Stop Doing THIS Triceps Exercise (DO THIS INSTEAD!)

It’s easy to mess up a popular triceps exercise like the triceps overhead extension or triceps pushaway. In this video, I am going to show you how to perform a popular triceps exercise without any mistakes so that you get the most gains possible. It’s like I always say and will continue to say; it’s

Can we talk about this exercise, please? And maybe  even stop doing it, depending upon what the other exercises you’re doing in your program? You see,  when it comes to training triceps, there’s three heads that you want to train. The medial lateral  and then the long head. And the long head is the big meaty one that’s actually responsible for the  most size of your arm.

So, you’re going to have to train it. Now, when it comes to the triceps,  the function of the medial lateral head is simply to extend the elbow. So, if you have an extended  elbow, you fully contracted those two heads. If you have a flexed elbow, you fully stretch those  two heads. The same can be said for the long head too, except its attachment is actually unique and  it’s back here on the shoulder blade.

If I want to fully flex that head of the triceps, it’s not  just an extended elbow, but it has to also be back behind the body. Well, what exercises do things  like this? Obviously, a Bench Dip, a Tricep Dip, maybe a Dumbbell Kickback, those are going to  fully shorten the tricep long head. To fully stretch the long head. I don’t just need a flexed  elbow, but I need this arm to be up overhead, right opposite of the extension of  the shoulder.

I got to get in shoulder flexion. So, we go back to this exercise. Why are you doing it? Because what a lot of people will do is check the box for saying that, I’m  getting a good stretch on my tricep long head here because my arms are up, but not really. You see,  there’s nothing really wrong with the exercise if you want to do it for its sole purpose.

And that  for me is to load the damn weight up, use a little bit of momentum, and involve your core so that  you can actually overload this medial and lateral head exercise, because that’s all it’s doing. It’s  not doing an effective job on building up the long head, which again, is responsible for most sides. So, what do you do instead? First of all, change the angle of where you have the cable. Stop going  so high and put it more at about waist level.

Take the rope, get in position and I’m going to step  out okay. And I want to get a good solid base. And this is where people miss a great opportunity  with this back foot. You drive yourself into the ground with a good solid base here, and then you  lock yourself in place by driving up into plantar flexion. I’m going fully up on my toes and I’m  not even working here to hold this, this is not like an active calf extension.

I’m actually  locking my midfoot in place and using it to stabilize me into the ground. Because most people  would say, oh, it’s too hard for me to hold, especially if I was flat footed. And I agree,  your core is not going to hold that. But when you lock in place here, you’re good to go. Now your elbows here are going to stay pointed straight ahead.

And what’s nice about this  variation of this exercise, rather than, let’s say a dumbbell, is that I’m not getting  that internal torsion that happens when you have a dumbbell in your hands. In other words,  with the dumbbell in my hands like this, I’m getting a rotation component that could  be uncomfortable for people in this position because you get some of that impingement stress. I don’t have that. I have my elbows this way out, so I have a really good, comfortable exercise as  far as that goes. But now when I get in position here, I now, because of the lower angle of the  cable, have a good stretch on that long head.

You can feel that you could see it. I didn’t have  a shoulder that’s down here, right, watch the shoulder angle from here when I’m in here. Where’s  that shoulder angle? In relation to my torso, if I were to stand upright, it’s not very flexed  at all, it’s about 90 degrees. That’s not enough to elicit a good strong stretch on the tricep long  head.

Contrast that to when I come in here and I’m in this position. Where’s that shoulder now? That’s adequately stretching that tricep long head because I’m up here in flexion by another  3040 degrees okay. From here now, this is key, when I extend, I want to stay as upright as I  possibly can. I want to open my chest as I go up, here.

Right. Just like that. Because you want to  note the direction of the cable in relation to the forearm. If I can keep this cable as perpendicular  as I possibly can to that forearm, it’s going to be impossible to be completely perpendicular. But if I can get it as perpendicular as I can by staying up tall, I’m going to put maximum  tension on the triceps in this fully extended position.

Contrast that once again with what’s  happening here. When I go here and I go out, what’s happening? Look at the relationship of  that cable and my forearm. They’re almost parallel to each other, there’s not a lot of tension  when that happens on the working muscle. Now, when you grab these ropes, I see a lot of people  grab them like this.

Okay. What that does is it influences or kind of incentivizes you at the  top to kind of let the weight pull yourself back into what we call radial deviation down  that way, never fully extending the elbow. If instead I grab the ropes underneath like this  here, so my hands are facing out when I do the exercise and I get to the top here, I can fully  extend. My wrists are extended, and with that, neurologically we activate the full extension  pattern of the elbow, which means I get fully locked out. Anybody that ever did any tricep  exercise where they didn’t really fully lock out the elbow, never quite felt the full contraction.

But when you have it like this, you accessorize that basic extension of the elbow joint because  you’re getting an extension of the wrist there, sort of paired together neurologically. So, if  I can get that full extension at the wrist, I’m going to get an easier extension at the elbow. Finally, when I get in this position here and I’m up at the top like this, you might question, well,  that’s really difficult, Jeff. I don’t have the shoulder mobility to get myself up here with that  good stretch. Right?

Well, yes you do, because if I were to just pull these down to my shoulders and  press up, this is the end position of a Shoulder Press. I think we all, or most of us have the  mobility in our shoulders to do an Overhead Shoulder Press. I’m not asking for anything  that’s more than you probably already have. It’s just that you never really felt that level of  stretch applied to that exercise, because you’ve been doing too much of this for too long. And again, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with this, if you’re going to do it to  really load the weight up and drive a lot of tension through the triceps, because it’s more of  a momentum-based exercise.

But when you want to have an impact on the tricep long head, you better  get this thing to the position to actually get your arm up and apply that stretch to be able  to get that. And again, complement that with some of the exercises that put you in that fully  contracted or fully shortened position of the long head to where your arm is back behind your body  to fully complement your workout. Far too many people check the box, tricep long head stretch  exercise. No, it’s not, pick something better. If you want to learn how to do a Face Pull  properly, because it’s another one people screw up.

Make sure you click this video here to  watch that. Also, how to properly do a Dumbbell One Arm Row, you can watch that here guys. All of our complete programs are available at athleanx. com. If you haven’t done so, click  Subscribe and turn on your Notifications so you never miss a video when we put one  out.

All right guys, se