Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • What's up, guys?

  • Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

  • So today I'm going to show you everything you need to know about the triceps and more

  • important, how to start targeting them the right way in your workouts.

  • I'm going to use Raymond.

  • He actually had an idea the other day.

  • He told me he literally had an idea.

  • He said "Screw using me.

  • Why don't you use the muscle markers instead?"

  • Which is exactly what we're going to do.

  • We're going to break out the muscle markers to show you how to start hitting your triceps

  • more effectively.

  • Okay, first of all we need to always put the science back in strength because that's what

  • we do here at ATHLEANX, and we need to start with a little bit of an anatomy lesson.

  • The triceps: there's three heads, obviously, by the name "tri".

  • Where they all originate and where they all attach is really important for how we're going

  • to attack them.

  • First of all we have the horseshoe.

  • This is what everybody looks at.

  • The front part of the horseshoe here is the lateral head of the tricep.

  • The green area, okay?

  • Then this big meaty area here is the longhead of the tricep.

  • This red area here, all the way down.

  • Now, they all commonly insert into a tendon that feeds into the other side of the elbow

  • joint here, which we'll get into in a second.

  • The medial head actually sits way up underneath here and it actually lays underneath the longhead

  • of the triceps.

  • So you can't really see that all that much, but it's a very important muscle, in terms

  • of providing stability to the overall tricep muscle group, and therefore allowing you to

  • maximize your strength across all three heads in all your different exercises.

  • Now, all of them, again, cross here into the elbow, which means they will extend into the

  • elbow.

  • So I don't care what exercise you're doing.

  • They're all going to work the triceps if you're extending your elbow.

  • That's just how it works.

  • You don't have to overcomplicate things.

  • However, one of them startsnot here on the armbut it actually goes onto our

  • scapula.

  • It crosses the shoulder joint.

  • That is the longhead.

  • That's why it's called the longhead, because it actually goes here.

  • You can see that it attaches all the way back here.

  • So now, what does that do?

  • Let's cover that first.

  • If you want to train your longhead you must create enough tension on there to maximize

  • the contraction of the tricep, meaning you want to stretch that thing out and get it

  • up and over your head.

  • So right away, a tricep push away.

  • Okay, you can see that my arm is up here over my body, and as I push out I'm getting extension

  • of the elbow, and obviously tricep contraction.

  • We also couldsome would saytake a dumbbell and put it up over our heads and

  • start doing this and extend the elbows.

  • My problem with that exercise is that you're actually internally rotating the shoulders

  • here to grab the dumbbell with this elevation of the arms.

  • If you have a shoulder problem, or an impingement in your shoulder already, that could hurt

  • a lot.

  • Especially if you have a labrum tear.

  • It can increase some compression in the joint.

  • So that's not one of my favorites, okay?

  • The next thing you could thoughlike I said, don't always think about standing

  • up into this positionif I were to lay down on my back and put my arm up into this

  • position you have, actually, one of my favorite exercises, which is the tricepthe lining

  • barbell tricep extension.

  • You could do this with an easy curl bar, you can do it with dumbbells.

  • Here I like to do them with dumbbells because it allows me to get a little bit further back

  • behind my head so when I'm contracting I still have some tension here on the triceps, as

  • opposed to being straight up, overhead.

  • We've covered that in many videos.

  • So that's your attack plan.

  • Now, here's one thing I'm going to tell you that is very important that others might tell

  • you never to do.

  • They might say "Well, what about the contraction of that?"

  • Well, if we know the longhead is stretched maximally by putting your arm up over your

  • head, right?

  • Because we're flexing the arm.

  • We know that the function of the longhead is not just to extend the elbow, but to also

  • extend the arm behind the body.

  • You need to start doing some exercises that extend the arm behind the body while you're

  • contracting.

  • There's something called active insufficiency, which means that you don't get a lot of

  • tension generated in this position.

  • I agree, that's true.

  • You don't get a lot of tension generated in this position because it's maximally shortened.

  • However, what it does have the ability to do is show you what peak contraction feels

  • like.

  • I could tell you right now, a lot of us suffer from the inability to have a good mind-muscle

  • connection, in any muscle group that we're working.

  • So we would use two particular exercises to help us get that feel of the contraction right

  • from the get go, before we start our tricep workout.

  • These two would be a cobra pushuplike I'm showing you hereand you can see that

  • my arm is extended back behind my body and again, we might want to do something like

  • the good old tricep kick back.

  • Again, the arm is back here.

  • It's a killer exercise in terms of feeling that peak contraction albeit, at a little

  • bit less tension and force.

  • We're not relying on it to build that much muscle.

  • We're relying on it to help us develop that mind-muscle connection.

  • One last thing you might want to try if you're still a non-believer in that, is just stand

  • out here, put your armstraighten it all the way out.

  • So we've got tricep extension here, or elbow extension so our triceps should be working.

  • But what we want to do is now, from here, just bring your arm back behind your body.

  • As soon as you do you'll feel, immediately, an increase.

  • A huge increase in the amount of that contraction that you feel in that tricep because we've

  • taken that longhead now, and we've put it into a state of maximum contraction.

  • Now, the other two.

  • What do you do with the other two?

  • You've got the lateral head and you've got the medial head.

  • Both of them now are only going to do what?

  • Extend the elbow, but there's something you can do to favorably hit each of the areas.

  • Think about when you're doing leg extensions.

  • Yes, leg extensions.

  • Not an exercise I would tell you to do, but just so you can visualize what I'm talking

  • about.

  • Leg extensions, you're going to stick your leg out like this, right?

  • What have you done if someone has ever told you to target the inside of your leg?

  • You've turned your leg out.

  • So now when you contract you're getting the VMO.

  • You're feeling more of a contraction here on the inner side of your quad.

  • If you turn your leg in you're feeling a contraction more on the outer side of your quad.

  • The same thing happens here with our triceps.

  • If we have our triceps when we're going to do a pushdown, if we were to rotate them in,

  • the more we turn them in the more we work on the outer side here.

  • If we were to turn them out, the more we work on the inner side here of the tricep.

  • So when we're talking about lateral, or medial you're going to go lateral head with the elbow

  • turnedwith the forearms pronated and turned in.

  • You're going to go more medial head here underneathremember, lying underneath the long head

  • medial head, as we turn them out.

  • So what are some of the options here?

  • Well, of course we want to hit the lateral head first.

  • If you're doing your tricep pushdowns you can turn your hands in, allow your elbows

  • to drift out a little bit as you do them and you'll see that you get more of that lateral

  • head.

  • You can do a diamond cutter pushup where you turn your elbows out and you could see you're

  • pushing down and getting that elbow extension, but with that slightly turned in position

  • here we're going to work on the lateral head.

  • For the medial head you could do a reverse grip tricep pushdown.

  • Now we're turning ourselves out and we're coming down and you're working, again, more

  • on that medial head which is buried underneath the longhead, or we could do a close grip

  • bench-press.

  • Elbows in tight, sometimes even underhand gripped you'll feel it even more.

  • You're going to press up and away from you.

  • Again, by turning out, focusing more on that medial head.

  • So all in all, guys, the idea here is that the triceps are not all that complicated.

  • All of them, regardless of what you do, are going to extend the elbow, but manipulating

  • the position of the longhead is going to be key.

  • Not forgetting to include some of that peak contraction positioning by getting the arm

  • back behind the body because the longhead allows you to do that, is a great way to kick

  • off your workout and help you develop more mind-muscle connections so overall you can

  • learn how to start developing more tension throughout your entire work out and get much

  • more out of them.

  • Guys, I hope you enjoy the muscle marker, again.

  • Once again, I like to break them out whenever I feel like it's going to help you guys to

  • understand more about what the hell is going on in your body.

  • If you're looking for a program that does that and lays it all out step by step and

  • never ignores the science along the way, then head to ATHLEANX.com right now and get our

  • ATHLEANX training system.

  • All right, guys.

  • I'll be back here again in a few days.

  • Leave your comments and thumbs up below.

  • Let me know what you want to see and I'll do my best to cover it.

  • See ya!

What's up, guys?

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it