Triceps Workout Mistakes - The 7 Sins of Tricep Training!

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are you trying to build bigger triceps but just not getting the job done well let me cover for you today what I think are the Seven Sins of tricep training so I can help you jump start the results that you’re seeing in the gym [Music] what’s up guys Jeff Cavalier athleanx. com and today I want to talk about the seven SS of tricep training that I think could be holding you back okay the first thing we want to do is start right here at one of the most classic exercises the close grip bench press Where Are We Wrong we’re doing it wrong by sticking with the barbell because frankly we’re going to probably kill our wrist in the process of trying to BU build bigger triceps because it’s just not natural to have our wrist forced into this close position over exaggerated extension up and through here okay and having it push up and away it’s just a tough position it even twists the wrist as you can see a little bit into a pron position so a lot of stress so what we do is we come over here you do dumbbells there’s no limit on the dumbbells that you can use you can use 100 lb dumbbells if you’re that strong and what you’re going to do is keep them in here wrist is nice and neutral okay and just keep your elbows close to your body press press Straight Up Down Slow press straight up so you still get the benefits of the close grip exercise in the tricep focus without having to kill your wrist in the process all right so let’s move on to our next biggest mistake here I think which is right here again on a flat bench doing a dumbbell life lying tricep extension now I’ve covered this before but I think it’s worth repeating that the big mistake here is the angle of the arm when you’re doing the exercise a lot of guys will start with the exercise straight up over their chest drop the dumbbells down and come up the problem is at this top position there is no stress at all no tension on the triceps in order to get tension on the triceps we have to get a little bit of a stretch on them especially the long head by letting the elbows go back about 45° you bring them back from here you come up in that fully extended position there now we have tension on the triceps again all the way down tension all the way up tension now we’ve just doubled your efforts again with a slight tweak of the angle of the arm why does that work let me show you real quick again it’s just physics if we have the uh the the lateral head of the tricep is attached on the humoris let’s from say from here to here okay so if I raise my arm up or down it doesn’t really matter that stays in the same position but the long head actually attaches up on the shoulder blade so if you look at Point a and point B when I raise my arm further behind my head I get a longer stretch on that muscle cuz this is not going anywhere and this is getting further away so remember sometimes physics and angles play a part in what you’re doing and you have to have a purpose to what you’re doing when you’re in the gym speaking of a purpose what is your purpose when you’re training your triceps I hope the answer is that you’re trying to actually train your triceps because far too often especially on this next exercise lat I mean tricep push Downs I see guys doing working lats for crying out loud lats ABS everything but the triceps because of the position of the body and the purpose of what they’re trying to do so you’ll see people do push Downs like this working a lot of ABS as they swing into the move or you’ll see them kind of keep their arms straight and pull down first and then just push down at the very end again this is more of a lat move it’s just like the straight arm push down which going to work more of your lats so when I say what’s your purpose when you’re doing a a tricep push down you want to have a purpose to what you’re doing so if it’s to work the triceps get yourself upright get your elbows in close to your sides okay start it with tension on the muscle already okay not not all the way up here where there’s nothing going on get some tension lift the weight off the stack push it straight down and back right straight down and back you can see the tricep having to do all the work but that’s what we want so make sure you have a a a purpose with what you’re trying to lift each and every set in order to get the most benefit out of every single rep you do we mentioned before angles and having to know your angles a little bit now I don’t want to turn this into a geometry lesson what I want to do is get you the best results possible but one of the standby exercises for building bigger triceps is the tricep dip except depending upon the way you do it you can get dramatically different results think about it this way if I’m doing a DI a dip I’m basically doing a suspended push-up the further I lean myself forward the more of my chest I’m going to work I’m running out a little room here in the wall but the more I lean forward it’s basically like doing a push-up if I want to work more of my triceps I have to get as upright as I possibly can be so get up almost pull your head and chest up and backwards and go straight like that now we’re really working the tricep don’t go down too far there’s no need to go that far or you can damage your shoulder straight up straight down so again a little change in angle can mean a lot of change in the results that you see when you’re training your triceps one of the next mistakes I think we make often times when training our arms is that we Overlook the value of body weight exercises for adding muscle especially when it comes to triceps there are many ways that you can overload and exercise I’ve shown one before a body weight tricep extension so the equivalent if you don’t have dumbbells of the skull crusher that we showed over there would be setting up a bar a little bit between knee and wa uh waist height get up in here get up on your toes drop yourself down again slow up in away so again it’s sort of mirroring that movement but we’re doing it in a whole other way and I can tell you this is a very difficult tricep exercise okay if if you I mean if if you try that and you haven’t done those before you’ll see what I mean come down here try set push-ups okay elbows in tight to your side and come up now one of the things I like to do here is kind of lead with my chest and head here okay upper chest and head up and up it’s sort of like the top position of a Hindu push-up because from here on up is really focusing on the triceps okay so lead down and then back up with your head and of course we have plank UPS again elbows in tight push up onto your hands down slow real good negative on that exercise push back up all right so don’t ever underestimate the value of body weight when it comes to adding size to your arms and doing it in a functional way now this isn’t the latest fashion in the athlet X apparel line what I’m trying to do is show you here with a weighted vest what I I think is one of the other major mistakes people make which is not overloading exercises on the triceps especially if you are going to use body weight exercises if you’re going to keep doing dips over here and you could do 15 20 dips you have to bring that rep range down more in the 10 to 12 rep range by throwing on a weighted vest putting a dumbbell between your ankles and wearing a dip belt something so you can get more of a challenge on that exercise you do your push-ups put this on again becomes instantly harder down and pushing up that extra weight for the triceps okay so whether you have a weight to vest or you don’t remember you could do other things too you can hold the dumbbell things like that but you have to make sure that you’re overloading to give your muscles a reason to grow larger last but not least when it comes to tricep training the biggest sin that guys are making most often is volum