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Exercising Your Triceps

Let’s face it, what bodybuilder doesn’t want to have enormous looking arms? The arms signify one’s power and strength. Big, muscular guns send a message to the world…you’re a force to be reckoned with!

To help achieve this goal, you’re going to need massive triceps. After all, the triceps make up about 2/3s of your upper arm. So intense training in this area is crucial to achieving big gun success! Don’t slack off on exercising and training your triceps, Arnold made that mistake and he had to play catch up later…learn from the great one’s mistakes!

Use the Triceps Anatomy To Your Advantage

Let’s start with a little basic anatomy to fully understand how the triceps work, and how this 8 week routine is set up to put you on the way to huge arms. The two heads of the biceps and the three heads of the triceps have separate attachments near the shoulder but a singular attachment for each muscle just below the elbow. Even though body mechanics don’t allow for complete isolation of any one given head, you can slightly shift the emphasis from one head to another by using a variety of exercises and angles. To sum it up, the more angles the more Muscle mass! This rule holds true, not just for the triceps, but all the muscle groups in your body.

Program Strategy

On other note is that this 8-week plan changes depending upon your level of conditioning. The general philosophy is the basic meat-and-potatoes exercises are used for the first two exercises, followed by some isolation movements to top the workout off. This rule can change a little, when using say pre-exhaustion, but for the most part its rule of thumb.

For beginners, simply perform the first two exercises in the beginning of every workout, and stick to 4-6 total sets all together. For an intermediate bodybuilder perform the entire workout, but adjust the sets to your fitness level. This holds true for advanced as well. You can also change the time between sets depending on your goals.

Also, when to train your triceps is something that will be up to you. Some people like to train them after chest and deltoid exercises, some like to have an all arm day. It is advisable to often switch your routine around to keep your body guessing and growing. If you have an all arm day, make sure you’ve given a few days between training your deltoids or chest. Whether your triceps are sore or not, they have been heavily taxed from your chest and deltoids workout, so make sure they are well rested so you don’t fall into over-training. A great way is to use muscle recover supplements and sports nutrition products to help your muscle recover and in turn grow.

Warming Up

Here’s a little pre-workout warm-up advice. Make sure you loosen up your triceps real good. It’s advisable to do this by including two warm-up sets of the first exercise in the routine. The first warm-up set being light weight in the 12-15 rep range, and the next warm-up set in the 5 rep range using 50 % - 60% of the heaviest weights. Don’t go all out in either of these sets, the light set just helps get the blood flowing, and the semi-heavy set prepares the body for the heavy lifting. If you’ve already worked your chest and deltoids, warming up on the first exercise is all the warm-up you should need, because the triceps have already taken a pretty good beating. If you are just working arms, warm up for the first two exercises.

Also, recommended is stretching and flexing before and between sets. Stretching not only prevents injuries, but also helps keep the blood flowing. Flexing between sets also helps keep the blood flowing, and will increase muscularity. To help prevent any tricep strain, don’t let the muscle go ‘cold’, in other words resting too long between sets. The idea is to give the tricep enough time to recover, without letting it rest too much. The recommended amount of rest time is 1 to 2 minutes. But that may change according to the individual level of fitness

Lastly you should get lots of sleep and eat nutritiously dense foods. Then sit back and watch your arms grow! Listen to the feedback your body gives you, fine-tuning your workout as needed. Supplements are also recommended to help maintain our body’s nutritional level, as bodybuilding can take a lot of our muscles.

With all that in mind let’s thrash those triceps!

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