The PERFECT Tricep Workout (2025 EDITION)

With the return of the perfect workout series, I am updating the perfect triceps workout to give you the best triceps workout you can do. The biggest difference is that I am giving you not Justine, but two perfect triceps workouts for you to try that are not just randomly thrown together, but are ba

what’s up guys Jeff Cavalier aex. com do you remember the perfect workouts they became the most popular workout series ever here on YouTube and I have you to thank for that and to show my thanks guess what I’m bringing them back by popular demand the perfect tricep workout continues our series here today for 2025 and Beyond now when it comes to a perfect workout or in this case A Perfect science-based workout I think it’s important to understand that there is no perfect science so any workout that is actually recommended to you based on the latest in science alone is not really going to cut it see here as we’ve always done we rely on the Sciences of anatomy and physiology and Kinesiology and we put it all together in a workout that actually makes sense and we’re going to do the same thing for you here we’re going to sprinkle in what we know now to be the most effective techniques to employ when we’re trying to build bigger triceps but not just for today but for the Long Haul right longevity and joint health is also going to be a big concern of mine as a physical therapist and it’s not just because I’m an anatomy nerd that this stuff matters to me it’s because I know when you’re trying to build a muscle this stuff will matter to everyone and when we’re talking about the triceps we’re talking about a three-headed muscle the first two of which the lateral IMM medial head are responsible for getting those elbows extended out in front of our body so we need exercises that do that the same token the third head here the long head is probably most responsible for the overall size of your arm accounting for 2/3 of the size of the triceps itself now how do we do that well a lot of times people don’t do all the exercises needed because you can’t just focus on those that get those elbows up in that tricep long head in a stretch position but ones that also put it in its fully contracted position but of course we’re going to cover all those in our workout now while I say the perfect tricep workout what I actually mean is not just one tricep workout but really two and the reason for that is while there’s a lot that we disagree on when it comes to the science of training the one thing we can pretty much all agree on is that it seems to be that training a muscle group twice a week is more beneficial than training it just once and that’s because we know that there’s a possibility to restimulate a muscle every 72 hours or so that gives us another growth opportunity if we take it that being said a lot of that goes hand inand with the amount of effort and intensity that you’re willing to train with if you’re going to train really really really hard Think Like Mike mener then you’re not going to be able to train that muscle twice a week and in that case if you’re looking for a workout like that I have it it’s called The 100 arm workout that you’re going to want to check out but if you’re like most of us that want to put in a good solid effort and want to see the best results for it then you’re going to be able to split the workouts up into two separate ones but again you’re going to equate the volume that you normally would do in just that one workout and split it up over two the good news there is the work us will become shorter and because of that as I mentioned before you’re going to be able to train another muscle on that day allowing us to hit all the muscle groups in this Perfect workout twice a week now this is the first time that we’re covering a muscle that actually gets to be on the back end of one of your training days in this case every time we train chest now the number of sets that you’re going to perform in either of these two tricep workouts will be heavily dependent upon whether you’re treating it like a standalone or whether you’re going to pair it up with one of these up here but in order to figure out what that’s going to be like or look like for you we should actually start looking at the workouts and tricep workout number one looks like this just four simple exercises and it starts off with a basic movement it’s the tricep push down and I think one of the big things that we don’t do here is take advantage of the fact that we can load this exercise up quite heavily here in the 6 to8 rep range and then push it to failure again without bastardizing the exercise or turning it into what I call a jackhammer push down you still want to Target the triceps and most importantly here you’re hitting that medial lateral head by getting your arms out in front of your body now ironically here another good exercise would be or could be a close grip bench press in this spot but if we are doing this as I mentioned before along with the perfect chest workout I don’t really need to have you bench pressing again okay we could do this exercise treat it the way I just said and get good results for it again two to three sets 6 to8 reps using your 6 to eight rep max next we have a lion dumbbell extension now I mentioned before about the importance of the long head in terms of the allocation of size of the arm when it comes to that long head of the triceps it’s really important but how you train it matters are you training it through that stretch position or are you training it in that contracted position and as I mentioned before you’re going to have to do both however we’re going to take it even a step further we’re not just going to do two to three sets of 8 to 10 using our 8 to 10 rep max but we’re going to do this in a way that allows us to ch sheet beyond go to and through failure so we can perform some Ecentric only repetitions where we can drive even more growth and that’s where we actually want to make sure that we’re using the dumbbells here rather than an easy curl bar because I love doing this exercise with an easy curl bar but you’re not going to be able to do the cheat to put yourself into the Ecentric only reps as easily if you don’t use dumbbells well as you see here when I reach concentric failure I want to still perform these Ecentric only repetitions well that’s where you’re just going to drag them across your shoulders low to put you in a position to press them back up to the top basically a close grip bench press but this time this going be a weight that you can easily handle and like I said again this would be very challenging if you had an easy bar that kept banging against the back of your head the dumbbells allow you to do this much easier without that risk of concussion now we’re looking again at two to three sets of 8 to 10 repetitions again allowing for those Ecentric only repetitions at the end now the third exercise up here is going to complement what we just did remember last time we focused on that stretch position of the long head to get that long head fully contracted State you want to get that elbow back behind your body with the elbow extended as well well that’s where we do something like the dumbbell or cable tricep Kickback and I know this exercise takes a lot of because people say it’s not worthwhile to do I disagree completely as a matter of fact it’s one of the only exercises one of only a very few select that allow us to get into this fully contracted position and that’s why you need to start making sure you do it now while the cable might provide a more balanced resistance curve throughout the range of motion I certainly don’t think that the dumbbell is a bad option or one to be avoided remember it’s one of those only opportunities to get fully back behind your body and extended to really get that good tricep contraction and therefore it’s one that I want to make sure that you’re doing when