How To Grow Your Triceps: Exercises And Common Mistakes To Avoid - Blog Kalori

Hi guys, my name is Chris and welcome to BlogKalori.

In this article, we're going to cover how to work the back of your arms or more accurately, the triceps (How To Grow Your Triceps).

Common triceps mistakes

To start off, we'll discuss the most common exercise used to work the triceps, which is the cable tricep extension.

Most people do this exercise because it does directly target the triceps in an isolated form.

But there's also a lot of common errors that would come when working this kind of movement, we'd often see things like a straight bar, or rope or other attachments being pulled down through the mid range of the triceps to try and get that contraction at the bottom.

And then although these types of exercises with the cable and different attachments are very useful, they only focus on the mid range of the triceps and the tricep head work in a lot of different directions.

A lot of people don't realise that so they stay just in this mid range the whole time.

If we're to change the exercises, and trying to work through the full range of motion, we'd get far better development.

Different cable exercises

So other examples of movements we could use still in the cable would be potentially swapping from a bar to two ropes, we often see people using a single rope in the gym to try some extension, which is slightly flawed because it's going to hit your body and stop.

If we use two ropes, we're able to go a lot further past and then we fully shorten the triceps.

So the best place to start is with the cable tricep extension, a lot of people make the common error of not fully using the movement.

Changing techniques

So I get clients often to lean into the machine more lean into the cable and try and get as much elbow flexion as possible to allow a full stretch position for this movement and gain the greatest range of motion possible.

Adding compound movements

The next aspect to consider would be choosing a compound movement.

For example, a dip.

We're gonna use multiple muscles allowing us to load the exercise up a little bit heavier, and really try and put some stress through the triceps whilst involving all the muscles too.

Although isolation movements are fantastic.

They only have a limited amount of load that we can use, because they're single joint, single muscle exercises.

So by using something like a dip, we can go a lot heavier and really gain strength in size in that area.

That then would have a carryover to all the exercises in our upper body.

When it comes to dips, a great place to start would be a bench dip.

To do this we'd get a flat bench and make sure we put in our hands behind those sliding just off the edge of the bench and then focus on the elbow bending as we go down, driving back up through the triceps, which actually is a very easy way to hit the movement correctly.

Two things look out for liquid cause problems with this movement.

Whereas if you sit too far away, your hips are forward, pushing your shoulder back and get a lot of pain the front of the shoulder because the force had been transferred to there, not through the elbow on the tricep.

Then the next point would be if your wrists are too far back and bent back, not on the edge of the bench grabbing hold.

You obviously need a nice straight wrist when performing any kind of movement.

If it's bent in an awkward position any way, it will put force into the wrong direction.

Once you become comfortable with this type of dip.

A great way to progress a movement would be to take yourself over to the assisted dip station where you can add some resistance to take weight away from your bodyweight.

So you're not going straight from the bench to a full body weight dip, you go into an assisted version of the movement that then allows you to progress it over time.

As you get stronger you can reduce the assistance needed until you're able to perform a full body weight dip.

Planning a tricep workout

When putting together a complete tricep workout.

We never want to forget overhead tricep movements.

So for example, an overhead tricep extension with a cable or dumbbell.

After many years working with clients, I suggest moving away from barbell movements that put you in a fixed position and cause unnecessary stress to the elbow and try and move more towards a more natural position.

For example here with a cable where we really focus on the movement pulling into the bottom of the tricep, really tightening that area and gaining that little bit of contraction that you're not able to do from other types of movements we've already covered.

So guys, in summary when putting together a complete tricep workout, to really strengthen the tighten up the area, you want to make sure that you don't just focus on cable movements in that mid range, but you choose at least one exercise for each of the categories covered in this video.

That brings us the end of another myprotein masterclass video on how to tighten up and strengthen your triceps on the back of your arm.

Don't forget if you've got any questions drop them the comments box below.

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