How to Fix Your “FLAT” Triceps (GUARANTEED)

If you have been wondering how to fix your flat triceps and to get them to hang, then you’ve come to the right place. In this video, I am going to show you the best triceps exercises you can do in order to get rid of flat triceps and get them to hang. Remember, though, it’s not just about what exerc

You’re doing tricep push downs, close grip bench press, and skull crushers like crazy, but you still can’t fill your shirt sleeves. And when you flex your arms, your triceps are missing that classic low hang and instead look just plain flat. And there’s a reason for that. And that’s usually a misunderstanding of the anatomy of the triceps and also not knowing the best exercises that hit the exact head of the triceps that actually fill in the gap that you’re missing right now. So, it’s my job to make sure that you not only know how to do the right exercises, but you know how to do them the right way.

And when we’re talking about filling in those shirt sleeves, you got to target the long head because this is the head of the triceps that provides the most width and it’s the one responsible for that big gap or flatness that you’re seeing right now. So, how do you do it? Two different things you need to do. Number one, you need to find exercises that put it in its most shortened position where your arm is going to finish back behind your body. And then you also have to find exercises that put your shoulder in flexion and your elbow up overhead to put stretch on that long head of the triceps.

And that’s when we think we’re doing it when we do the skull crusher, but we’re not. Because if you target the skull, you’re finishing and starting from this position here, which is not a position overhead, but rather in front of your body like in a traditional tricep push down. What I want to do, and what you need to do is get those arms back behind your head. So now with your shoulders in flexion, with the bending of the elbows, I get a lot more tension directed right at that area that we’re trying to fill in that gap. And again, when I straighten out my elbows, I never allow the arm to drift or travel any further towards the torso.

Once you set this angle back behind you, now it’s just about opening and closing the elbow joint, keeping that arm pointed backwards the entire time. And that’s the way you’re going to turn that exercise into a more effective one for building your triceps. Sticking with the exercises that do a good job of putting your arm overhead, we have another one that a lot of people do, but unfortunately they do it incorrectly. It’s the tricep pushway. And you’ll see this all the time.

They’ll get in this position here and they’ll extend the rope out in front of them. But what’s happening is you’re extending it far too low, right? Your arm position here is incorrect. You can’t have a parallel arm position to the floor because the more parallel you keep your arm here, the more parallel it will become to the rope in the finished position. And that’s not a good recipe if you want more tension in the tricep.

You want more perpendicularity. So the way to do that is to get your arms to a higher position on the finish. The other thing is people don’t use enough weight on this exercise. And there’s a simple cheat that you can actually add that allows you to use more weight and also still get into that proper finish position. And we call this a step through pushway.

Now I want you to get away from the stack. In other words, disengage the stack by stepping away. From here with that back leg, I’m going to use that to my advantage. I’m going to step into it and then step through and push coming actually towards you. Right?

I’m stepping towards you and driving the weight out at the same time. Again, keeping that arm position high and not low. With us in this high position, we’re going to get much more tension on the triceps. What’s nice is on the rebound here, I get a good stretch with this overhead arm positioning on the triceps. You can actually elaborate that by letting your elbows drift high and then drive forward and step through and push back and up just like that.

Now, I’m finishing nice and high again. But you can see I can use a little bit of body anguish and momentum to almost cheat this the same way I would with a cheek curl. Right? You’re using some momentum and now I got to control the eccentric on that good stretch on the way back. But again, we’re finishing with a more perpendicular positioning of the rope to my forearm.

A much better exercise. And again, one I can load up heavier to get more benefit from it. Next is an exercise that I know you’ve seen it, you’ve likely done it, and you probably have done it wrong. And we’re talking about the popular dumbbell overhead extension or power bomb. And you’ll see this exercise where you extend the dumbbell up overhead like this and lower it down to get a good stretch on the triceps.

Once again, getting into that overhead stretch position. The problem is the position of your elbows here. A lot of us maybe either due to immobility of our shoulders or just simply shoulder pain will find that our elbows will drift out to the sides. What happens is when they drift, you take a lot of the tension away from the triceps because you’re limiting the range of motion. Where your elbows are out wide, this is about the range of motion you get at your elbows.

When they come out in front of you, you get much more flexion and extension range of motion, which is going to put more tension overall into the triceps and make it a better builder. However, how do you do it right? Not this way. Not just sitting on the end of a bench. Instead, you do what I did in the beginning, and that’s you prop up the incline bench.

Because this actually fixes whatever biomechanical limitations you’re inadvertently avoiding at this moment. Because when I do it this way, I still get the same ability to drop the dumbbell back behind my head, get an intense stretch on the triceps, and get that good long range of motion. But look what’s happening at the shoulder joint. I don’t have to have as much flexion mobility because my arms are actually a little bit more out in front of my body relative to this position here. They’re basically like this as opposed to having to be back here like that.

And that little bit of flexion difference is the difference between being able to do this properly with the elbows forward or not with the elbows drifting. So doing it this way, you drop that dumbbell down. Good stretch back here. Extend up. And again, just like the first exercise, a little bit back behind you.

Keep those elbows locked in that position close to the side of your head. And I promise you, this exercise becomes one that delivers the gains without the pain. The fourth exercise actually introduces a mistake that’s more prevalent now than maybe ever before, and it’s forgetting to then do the other exercises, the one that actually placed the triceps in that more fully shortened position, cuz there’s still a lot of benefits to be had there. For this, I actually use an exercise I call the Wolverine pull down. So, we can’t forget the fact that given the fact that the tricep extends the arm back behind the body, it actually does have functions as a pull muscle, but it also, of course, extends the elbow.

So, it’s sort of a pull push. This exercise will do both of those. What you do is you take a hand overhand grip here on the cable machine, and then you pull until your elbows are close here to your body, right? They’re tight to your body. After you pull, you extend the backs of your hands as far back behind you as possible.

And again, we know if we can get the arm back behind us, shoulder into extension, we can really hit that long head. And again, with good full triceps extension, elbow extension, we come up, little bit of recoil, and then pull and push. Pull, push. One of the best contractions