Overview

Effective triceps training involves targeting the three heads of the triceps to some capacity.

These are the lateral, long and medial heads, in descending order of size.

The lateral and medial heads are involved in elbow extension.

The long head is a bi-articulate muscle, involved in both elbow extension and shoulder extension and adduction.

Because of this triceps training should generally be thought of as two distinct motor patterns. In many instances it’s still helpful to think of a shortened-biased, midrange-biased and lengthened-biased exercises, though depending on the situation the mid-range does not need to be trained directly due to overlap with chest and shoulders training.

Triceps are tied together with chest and shoulders; although we’re grouping them into distinct categories for ease of discussion, in reality a pressing motion is going to involve all three muscle groups.

Prescription

Minimalist

An absolute minimalist approach means 1 movement ‘slot’.

In this case if we can only 1 motor pattern, there’s a clear winner:

• Tricep dominant press (midrange-biased)

Moderate

If we have more resources to expend on the muscle group, it is of course the preferred approach.

You’ll notice the movement slots are different to a minimalist approach, not just an addition. A few muscle groups such as triceps, traps and glutes already get a lot of indirect work from other movements.

So you may end up with situations where if you’re hitting everything with the bare minimum, you need a heavy overloading exercise. Whereas if you’re increasing your movement slots and volume of sets, you may already accrue sufficient indirect volume that it’s best to focus on more targeted work.

In this case the movement slots would look like this:

• Any pushdown
• Any extension

Maximalist

This is the approach if we are throwing everything at the kitchen sink. Use sparingly either if you are in a plateau or looking for a specialisation phase.

Here the movement slots might look like this:

• Tricep-dominant press (midrange-biased)
• Iso-lateral pushdown
• Bilateral Pushdown
• Standing extension
• Lying extension

Standout exercises

Tricep-dominant press movement

Dip

• These include ‘regular’ dips with a natural movement that spreads the load across triceps and pecs, and a tricep-dominant dip. This is done by pushing your elbow maximally outwards (as opposed to a chest-dominant dip where you keep the elbow and wrist stacked).
• If you’re advanced you’ll likely need a dip belt; there’s only so much dumbbell weight you can squeeze between your legs.

Smith Machine JM Press

• Alternating between SM JM Press and dips for months and years is a sure fire way of building tris, there’s no way around it. This allows additional stability compared to dips .

Iso-lateral pushdown movement

Cable Rope Pushdown or variations

• Really any attachment that allows your hands to move freely on a cable stack is equally good here. A common piece of equipment is a pair of Vulken straps which is a good variation. A rope, a Vulken strap, or dual D-grip handles are pretty much equally good options.

Bilateral pushdown movement

Cable V-bar Pushdown or variations

• This is simply any attachment with a fixed hand position. This could be a V-bar or EZ bar or any other attachment for the cable. If push came to shove I’d argue that we want to maximise stimulus with different angles, and the V-bar allows a more comfortable bar path, so it’s the superior option. But this is fractional minutia, don’t let it distract you from just going through a full pushdown.

Standing extension movement

Supported 1-arm DB Extension

• This is done standing on your feet, but lying your back on a bench at the steepest angle. This is a money exercise, taking the long head through a full range of motion. If you don’t have a bench, standing is of course fine.

Cable 1-arm Extension

• Essentially the same movement, just grab the end of the cable without an attachment. Pretty much equally as good, you’ll notice we prefer single arm variations here to both maximise stimulus and minimise potential joint niggles.

Lying extension movement

Bentover Cable Rope Extension

• Yes this is cheating a little, ‘bentover’ isn’t exactly a ‘lying horizontal’ movement but it falls in the same bucket.

DB/KB Lying Extension

• A time tested option, best done on a bench with the feet up. If a bench isn’t available lying on the ground is fine. Experiment with the kettlebells if your gym has small to medium sized ones, it’s a nice alternative to dumbbells.

Dual Rope Pushdown

• Yes this movement slot is probably a misnomer by this point. This is a pushdown not an extension, but this variation is more in line as an alternative here. The problem is the loading is too light for it to be a standard pushdown; we aren’t going to be taxing the muscle the same way. On the other hand the extra length allows us to fully contract the long head of the triceps, making it a good option to sub in here on occasion.

Execution

With presses, keep intra-thoracic pressure and then after that it’s simply a matter of torque between your elbow and shoulder. So think of expanding your rib cage with each breath and maintain this pressure throughout the set. Then drive the elbows horizontally away from the point between shoulder and wrist. With this you can then focus on the mind muscle connection of the triceps.

The secret sauce to the dips is the full shoulder depression of each rep until you absolutely can’t; this adds to scapula work which is underworked for almost everybody.

With pushdowns, the key is realising shoulder extension is connected to the triceps. It’s OK to allow it to move as long as you’re focused on the elbows and the mind muscle connection with the triceps. Especially as you go into partial reps which most of us will need to really push progress.

With extensions, keep the stability of your torso and don’t lose intra-thoracic pressure of the chest. With the eccentrics try to drive the elbow up above your head as you lower the weight.

Programming

Reps, tempo, sets, rest times

Triceps don’t need any unique points here, just focus on execution and effort and the rest will come.

Intensifiers and volume

Tricep presses should generally be kept as straight sets; cluster sets (for SM JM Press) or drop sets (for dips) can be used for a period of time.

Pushdowns should absolutely be blasted with all the intensifiers. Mechanical drop sets into partials and isometrics, cheat reps, cluster sets or drop sets should be liberally used.

For extensions we want to keep it simple with possibly just some iso holds at the end of sets, used occasionally. The bentover cable extension in particular can use more cheat; generally avoid this for lying variations.

Sequence

As always the standard rule with a muscle group with multiple exercises in a session is shortened biased first, mid-range biased second, lengthened biased third.

Here we also have to note a tricep press likely comes after a chest and/or shoulder press. Since the elbow joint is likely sufficiently warmed up, we can go straight into tricep pressing.

When it’s time for additional tricep work, we will still go pushdowns first extensions second.

In cases where you’re only doing an extension movement, still strongly consider hitting a pushdown with warm-up weights for a set or two.