Triceps Workouts

Strong arms are important for almost every upper body movement you do each day and your triceps are often the heavy lifters. Anytime you push something a door, a stroller, a lawnmower or a barbell, you're using your triceps.

Strong is important and, for many of us, so is having shapely, toned arms. In other words, most of us don't like it when our triceps keep waving even after we've stopped.

The best way to build strong, firm triceps is to choose the exercises that hit all those muscle fibers from every angle.

The triceps, as the name suggests, has three different heads the long head, lateral head, and the medial head. All of these heads contract during triceps exercises, but some moves emphasize different parts of the triceps.

While the biceps constitute a sizeable portion of your arms, the triceps comprise a larger portion of your upper arms. So if you're looking to fill out your sleeves and pump up those guns, you will need to workout your triceps alongside your biceps. Earlier, we shared these ten bicep workouts. Today, we bring you the best triceps exercises to get your arms in shape.

The triceps muscle is made of three heads: one runs along the back of your arms, the second is the outermost part of the muscle and the third runs underneath the other two and is the part that you can see closer to your elbow. Training for triceps can be difficult but working out your triceps is important because these are the muscles (and not the biceps, as is the popular perception) that add size to your arms.

Strengths It's not the most impressive movement you'll ever do where weight load is concerned, but form is paramount since you're targeting the smallest of the three triceps heads. Go too heavy and you'll rely on momentum and an assist from the lateral and long heads, among other muscle groups. You won't hear us say this often, but for a direct hit on the medial head, a machine beats any free-weight alternative hands down (pun intended). The cable pressdown is much preferred to the dicey nature of going underhand on barbell and dumbbell exercises, which tend to put the wrist under strain in awkward positions.

How-To Stand in front of a high-pulley cable and grasp a straight-bar attachment with a palms-up (supinated) grip. With your knees soft, lean forward slightly at the hips and keep your elbows close to your sides, bringing your upper arms parallel to the floor. From here, forcefully extend your elbows to push the bar toward your upper thighs at the very bottom of the range of motion. Squeeze and hold for a one-count before returning to the point where your arms are parallel to the floor.