The triceps brachii, or ‘triceps’ as they’re commonly known are a very important muscles. ‘Triceps’ is actually a Latin word meaning “three-headed” which you can actually see if you stand with your back to the mirror and flex your triceps (though you can’t actually flex your triceps - see note below). Both men and women will often ignore this muscle and opt to focus on the biceps instead.
I wrote an article on biceps last week in which I state a fact unknown to most - the biceps take up just 1/3 of the muscle mass in the upper arm. That’s right, 2/3 of the muscle in your arm is in fact the tricep. If all you to is exercise your bicep muscle then I’m afraid you’re missing out on 66% of the progress you could be making.
The bigger your tricep muscles are the better your arms will look
I’ll risk repeating myself again - if you want big arms then you are going to have to work on your triceps. Believe it or not, this includes you ladies too (your genes won’t let your muscles get bigger than you want them, you don’t need to worry about that).
Some great tricep exercises:
- Dips (bench or parallel bars)
- Close grip bench press
- Skull Crushers
- Press ups
Bang-for-buck triceps exercise: Dips
As always, I want to single out the most effective exercise. Although dips do not use your entire body I still consider them to be bang-for-buck because they are just so effective at hitting your triceps (and chest) and as such I highly recommend that you include them in your workouts.
In a nutshell, dips involve raising and lowering your body using just your arms. There are 2 ways to do it, one is when you have 2 chairs or benches with your feet (heels) on one bench and your hands holding on to the other bench so that your legs are parallel and suspended above the floor. From here you simply lower your bottom to the ground (without touching it) and raising it back so that your arms fully extend at the top. This method is known as bench dips.
Parallel bar dips are even harder. You’ll need bars that are parallel to each other so that you can hold on to them with your hands while suspending your whole body in between the bars. You then lower and raise your body similar to bench dips except you are no longer resting your heels.
If all this is too hard for you at the moment. Don’t stress, a great way to build yourself up to dips is by doing press ups. In fact, even when you can move onto dips, press ups are always a great bang-for-buck exercise to be doing!
Note: While most will flex their arms to showoff their biceps, you can’t flex your arms to show off your triceps. This is because they are an extensor muscle which means it will be the most ‘pumped’ when you extend your arms out straight.
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