MAX GAINS SERIES: Triceps Pushdowns

If triceps pushdowns are part of your tricep training then you are going to want to watch this video on how to squeeze every gain out of the exercise for max size. The pushdown is one of the most common tricep exercises but often misperformed as well. Here, I’m going to show you the best way to po

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Today we’re going to talk all about the tricep pushdown. I am going to show you how to squeeze every, single ounce out of this exercise to get the best impact of it, because I know a lot of people are doing this exercise.

I’ve got to tell you; a lot of people are making some big mistakes when it comes down to it. We’re going to break it down from the anatomy of everything that’s going on in the elbow, actually in the shoulder as well, to perform this exercise, and I’m going to show you why the little things matter. Where are the position of your elbows in relation to your side? What that has to do with the effectiveness of the exercise. Where your hands should be in relation to your body when you’re doing the pushdown.

The fact that your wrist and the placement of your wrist will have a key component in terms of maximizing the effects that you see from this. Also, when we’re talking about the wrist and the positioning of our arms and forearms, what’s happening here when we supinate, or pronate our forearms? Are we getting a different impact on the triceps themselves? I want to cover all that here today because I’m telling you guys, if you add all these things up it’s going to make this exercise a homerun for you every, single time you do it. So, what we want to start with is the position of the hands in relation to the body during a press down.

It doesn’t matter which implement you’re using at the moment because we want to talk about – even with a straight bar here – is how close are you to the machine? Some guys will get right up on top of it like this. Some guys will be a little further away, here. Still, others will actually be away from it and when they press down their hands are actually out in front of their bodies. You’ve probably seen all three, but which one is right?

Which one should you be doing? It depends. The fact is, when you get up on top of the body here, the first thing you’re doing is letting the triceps rest. A lot of us will get our hands up in this position near our chin, and this is not really placing a lot of tension on the triceps. We know, in order for this to have the most tension we want this line.

The line here of the cable to be perpendicular to our forearms. So that would mean, if we’re going to get really close to it, we want to have our hands starting at about waist level to actually have tension on the triceps. Then we would go from there. So, the range of motion would go from here to here. Whereas, we know if we take a little step back here, we know we could still be a little more perpendicular to our forearms at a higher point.

Now, closer to our chest. We go through here, we have a little more range of motion on the triceps in that position. But we also realize that if we went too far out away from our body, now the arms – just by virtue of being too far away – are going to have to drift. As soon as the elbows drift away, in order to get this down, and back, we’re going to probably initiate here with the lats. By initiating with the lats, it’s not necessarily what we’re trying to do if we’re trying to get the most work done by the triceps.

I’ve talked about position here, where we can actually do a rowing pushdown, but that’s really to cheat the concentric portion of it to overload the eccentric on the longhead on the way back up. But that’s not what we’re doing here. We’re doing a traditional pushdown. So, you have two options. You can either take that midpoint that we talked about, which would be hitting a longer range of motion, and still getting the effectiveness of the exercise without compromising too far, or too close.

Or you could do the rocking tricep pushdown, which is an exercise that I covered in depth. I’ll show you the video that we covered it, and what it looks like here. I want you to watch it when this video is over. I’m going to make sure I link it at the very end. That will show you how to get the most out of that exercise from the beginning to the end, by changing the position of your body, in relation to that, by using this line of resistance, and keeping it as perpendicular to your forearm as we possibly can.

Now with that covered, now I want to move on and start talking about the positioning of the elbows and how far, or how much drift we’re going to allow before we don’t want to have that anymore. Now we’re talking about the elbow positioning. What you want to make sure you’re not doing is allowing your elbows to start drifting so much that it starts to put you into this position. We call this the jackhammer pushdown. It’s not a good thing.

I’m sure you’ve seen guys doing this all the time. They get up here, they load the weight up, and they’re pushing down just like this. That’s the jackhammer push. They look like they’re operating a jackhammer. The reason why you could use so much more weight to do that is because you’re not doing a pushdown anymore.

What you’ve done is, by getting your arms here, internally rotated, and elbows out, and now getting up on top of it, you’ve actually created a scenario where you’re doing a standing dip. Now what we’re doing is, if I were to take this and pushdown there’s no difference than if I do a straight bar dip, or even a dip where I have my hands in closer. Now I’m activating the chest a lot to complete the exercise, and we’re no longer letting the triceps do the bulk of the work. So, if you want to do this right, what you want to do is the opposite. You don’t want the elbows flaring.

You want the elbows held nice and tight to the body. By virtue of doing that, you’re going to get more longhead involvement that crosses the shoulder joint, and attaches to the shoulder blade, that will actually want to be adducted and have your elbows in tight. Here’s the best way to do that. You want to go for elbows tight, hands wide position. As far apart as you can.

So hands like this, as wide on the bar as you can. Elbows as tight as you can. You could almost pull apart on the bar here and keep the elbows tucked in this way. That’s going to keep you in this position right here. So, we’re not allowing the drift of that.

We’re keeping it in tight, which now focuses all the movement on that arc of this extension, and flexion here of the elbow, which is going to maximize the work of the triceps. The next interesting thing is, whether or not it even matters, whether or not you’re doing an overhand pronating grip pushdown, or an underhand grip. A lot of guys will swear that when they’re doing the underhand grip they feel the longhead of the tricep, way back in here, contracting with much more intensity. Others will say it doesn’t even matter. If you look at the science and anatomy there, at first glance you would say it doesn’t matter.

Here’s what’s actually happening. Look here at the bones of the elbow. Really, if you look down a little lower you’re looking at the bones of the forearm here. You have the ulna, and the radius. Now, the ulna is actually the part of the lower forearm that is hinging on the humerus to create the elbow joint.

That is the bone that the triceps all commonly come together and attach to. That means, if that happens to the ulna there then, yes, you can argue that there will be a difference, or an impact on what’s happening with the triceps. However, the radius is what creates supination and pronation of the forearm. The radius will roll over the ulna to create pronation, or supination here at the forearm. But the radius and the radial ulnar joint does not impact what’s going on with the ulna itself.

Meaning, that pronation and supination at the el