Grow Your Triceps Fast!

Everybody wants big triceps, but more importantly, everybody wants big arms. But biceps is only two muscles, triceps is tri, that’s three, it goes all the way around. The bigger your triceps are, the bigger your arms are going to look. 

The majority of us don’t have a hard time targeting the medial head or the lateral head, it’s the long head that we really have a hard time isolating and growing because there’s one culprit that can negatively affect every single triceps exercise that you’re doing and that’s what we’re going to cover in this article as we go over a few exercises.

If you missed the last video I did on biceps where I talked about how you can utilize heavy eccentrics, you can check out that video HERE. Remember you can apply heavy eccentrics to any exercise, it’s just that in this series where I’m talking about different muscle groups, I’m going to talk about different things you can do with the exercises.

Heavy Compounds – Triceps Dips

First we’re going to talk about heavy compounds. The culprit that’s affecting your gains is elbow flare. Elbow flare can not only take attention away from the triceps, but in some cases it can also put a lot of pressure in your shoulders and give you a shoulder injury. 

The first exercise we’re going to talk about is dips. With dips, that’s one of those exercises where people complain that their shoulders hurt, then when I ask them for a form video, nine times out of ten they’re coming down, getting that elbow flare and then coming back up. The tenth time being they actually have some shoulder mobility issues and we have to go ahead and fix those. But the majority of people are just elbow flaring the entire time and then coming back up.

When you’re doing a dip, whether it’s weighted or just bodyweight, no matter what, number one you have to make sure that your hands are super close to your body. A lot of people go to the gym and use the assisted pull-up machine which has dip handles and the handles move in and out. 

They do that because if you’re a bigger person, you might have to put them out because you can’t get your hands that close to your body. But if you’re already in the out position, most people don’t take the time to turn them back in because they don’t know.

Number two is just a simple form cue – tuck your elbows in, go all the way down and all the way up and you’ll instantly feel the difference. You’re going to feel most of that, or all of that tension, transferring from your shoulders to your triceps which makes a huge difference.

Close-Grip Bench Press

The same thing can be said about the close-grip bench press. For a lot of people, elbow flare is the main culprit, but if I’m being honest, hand position and elbow flare are the two main culprits on this exercise that are stealing your gains. 

When you’re in the gym doing a close-grip bench press, just because the name is “close-grip” doesn’t mean you grab the bar literally as close as possible. This puts your wrists in a very awkward position where all that tension is transferring to the joint and overtime can really hurt you, especially if you’re lifting super heavy weight. 

You can’t really balance the bar that well either and then obviously the main thing happening with this grip is it’s forcing elbow flare, which is bringing more chest and shoulders into the movement.

If you want to nail those triceps, first of all lower the weight (especially if you’ve never done this before), grab the bar about shoulder-width apart, pin your elbows to your torso as you go down and the bar placement is going to sit just above your belly button. 

Then as you press the weight, you press back up to the ceiling keeping the barbell over your torso. This is the correct way to do a close-grip bench press. 

If you start coming down but the weight is too heavy and you start getting elbow flare, the bar tends to move up towards your chin and you end up pressing over your chest and shoulders and rendering the exercise kind of useless for building bigger triceps because you’re not focusing on what you need to focus on.

Now a lot of you do triceps pushdowns (an amazing exercise for triceps), but I’m not going to talk about that in this article as I’m still under the impression a lot of you are training from home so you’re using dumbbells and barbells, which is why I’m showing these other exercises.

Isolation Movements – Skullcrusher

Now that we’ve talked about compound movements, we’re going to talk about isolation movements. The key thing is, when you’re doing an isolation movement like a skullcrusher, you want to make sure that remains an isolation movement. 

What I mean by that is, if your arms are not staying in a fixed position when you’re doing this exercise, you’re taking tension away from the triceps and once again allowing your shoulders and chest to assist in the movement. In some cases, your lats can assist as well.

A skullcursher got its name because you’re literally about to crush your skull with the barbell. Elbows stay in a vertical position as you press and as you come down, this keeps all the tension on your triceps. Now I’ve taught you in the past that if your elbows hurt while doing this that it’s OK to come behind your head a little bit and extended straight out. 

You’re still going to target the triceps and if you keep your arms in a fixed position, you’re still keeping an isolation movement, but you’re going to probably get some assistance from maybe your lats because you’re holding the bar there, especially if you come down and get some shoulder movement. 

The way you’re going to feel the majority of the exercise in your triceps is by staying in a fixed movement pattern.

A lot of the times also, people will teach this movement and say if you want to target that long head of your triceps more, that’s why you bring the bar more behind your head, because any time your elbows are over your head, you’re bringing more of that long head of the triceps into the exercise. Again, the long head is the head at the back, the biggest part of the arm.

Powerbomb

If I’m being completely honest, if you want to hit the long head of your triceps, then you should do an exercise that allows you to overload as safely as possible while keeping your arms in that fixed position over your head, which is an overhead triceps extension, or as I like to call it – a powerbomb.

Again I’m going to assume if you’re training from home, not everyone has a bench with back support. You can do a powerbomb seated with no back support and you can also do it standing and you can still handle some pretty incredible weight. 

But again, the main culprit here taking away from those triceps is going to be elbow flare. So I want to show you a quick warm-up you can do. If you’re having a hard time with shoulder mobility, a very simple thing you can do with a band or broom stick is shoulder breakers back and forth to loosen up your shoulders. 

You can even do these in-between your sets and in fact it can be good to do dynamic warm-ups in-between your sets because as you’re exercising, you’re getting great blood circulation. This applies to all dynamic movements.

I’m going to show you the double-hand version of this exercise, because in my opinion it’s the best way to do it because you can lift the most amount of weight which is what you want to do if you’re trying to overload your muscles for growth. You first of all need to know that you’re holding the dumbbell by one head of the dumbbell, not by the handle. 

When you have the dumbbell over your head, rotate your wrists forward and as you come down, keep your elbows in and reduce elbow flare. They don’t have to be super tight to your head, but you don’t want them flared out wide either.

When you do it the right way, the only part of your arm that’s moving is your elbow joint, up and down. When you start flaring your elbows as you go down and come up, you’ll see your shoulders start to move as well as your elbows, so it’s taking tension off the triceps. It might not be a ton, but it’s enough to make the exercise not as effective.

You DO NOT want elbow flare, that’s why I never recommend doing this exercise with a plate, because when you hold the plate, you have no choice but to come down and have that elbow flare. There’s no way to really bring your elbows in to do the movement comfortably, if anything it can put more tension on your elbows just because of the position that you’re in.

If it’s hard to do it with a dumbbell, don’t use a plate. Either do skullcrushers or grab a little dumbbell and build up your strength so that as you move up, you get stronger with the exercise and you can handle it. The powerbomb is actually my absolute favorite exercise of all time to do in the gym. Rikki actually gets mad because I do my warm-up sets with a 100lb dumbbell!

Conclusion

Because this is my favorite exercise, I get really angry when people explain how to do it incorrectly. When you get strong with this movement, remember all the same tips still apply – rotate your wrists forward, keep your elbows in, go down all the way and then come back up. If you keep your core tight and flex your glutes, you can do a standing dumbbell overhead extension with heavy weight and you’re going to be totally fine.