arms cannot rebuild and recover. Odds are if you are reading this you are not happy with your arm growth, so start by determining your overall training volume per week work sets per week nd adjust your plan as needed.
This could not be further from the truth when it comes to muscle growth and recovery. Be sure that you are maximizing your recovery and staying within optimal weekly training volume work sets per week.
If you are correctly prescribing training volume and are not seeing growth, keep reading. The Fitbod app recommends precise training loads, sets, and reps based on logged workout history. The Fitbod algorithm also recognizes how hard a muscle group has trained and will program the right exercises based on your optimal levels of recovery.
Despite the widespread popularity of arm training, many gym goers still fall short of filling out their shirt sleeves or having lean, sculpted arms. One cause of this is the lack of full range of motion training. Performing movements like curls and triceps pushdown as well as all other exercise to the fullest range of motion creates a deep muscular stretch on the muscle that stimulates high amounts of stress.
It is this stress that is responsible for muscle growth. Lack of performing movements in the full range of motion can often minimize your abilities to maximize growth. And remember, using less weight to allow for a fuller range of motion is key, not lifting heavy!
Performing movements with erratic speeds, lack of control, and minimal abilities to feel the biceps and triceps contracting and extending under load can all limit overall muscle stress.
When performing movements, opt to perform them in slow and controlled motions, focusing on feeling the muscle stretch and contract under loads throughout the full range of motion. Performing the same movements and same angles can result in overuse injury and limited growth. Be sure to review the above sections and links to learn more about how various exercises target various aspects of the muscle.
Dumbbell Bicep Curl: 3 sets of 11 reps. Seated Tricep Press: 3 sets of 12 reps. Biceps Curl To Shoulder Press: 3 sets of 7 reps. Incline Dumbbell Curl: 3 sets of 10 reps. Palms-Down Barbell Wrist Curl: 2 sets of 5 reps. Download Workout on Fitbod Final Thoughts Building bigger, stronger arms is not as simple as doing more sets of using heavier weights.
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