The Tricep Exercise You STOPPED Doing (BIG MISTAKE!)

Build your Ultimate Arms with this new ATHLEAN-X program

What’s up guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. COM. So let’s talk today about one of the most unfairly treated, misunderstood Tricep exercises that there is, the Tricep Kickback. A lot of people think that this is a garbage exercise that can’t possibly help you build muscle.

I’m here to defend it today and tell you that the Tricep Kickback is one of the best Tricep exercises you can do, and especially because it provides some unique advantages that no other Tricep exercise gives you. So why don’t we breakdown the criticisms of the exercise and then we can start to talk about why we feel like those are pretty much unfair criticisms, ok. So first of all, let’s take a look at the Tricep Kickback itself. This is what a lot of people think the Tricep Kickback is. The light Dumbbells, unfortunately I don’t have any Pink Neoprene Dumbbells but I might as well because everybody thinks you do it, you stand up, you kind of lean forward, one arm at a time and you lift very light weight because you can’t lift heavy weight doing a Tricep Kickback.

We all know, it’s very difficult to lift heavy weight without really swinging and kind of, killing the exercises anyway. But that’s not how it has to be. First of all, the first argument is that it doesn’t provide resistance throughout the Range of Motion. Well my answer to that is, What is the Range of Motion? What I showed you there is not the Range of Motion.

Bring your Arm all the way up and then back, what is this for? You’re not doing a Curl, it has nothing to do with the exercise. You don’t need to coil up in order to do this exercise. So why don’t we redefine what the Range of Motion really is. Instead of doing it that way, do it as I show you here.

Use just the last one third of the Range of Motion because that’s where you’re doing most of the work. You see guys, if you remember from Physics we talked about here with ATHLEANX, you look at the Physics behind an exercise because it explains what you should be doing when you do the exercise. If we know that the Lever Arm here is the Forearm, we know that when it’s parallel to gravity, right, right in line with gravity, we’re not doing any work so right here at the bottom of a Tricep Kickback, we’re not doing any work but when we get up here, perpendicular to gravity acting down, that’s when all the work is being done. Well great. This is an exercise that gives us one of the best contraction exercises for Triceps because it has peak force being generated on the muscle you’re trying to work, in it’s peak contracted state.

So who cares what happens leading up to that. We don’t care about that. We’re worried about where we can direct the force and we can put it where the muscle’s trying to contract the most. So right there, I’m defending that exercise for the very reason that those that argue against it are doing so. The next argument against the Tricep Kickback is that you can’t load heavy.

But as I already alluded to, what is heavy? Heavy is relative to the exercise that you are performing. Tension is what matters. What is your muscle feeling, that’s what really matters. That’s the currency here, that we’re talking about when we’re lifting.

Yeah, you might be able to use heavy Dumbbells to do a Close Grip Bench to work your Triceps. But if you use 20 pounders, that becomes heavy for this exercise. And since the currency of muscle is tension, we know that if we’re using a weight that causes enough tension in the muscle, especially here at the peak end of the Range of Motion when it’s most contracted, that is going to give us the overload effect that we’re looking for. So heavy is always going to be relative. 20 pounds doesn’t equate to 80 pounds, what it equates is the tension on the muscle.

As long as you understand that, then you already start to see that it doesn’t matter, even if you are starting off with those Pink Neoprene Dumbbells, at least you’re providing the tension that your muscle need to overload it, to allow it to continue to get stronger and bigger. Start with what you can handle. Try to fatigue in that 10 to 12 rep range and I guarantee you, over time you’re going to have this exercise actually help you to build muscle. The third and final argument made against the Tricep Kickback is that this exercise actually either promotes bad posture or it causes Shoulder problems. It doesn’t have to do either.

Maybe if you do it the way I showed you in the very beginning, which I’ll show you once again here, this might cause a problem. Why? Because if you’re doing it freestanding, you’re doing it one arm at a time, you might have the tendency to try to cheat the weight up by leaning your trunk forward more. What happens here is you do get a anterior translation of our Humerus. So inside your Shoulder capsule you’re getting a Shoulder glide.

That causes a much more likelihood that we’re going to have some type of impingement in the Shoulder as we kick the Dumbbell back, but there’s an easy fix for this. Stabilize your upper Torso by doing it like I’ve showed you here. Get on an Incline Bench, do both arms at one time. You’re not getting a favoring from right to left and you’re not getting a lean forward because you’re situated right up, flat up against that Bench. So you’ve solved all those postural problems and we’re able to actually probably assist you in those weights that we talked about in part 2, because you can use a little bit heavier weights now that you’re stabilized going forward.

So guys as you can see, this is not about exercise, as a matter of fact, it’s one of my favorite ways, and if you haven’t done this exercise in a while, it’s one of the best ways to get peak tension at maximal contraction during a Tricep Workout. Guys as you can see, it’s not necessarily the exercise, it’s how you do the exercise. And in our upcoming Ultimate Arms Program we get rid of the exercises we don’t feel will help you to build the best Arms possible. And we put the Science back in Strength for those that we do choose. As a matter of fact, I lay it all out guys, a 6 week Program.

I guarantee, the Best Arm Program you’ve ever done. And guess what, it’s a lot more than just Arms, we’re going to cover your entire body. We’ve got our Leg training in there, our Upper Body, everything is going to be covered. This is much more than just an Arm program but the Science that going behind the selections of what we do to help your arms get bigger, that’s where it all counts. If you want guys, that’s coming out on Tuesday.

Ultimate Arms will be available at ATHLEANX. COM. In the meantime, use this tip, watch this video, stop NOT doing the Tricep Kickback. Because as I showed you here, there’s three very good reasons why you might want to start again. Alright guys, I’ll be back here again very soon.

If you found this video helpful, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. In the meantime, I’ll be back again in just a couple days with more videos. I’ll see ya!