If I had a nickel for every time a person asked me to “make a muscle,” I would be one wealthy dude. The funny thing is, when I get that request I’m always tempted to flex my back or calf since all they asked for was a muscle. Of course, however, I know that they really want to see me flex my biceps. What most people don’t realize is that it’s actually the triceps that create most of the arms’ mass, so when a lifter throws up an arm and puts on a gun show, people are actually gawking at the triceps more than the biceps.
With that in mind, it makes sense to make sure that you’re focusing as much on the development of your triceps as that of your biceps. Here are some common errors I see in their triceps training. So if you want bigger, stronger arms, be sure you’re not making one of these five tri training errors.
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Failure to Include Close-Grip Bench Presses and Dips
While isolation exercises certainly have their place in an effective triceps-building program, you will never reach your “mass potential” without regularly including close-grip bench presses and dips in your workouts. These basic exercises allow you to team up with your chest and delts to lift prodigious poundage, which is necessary when you are after titanic tris.
The long head of the triceps makes up most of its mass and this is best activated by exercises where the elbows are up by the ears with arms overhead. Every triceps workout should include seated/incline overhead barbell, dumbbell, or cable extensions if the goal is to create arms that are freaky even when just hanging by your sides.
I totally understand that everyone loves training biceps, but since the triceps are a more complex muscle (3 heads vs. 2 heads) they will require a bit more work to reach full development (unless genetically gifted in that area). While I normally recommend between six and eight all-out sets for bis, when I assign workouts for tris, I push the volume two to four sets higher.
You want to make sure a muscle is growing at the fastest rate possible? Then make sure it receives the most tension on every single rep! One of the most common things I witness trainees doing in the gym is allowing the elbows to flare out during pushdowns and extensions, which cheats the triceps out of stimulation by making the shoulders/chest “press” the weight—which is not the most effective way to perform these particular movements. Keep the elbows tight and allow only the triceps to move the bar or dumbbell.
Much triceps muscle fiber firing occurs in the last 1/3 of pushdown, press and extension exercises. Thus, if you do not lock out, you are not fully engaging the tris and also missing out on potential hypertrophy. The key is to lock out under full control by contracting the triceps fully and not utilizing momentum or allowing the elbow joint to support the weight. In other words, “squeeze to lockout” and flex the muscle tight.
