What could be worse than having flabby triceps? Maybe a big fat gut! But that’s another article altogether! Contemporary clothing emphasizes body hugging fabrics and sleeveless designs for both men and women. Face it, if you are out of shape, you just won’t look good in today’s fashions and you won’t feel very comfortable strolling along the beach in a bathing suit either.
The problem being that as you get older your triceps will just keep getting softer and gooey. But don’t worry, because you can tighten and tone your arms. If you are too busy and can’t make it to a gym, you can always use your furniture as gym equipment.
One simple triceps exercise that you can do from home is dips off the back of a chair with your feet either touching the ground or resting on another chair. Push-ups will also work your triceps and can be done anywhere so you have no excuses
The triceps are a large muscle mass and needs to be trained more than the biceps, which are smaller. You want your triceps and biceps to look good from any angle, but unlike the biceps, your triceps will make your arms look huge when your arms are not flexed. When you hear somebody comment on the size of someone’s arms, what they are really noticing is the development of that person’s triceps. The triceps are among the most visible parts of the body, whether flexing, exercising or just hanging out.
The first thing you want to do to train your triceps is build up mass and strength in the muscle’s structure. That means doing basic tricep presses and extensions, adding more weight gradually until the muscle group begins to respond. There are different kinds of presses and extensions designed to develop specific areas of the triceps. There are also certain exercises you can do to maximize your triceps training.
Any time you straighten your arm against resistance the triceps are involved. Using a cheating technique enhances muscle mass and strength, though you don’t need to cheat to put extra stress on your triceps. All of the effort you put into power training-bench presses, dumbbell press and shoulder presses-already put enormous stress on the triceps.
Triceps are involved in a variety of different exercises but it is also necessary to isolate them and put stress on each part of them directly, thus making sure you get full development. There are a number of tricep extension movements using barbells, dumbbells and cables; each exercise tending to affect different areas of the triceps.
Depending on your proportions and bone structure, it may be easier for some people to develop good triceps than others. For example, when doing tricep pressdowns it is easier for some to isolate the triceps while others with different proportions and muscle attachments will find themselves involving the pecs or even the lats instead of just their triceps. You can see this when a bodybuilder tries to do tricep pressdowns and ends up with a good chest pump instead. In that case, learning to isolate the triceps totally becomes all-important and can be accomplished by doing one-arm dumbbell extensions or barbell tricep extensions.
Lying tricep extensions work the muscle group from the elbow to the rear deltoid. One-arm tricep extensions help develop the triceps so they look good when doing a bicep shot, the fullness of the tricep offsetting the bicep’s peak. Lying dumbbell extensions work the outer head of the triceps to a much greater degree and give the shape and thickness needed for total development of the triceps.
Hand positioning makes a difference in how an exercise affects the triceps as well. If you hold your hand so the thumb is up, palm facing you, you are working the outer tricep as when doing tricep pressdowns holding onto a rope rather than pressing down on a bar or doing dumbbell kickbacks.
If you turn your hand so that the palm faces straight out as in a French press or triceps pressdown you are putting more stress on the inner part of the triceps. If you turn your wrist thumbs in and down, which is easiest when doing one-arm cable tricep pressdowns you really put the inside of the muscle to work.
Advanced training involves supersets-hitting the muscle with one exercise after another to develop size, strength, shape and endurance. You will need to work the upper, lower, inner and outer triceps. Adding exercises is important but only if you pursue them with an intensity that force the muscles to grow no matter how advanced you become.
Here are some tricep routines for you to choose from:
1. Tricep cable pressdowns with standing or seated dumbbell extensions. Four or five sets for each exercise.
2. Lying triceps extensions using e/z bar with dumbbell kickbacks. Four or five sets for each exercise.
3. Triceps cable pressdowns with rope cable extensions. Four or five sets for each exercise.
4. Reverse cable pressdowns superset with dips, finished up with tricep kickbacks. Three or four sets for each exercise.
These tricep routines should get you off to a good start! Of course, as you progress you can add more sets.