Are you looking to get bigger arms? Bicep curls or one of the many variations are surely the way to go! It looks great when you perform a curl in front of the mirror and bicep curls are effective to strengthen and increase arm size. But what about the other part of your arm? The arm muscles that you don’t see in a mirror? The tricep brachii.

What Are the Triceps?

While the biceps form the front part of the upper arm, the triceps make up the rear. The triceps contribute the largest portion of the arm muscles so if you are looking to increase arm size then it is a good idea to stop ignoring your triceps.

As the name tricep suggests, the muscle group consists of three muscles, namely the long, medial, and lateral heads. The medial and lateral heads cross a single joint at the elbow and are responsible for extending the forearm. The long head crosses both the elbow joint and shoulder joint so that in addition to forearm extension it also abducts the arm and extends the shoulder.

How To Train Your Triceps

Armed with the knowledge that triceps form the larger part of the arms, your triceps should get the same, or more, attention as your biceps.

Order of Exercises

To increase muscle size, you need to create a high level of fatigue in the target muscles. The triceps work as secondary muscles in push exercises such as shoulder press and bench press. For this reason, it is a good idea to include triceps training on the same days as these push workouts.

If you isolate the tricep muscle at the end of a push workout, the triceps would already be partially fatigued, and you will be able to create higher levels of fatigue for increased muscle gain.

Selection of Exercises

To maximise triceps training you should aim to target all three muscles of the triceps. To do this you should select exercises with a variety of arm and hand positions. Exercises with the arm tucked next to your body focus more on the lateral and medial tricep heads while exercises where the arm is raised will focus more on the long tricep muscle.

Number of Reps

A rep range of between 8 - 12 is ideal for increasing the size of the triceps. Select a weight that will allow you to just complete the number of reps. Each rep should be slow to increase fatigue and keep the rest period to no longer than 90 seconds.

Three Triceps Training Exercises

Tate Press

The tate press is an isolation exercise that also requires a large eccentric contraction to prevent the weights being dropped onto your chest, providing a large muscle growth stimulus. Our model is using 22.5kg Dumbbells. You should select a weight that is challenging but not too difficult.

• Lie on a Flat Weight Bench and push the dumbbells horizontally above your chest as you would for a bench press.

• Slowly bend your arms so as to lower the weights towards your chest. Keep your upper arms stationary, and your elbows above your chest. You should end up with the dumbbells held vertically.

• Extend your forearms to return the weight back to the original position.

Two Arm Triceps Kickback

Performing triceps kickbacks on both arms at a time will require you to select a slightly lighter weight than when doing single arm triceps kickbacks but saves you time when you are adding in extra triceps exercises at the end of a push routine.

• Start with a dumbbell in each hand.

• Lean forward and bend at the knees so that your chest is close to being parallel to the floor.

• With your arms tucked in against your chest, bend at the forearms so the weights are perpendicular to the floor.

• Extend your forearms behind you so that your entire arm is parallel to the floor.

• Return to the starting position in a controlled manner.

Floor Press

Similar to the bench press, the floor press is a compound strength exercise targeting chest and triceps with the benefit of being able to increase the training load due to a smaller range of motion. This is particularly useful to strengthen the final part of forearm extension.

• Lie on the floor under a barbell with bumper plates.

• Grab the barbell as you would for a bench press.

• Press the bar away from your chest. Our model is using 20kg Plates

• Slowly return to the starting position.

Triceps are often ignored in our search to increase our arm size but, if anything, more emphasis should be placed on the triceps in the quest for bigger arms. Select a variety of exercises that make use of different arm positions and include these at the end of a push routine such as chest or shoulders to watch your muscles grow.

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Tags: Equipment > Bars and Weight Plates ; Equipment > Dumbbells ; Exercise Type > Strength