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Don't Do These Ineffective Triceps Exercises for Arm Day Workouts | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
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12/07/2024
Don't Do These Ineffective Triceps Exercises in Arm Day Workouts | Men’s Health Muscle
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Sports
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00:00
Everybody wants a big set of arms
00:01
and very often that means not just training our biceps,
00:04
it means attacking our triceps too.
00:06
But we can't just attack our triceps
00:08
with the latest, greatest exercise off of Instagram.
00:10
Very often those are the exercises that simply don't work.
00:13
That's what we're covering
00:14
in today's edition of the Don't List.
00:16
We're gonna look at triceps exercises
00:18
that are just a complete waste of your time.
00:20
And we're gonna start the list off
00:21
with the cross body skull crusher.
00:23
Now the cross body skull crusher
00:24
is a bodybuilding exercise
00:26
that you may have seen a certain Arnold Schwarzenegger doing
00:28
and that certainly makes it awesome.
00:30
But the problem with the cross body triceps exercise
00:32
is it leaves us in a lot of internal rotation
00:35
when we're doing it at the shoulder joint.
00:37
That will attack your triceps well,
00:39
but it is not great for your long-term shoulder health.
00:41
Instead of doing that cross body skull crusher,
00:44
let's just grab two dumbbells.
00:45
Let's get ourselves into a good tight position
00:47
with our elbows close to our bodies,
00:49
getting into external rotation.
00:51
And that's gonna be a way that you can still hammer
00:53
the exact same elbow extension principle
00:55
that you wanna get out of your triceps
00:57
without any of the long-term issues
00:59
that you might have with your shoulder.
01:01
Another exercise you wanna avoid for your triceps
01:03
is the bench dip, in particular, the weighted bench dip.
01:06
Yes, this is a great ego exercise
01:08
and it's certainly an exercise
01:09
that you think you can do anywhere.
01:10
You can throw a bunch of plates on your lap,
01:13
set up on a bench,
01:13
and then all of a sudden you're doing dips.
01:15
But the problem with that is, again,
01:17
we're winding up in this position of internal rotation.
01:20
And now you've done it with plates on you
01:22
that are also taking away your ability
01:24
to just move naturally
01:25
through the pattern of elbow extension.
01:27
So instead of doing that,
01:28
if you really, really wanna do
01:29
a weighted body weight exercise,
01:31
then let's just go to a weighted close grip pushup.
01:34
You're still gonna get to work on extending at the elbow.
01:37
We're gonna get a much better range of motion
01:39
and it's gonna be a lot easier on your shoulders.
01:41
It's crazy, but when you're training your triceps,
01:43
the thing you want to avoid
01:45
is putting your shoulders under strain.
01:46
And too many triceps moves place you in a position
01:48
where you're gonna place your shoulders under strain
01:50
and that's just not worth it.
01:51
We don't need that to really train elbow extension,
01:53
which is what we're getting from our triceps.
01:55
Third exercise to avoid is the dumbbell kickback.
01:58
Yes, the dumbbell kickback is a really good way
02:00
to get good squeeze on our triceps,
02:03
but it is not an exercise
02:04
that's really challenging your triceps
02:05
through anywhere near its full range of motion.
02:08
At the bottom of the dumbbell kickback,
02:10
absolutely nothing is happening.
02:12
At the top, you get that good squeeze
02:14
and we get all the tension,
02:15
but it's really, really easy
02:16
to get ourselves rocked into that position
02:18
to basically use momentum to get ourselves to the top.
02:20
And that just isn't the best way to train your triceps.
02:23
Instead of doing the dumbbell kickback,
02:25
you wanna look at something called an X press down.
02:27
Now this is a variation on your standard press down,
02:30
but now you're going to have a cross body position.
02:33
And because of that,
02:34
a couple of things happen that are really good.
02:36
The first of which is one,
02:38
we get all of that mid back squeeze and tension
02:40
that we really have to manage during our dumbbell kickback.
02:43
And two, we get to really challenge our triceps
02:45
both in the stretch position
02:47
when we're at the top of this exercise
02:49
and in the flex position.
02:50
So we're getting a lot more out of this for our triceps.
02:52
Another exercise you wanna avoid
02:54
is something called the dumbbell overhead extension.
02:56
Now, when we're doing the two arm overhead extension,
02:58
the great problem with this is again,
03:01
you're slipping into internal rotation
03:03
at the shoulder joint.
03:04
And yes, you're gonna get an okay squeeze with your triceps,
03:07
but at the very top of the motion,
03:08
you're also not getting a whole lot out of it
03:10
because our joints essentially get to stack.
03:12
So what we wanna do instead of doing this with a dumbbell,
03:15
we can basically do a cable overhead extension.
03:18
You can do this on an incline bench.
03:20
Now you're gonna get a really, really good stretch
03:22
at the bottom.
03:23
At the top, we've still got tension from that cable too.
03:25
So you get a really, really good squeeze on your triceps.
03:28
And we can work to get our elbows in tight
03:30
and we can work to keep our shoulders
03:31
out of internal rotation.
03:32
That's gonna get you a lot more life
03:34
and a lot more health for your shoulders in the longterm
03:37
while still crushing your triceps.
03:38
The worst exercise when it comes to training your triceps
03:41
is an exercise you think you can take anywhere,
03:43
but it just doesn't travel as well.
03:44
And it just isn't as useful as you think.
03:46
And that is the diamond pushup.
03:48
Now in the diamond pushup,
03:49
we're gonna get into a standard pushup position,
03:51
but we're gonna make a diamond shape
03:53
with our hands.
03:54
That's pushing our shoulders very close
03:55
and it's really, really easy,
03:57
especially when we're obsessed with that diamond position
03:59
to slip into internal rotation at the shoulder joint.
04:03
And so we're just not putting our shoulders
04:05
in a healthy position,
04:06
even if we do get a relatively good squeeze on our triceps.
04:09
Now, instead of doing the diamond pushup,
04:11
all we're gonna do is change our hand position
04:13
and make this a basic close grip pushup.
04:16
When we're in this close grip pushup,
04:17
we wanna get our hands ever so slightly narrower
04:20
than shoulder width.
04:21
But because we're in that position,
04:23
we're still gonna get the same benefits
04:25
of the diamond pushup
04:26
without placing our shoulders at any risk.
04:29
We still get to drive all the way down
04:31
into the bottom of that close grip pushup position.
04:33
And when we come up,
04:34
we're getting great elbow extension.
04:35
This is another exercise that you can load
04:37
so you can really push things farther.
04:39
So get the diamond pushup out of your repertoire
04:42
and let's go with the standard close grip pushup instead.
04:44
Your shoulders will feel much better
04:46
and your triceps will still get blowed up.
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