How To Get Bigger Triceps (3 Training Mistakes You’re Probably Making)

If you're seeking to build big, impressive looking arms, then there's no doubt that you have to prioritize the triceps. This is especially true since they actually make up most of the size of your arms. But in order to best grow this muscle, you need to pay close attention to how exactly you're performing your triceps exercises and the approach you use to train them. For example, let's take a look at Bob on the left and Billy on the right. Although Bob may do the exact same amount of sets and reps as Billy does, and maybe even lifting more weight than him, I can guarantee you that over time, Billy will see better triceps growth due to the various technical aspects of the movement that he's taken the time to fix and optimize. And these fixes may be exactly what you need in order to take your triceps development to the next level. Therefore, in this video, I'll go through the most common mistakes people make that hinders triceps growth, and more importantly, I'll show you exactly how to fix them right away. The first, and probably the most common mistake is letting other muscles take over and steal tension from the triceps during pushdowns, for example, and the three main culprits for this are the lats, shoulders and forearms. But luckily these can all be quickly fixed with simple tweaks in your form. If you're letting your elbows excessively sway forward and back during the movement, then all you're doing is evolving more of the lats, since they are mainly responsible for shoulder extension. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is something you want to avoid if you want to prioritize triceps development, given that this takes tension away from the triceps during the movement. So what you want to do instead is lower the weight, bring your elbows down to your side and keep them locked and pinned to your side throughout the movement. You can now visually see how the triceps take on the majority of the load while the involvement of the lats is minimized. Letting the forearms take over is a little harder to catch, but it's just as common, especially when the bar attachment is used. And this happens when you flex your wrist as you push the weight down, which not only shifts tension away from the triceps, but also puts your wrist at a mechanical disadvantage and stresses the elbow joint as well. Instead, you want to keep the wrist in a neutral position relative to your forearms in order to both increase wrist stability and elicit a stronger contraction from the Triceps. And finally, enough. Another common error people make is slowly leaning forward and rounding their back as they begin to fatigue, or when they use a weight that's too heavy. This actually causes the elbows to widen, which not only creates a favorable leverage to make each rep easier for you, but it also shifts tension away from the triceps and more so onto the shoulders and even the chest. Instead, you want to properly set up by sticking your chest up and out, retract your shoulder blades, bend, pin your elbows to the side, and maintain this position as you perform each rep. Another costly yet common mistake is failing to maximize the tension placed on the triceps during your exercises, which just comes down to how exactly you perform them. For example, during lying overhead extensions or skull crushers. If you're performing the movement with your arms locked directly overhead, then you're not maximizing the tension that's placed on the triceps. In fact, the triceps experience very little tension at the top part of the movement due to the position that your arms are in relative to gravity. So instead, applying the findings from this 2006 biomechanical analysis that greater degrees of shoulder elevation provides a greater stretch on the long head of the triceps, you want to move your arms slightly back, lock your arms here, and then proceed to perform your reps. This way, you provide more stretch in the long head of the triceps and enable the muscle as a whole to be active throughout the whole range of motion. And similarly, during tricep pushdowns, a lot of people tend to stand too close to the cables with their body positioned completely upright. But with this setup, your range of motion is now compromised and becomes limited since your hips get in the way at the bottom position. And in addition, the tension of the triceps at the bottom becomes minimal due to the direction of the cable relative to the forearm, thus leading to a suboptimal contraction of the triceps, especially of the long head. So what you want to do instead is very simple. Just take one or two small steps away from the cable, slightly hinge at the hips, and then perform the movement with your elbows pinned to your side. Doing so will slightly increase the range of motion of the exercise and enable the triceps to reach their peak contraction when you're at the bottom position. Although isolation exercises for the triceps, like the ones previously discussed, are great for development, there's no doubt that heavy compound pressing exercises will provide the most bang for your buck. This is mainly because you're able to overload them more effectively and lift much heavier loads with them when compared to isolation exercises. And this is especially important for triceps growth since research indicates that the triceps are composed mostly of type 2 muscle fibers which are theorized to be best stimulated by using heavy weight and two great pressing exercises that you should incorporate and prioritize for these reasons are are the close grip bench press and the barbell overhead press. The close grip bench press is a great option because as shown in this 2005 paper from the journal Strength and Conditioning Research, the bench press on its own already elicits very high triceps activity. But by narrowing your hand spacing you're able to shift more of the load to the triceps and hence produce even greater triceps muscle activity. However, just note that going too close often does more harm than good, so sticking to roughly shoulder width apart would be the best option to avoid discomfort while still maximizing triceps activation. The barbell overhead press is another great exercise you should be prioritizing for triceps development. In fact, it was shown in this 2013 paper from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research to elicit the greatest triceps activity when compared to other shoulder press variations, while also being the exercise where the most weight could be lifted, thus proving that if prioritized, it will be one of the main contributors to triceps development over time. And with that being said, weighted dips are another great exercise that could definitely be added to this list as well. But the main point here is that for the best results, start your workouts with heavy movements like these and really strive to progress them over time and then as needed, use isolation exercises afterwards to fit in more triceps volume to further stimulate growth. By using this approach in combination with the various technique fixes previously discussed, I guarantee that you'll begin to see a major difference in your triceps development over time.

And that's pretty much it for the video. These little training tips may not seem like much, but trust me, they really are what's going to make all the difference in the long run and enable you to progress that much faster. And if you're looking for a complete evidence based program that's fully equipped with in depth tutorials for each and every movement so you can ensure that you're maximizing your efforts in the gym, then what you can do is simply head on over to built with science.com and take my free science based analysis tool I have up in order to discover which program and which approach is best for you. Also, if you haven't already done so, I'd really appreciate a follow on Instagram. I post a lot of exercise videos on there as well as my meals throughout the week which I think a lot of you will really find useful. And if you enjoyed this video then please don't forget to give it a like leave a comment down below, subscribe and turn on notifications for my channel as well as this all really does help me out. Thank you so much for the support everyone. I really do appreciate it and I'll see you next time.