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  • What's up, guys?

  • Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

  • We're continuing our perfect workout series.

  • Today we're hitting the triceps.

  • With a little help from Jesse and the muscle markers, we've got a nice drawing on the

  • triceps here, so I don't have to try and do this.

  • The fact is, guys, it always starts with anatomy here.

  • It always starts with science because that's how you make smarter decisions in your training.

  • So, let's take a look at the anatomy, courtesy of the muscle markers, to see what's going

  • on.

  • You'll see here, the tricep is a three-headed muscle.

  • It's made up of the lateral head, the medial head in green here, and the longhead around

  • the back.

  • We've talked about the importance of the longhead all the time.

  • Save your jokes, I know.

  • The longhead is important.

  • I get it.

  • The fact is, when it comes to tricep training, the longhead is very important.

  • Why?

  • Because if you look at these two heads here, they exist on the upper arm.

  • They don't cross the shoulder joint.

  • They start here, and end here on the other side of the elbow.

  • All they're influencing here is elbow extension.

  • Nothing that I did up here at the shoulder would be matter because they don't cross

  • that joint.

  • Whereas, the longhead is the one that does cross that joint, coming off the scapula.

  • So, we know that if I can change position of the scapula, no matter what I didwhether

  • I brought it back or brought it up over my headall these things are changing the

  • orientation of the scapula.

  • Meaning, we're changing the tension on the longhead of the tricep.

  • So, we know we can influence that.

  • So, if you're going to put together a perfect tricep workout, what we need to do is figure

  • out ways to influence that.

  • Taking it a step further, we realize that the longhead of the triceps is put on stretch

  • when our arm is way up over our body.

  • So, we need to choose exercises that do that.

  • We also know that we can bring it in the opposite direction, all the way back behind the body,

  • and engage it into a full contraction, or fully shortened position.

  • So, we want to make sure we pick exercises that do that, too.

  • They'll be in our perfect workout.

  • At the same time, in pursuit of this, we don't want to lose sight of the fact that progressive

  • overload still matters.

  • Being able to load up the triceps with heavier weights, like any other muscle, as much as

  • possible is going to help us build them bigger.

  • So, we have to go pick the right, big exercises here.

  • Beyond that, I'm going to show you some ways to tweak those to get more from them,

  • so you get the most out of your muscle building capabilities from them.

  • Moving on, we always talked aboutin the perfect bicep workoutthis idea of overlapping

  • strength curves.

  • If we look at this exercise here, I have a band and dumbbells in my hand at the same

  • time when I'm curling.

  • Why do we do that?

  • Because we know when we use dumbbells, we max out the strength curve in the middle of

  • the movement.

  • When we get all the way to the top, we lose that tension.

  • But we also realize that bands help us to keep the tension going as I stretch further,

  • and further.

  • We combine them together to make a better exercise.

  • We can do the same thing here with triceps.

  • Again, to be part of a perfect workout, I believe we need to address that.

  • We're going to do that in two ways.

  • Guys, let's get it all started.

  • I'll break it down exercise by exercise for you and I'll give you the entire workout,

  • as we always have in this series, at the very end.

  • All right, so we kick off the perfect tricep workout here with those heavy exercises.

  • I like to address the heavier stuff first when we have the most energy and we're able

  • to hit them hard.

  • What is the first one up here?

  • It's a close grip bench-press, but it's a close grip pin press.

  • Why are we pressing off the pins instead of doing a full range of motion press?

  • Because if you're trying to target the triceps the most, and overload the triceps, you do

  • have to realize that the majority of the work being done by the triceps is from the midpoint,

  • on.

  • It's toward the lockout portion of the press.

  • If we train all the way down here, off our chest, although it's a good exercise, we're

  • working more on the delts to get them off our chest.

  • So, what we're trying to do is isolate more of the function of the triceps, which will

  • allow us to load this exercise up even heavier to match the strength the triceps have here.

  • We perform these in 10, 6, and 4 reps across three sets.

  • Moving on, we go to the next big exercise.

  • That is the weighted dip.

  • Again, there is an opportunity here that I think is sometimes overlooked.

  • That is to do this in the form of a tricep.

  • We can get to failure and we can push beyond failure.

  • So, what I do is setup here with a weight around my waist.

  • I can do it that way, or I can hold the dumbbell between my legs.

  • Whatever is easiest for you.

  • The fact here is, I'm going to perform my dip and I'm going to drop set when I reach

  • failure, to let go of the weight, and get back up there as a bodyweight option.

  • As I do those reps, I'm going to then go to failure once again, until I can go and

  • attach to the band, put my knees inside, and do a third set here without resting.

  • Continue this drop set down with an assisted dip.

  • In terms of the technique, no matter which form I'm doing here, in order to maximally

  • engage the triceps, you want to do two things.

  • Number one: you want to keep your torso as upright as possible.

  • I just did a whole video on the chest talking about how you maximize more chest involvement,

  • you lean forward.

  • The opposite is true with triceps.

  • You want to keep your trunk up as tall as possible.

  • The next thing is, don't allow the forearms to dominate this movement.

  • As you come up to the top, I like to almost hand release.

  • Push down through the palms of my hand, let my triceps do all the extending here.

  • Don't grip too much here.

  • The tendency is to not go to full extension because you're activating the forearms too

  • much.

  • I want that release.

  • Let go of the hands as you get to the top.

  • The fact is, guys, this tri-set allows us to take the intensity even further.

  • Now we move on here and we go to our super set.

  • This super set was made with the idea of doing what we talked about before.

  • That's focusing on the longhead, taking it through both of those extremes.

  • An exercise that puts it in more of a stretch position, and an exercise that puts it in

  • more of a contracted position.

  • We can do that here with a single cable.

  • We start with the push away.

  • You'll see here, what I want to dosince this is the stretched position of the longhead

  • – I try to accentuate that.

  • I try to allow the arms to drift a little bit higher on every rep to make sure I'm

  • getting a good stretch on the longhead.

  • We do that, again, by allowing the elbow to travel as high as our body will allow them.

  • As soon as I'm done with that set, you can see I immediately transition right into this

  • drag pushdown.

  • The difference here on a drag pushdown is the placement of my hands.

  • How far away from my body are they?

  • They're not away from my body like a traditional pushdown would be.

  • They're right up against my chest, literally trying to ride my ribcage all the way down.

  • You'll see what does is, it gets the elbows back into extension.

  • That is the key when it comes to putting the tricep longhead into that fully shortened

  • position.

  • You want to get your elbow back behind your body with full elbow extension.

  • We can do that here.

  • We work on this in a back to back format.

  • You do 10 to 12 reps.

  • The weight that you chose to do the first exercise stays the same.

  • So, there's no resting as you proceed to the second part of that combo.

  • Finally, we want to address those strength curves I had talked about in the beginning.

  • One of the exercises that we've talked about for a long time, and has been copied poorly

  • by others, is the rocking pushdown.

  • If you want to see how to do it right, you watch it here.

  • The idea behind the rocking pushdown is, we realize that forces change during an exercise.

  • If I were to take my arm right here and perform a regular pushdown, what happens is, the line

  • of resistance on a cable is going to be parallelat some pointto the moving segment.

  • Which, in this point, is the forearm.

  • When that happens all the tension is gone.

  • What we want to try and do is maximize that tension by always allowing that line of resistance

  • to be perpendicular to the forearm.

  • When we look at a regular pushdown, if I start right here, if I have the cable pulling straight

  • down to my forearm, we're good.

  • But when I get down to the bottom of that pushdown, now it's parallel to that forearm.

  • Meaning, we do not have as much resistance there, and you've probably felt that.

  • It's pretty difficult to start, but it's not so hard at the end.

  • We can fix that with a rocking pushdown.

  • All I have to do is change the orientation of my body to allow for that.

  • So, you see here, I start leaning in.

  • I've already got my leg dropped back.

  • So, I'm prepared to rock back.

  • But I start in a closer position so as I initiate the pushdown, I have that perpendicular line

  • of resistance from the cable pointed down to the forearm.

  • As I get down into full extension of the elbows, you can see I've leaned back, and rocked

  • back, which allows that line to lineup more perpendicular than it was before, with the

  • forearm still.

  • So, we keep that tension on the triceps even in its contracted position here.

  • I'm not leaning back in momentum to pull the cable down, or the stack down.

  • I'm just allowing my body's position to change.

  • This is a great addition to make sure you're hitting those strength curves.

  • We have another option here.

  • It parallels a little bit more with what we did with the biceps back in the beginning

  • that I showed you.

  • That's incorporating a band.

  • One of my favorite exercises is the inline tricep extension.

  • If we incorporate the band, we have a band inline tricep extension.

  • You guys can probably figure out what's going on here.

  • With the dumbbells, we know as we get toward the top, we start to lose resistance.

  • So much, in fact, that if I were to tell you to allow your dumbbells to get fully over

  • your body, straight up over your body, you've taken away much of the tension on the triceps,

  • making this exercise less effective.

  • Instead, what we do is keep them angled back a little bit.

  • Beyond that, we add the bands, so we have the additional resistance and stretch as we

  • pull into that final contraction.

  • Just by doing this, we've taken the same mechanics of the exercise, but by adding to

  • the two implements together, we've made a better exercise.

  • So, there you have it, guys.

  • There is the perfect tricep workout.

  • I want you guys to give it a try.

  • Here's what it looks like as I've been doing it this entire series.

  • I've laid the workout out for you.

  • Sets and reps.

  • So, you can have it, you can try it, you can convince yourself once again that there really

  • is only one way to train.

  • That's by putting science back in strength.

  • That's what we do here on this channel.

  • That's what we do in all our programs.

  • If you haven't already, guys, check them out.

  • Head over to ATHLEANX.com right now.

  • Find the program that's right for you.

  • All of them are built with the same idea: putting science back in strength.

  • In the meantime, if you haven't already subscribed, guys, please do so and turn on

  • your notifications so you never miss one of our videos.

  • Let me know what else you want me to cover here, what else you want me to break the muscle

  • marker out on.

  • Save some ideas, guys.

  • We could keepkeep them clean.

  • I'll come back here and do themwithin reasonwhat you're looking for.

  • All right, guys.

  • See you soon.

What's up, guys?

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