Don't Do These Ineffective Triceps Exercises in Arm Day Workouts | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00Everybody wants a big set of arms
00:01and very often that means not just training our biceps,
00:04it means attacking our triceps too.
00:06But we can't just attack our triceps
00:08with the latest, greatest exercise off of Instagram.
00:10Very often those are the exercises that simply don't work.
00:13That's what we're covering
00:14in today's edition of the Don't List.
00:16We're gonna look at triceps exercises
00:18that are just a complete waste of your time.
00:20And we're gonna start the list off
00:21with the cross body skull crusher.
00:23Now the cross body skull crusher
00:24is a bodybuilding exercise
00:26that you may have seen a certain Arnold Schwarzenegger doing
00:28and that certainly makes it awesome.
00:30But the problem with the cross body triceps exercise
00:32is it leaves us in a lot of internal rotation
00:35when we're doing it at the shoulder joint.
00:37That will attack your triceps well,
00:39but it is not great for your long-term shoulder health.
00:41Instead of doing that cross body skull crusher,
00:44let's just grab two dumbbells.
00:45Let's get ourselves into a good tight position
00:47with our elbows close to our bodies,
00:49getting into external rotation.
00:51And that's gonna be a way that you can still hammer
00:53the exact same elbow extension principle
00:55that you wanna get out of your triceps
00:57without any of the long-term issues
00:59that you might have with your shoulder.
01:01Another exercise you wanna avoid for your triceps
01:03is the bench dip, in particular, the weighted bench dip.
01:06Yes, this is a great ego exercise
01:08and it's certainly an exercise
01:09that you think you can do anywhere.
01:10You can throw a bunch of plates on your lap,
01:13set up on a bench,
01:13and then all of a sudden you're doing dips.
01:15But the problem with that is, again,
01:17we're winding up in this position of internal rotation.
01:20And now you've done it with plates on you
01:22that are also taking away your ability
01:24to just move naturally
01:25through the pattern of elbow extension.
01:27So instead of doing that,
01:28if you really, really wanna do
01:29a weighted body weight exercise,
01:31then let's just go to a weighted close grip pushup.
01:34You're still gonna get to work on extending at the elbow.
01:37We're gonna get a much better range of motion
01:39and it's gonna be a lot easier on your shoulders.
01:41It's crazy, but when you're training your triceps,
01:43the thing you want to avoid
01:45is putting your shoulders under strain.
01:46And too many triceps moves place you in a position
01:48where you're gonna place your shoulders under strain
01:50and that's just not worth it.
01:51We don't need that to really train elbow extension,
01:53which is what we're getting from our triceps.
01:55Third exercise to avoid is the dumbbell kickback.
01:58Yes, the dumbbell kickback is a really good way
02:00to get good squeeze on our triceps,
02:03but it is not an exercise
02:04that's really challenging your triceps
02:05through anywhere near its full range of motion.
02:08At the bottom of the dumbbell kickback,
02:10absolutely nothing is happening.
02:12At the top, you get that good squeeze
02:14and we get all the tension,
02:15but it's really, really easy
02:16to get ourselves rocked into that position
02:18to basically use momentum to get ourselves to the top.
02:20And that just isn't the best way to train your triceps.
02:23Instead of doing the dumbbell kickback,
02:25you wanna look at something called an X press down.
02:27Now this is a variation on your standard press down,
02:30but now you're going to have a cross body position.
02:33And because of that,
02:34a couple of things happen that are really good.
02:36The first of which is one,
02:38we get all of that mid back squeeze and tension
02:40that we really have to manage during our dumbbell kickback.
02:43And two, we get to really challenge our triceps
02:45both in the stretch position
02:47when we're at the top of this exercise
02:49and in the flex position.
02:50So we're getting a lot more out of this for our triceps.
02:52Another exercise you wanna avoid
02:54is something called the dumbbell overhead extension.
02:56Now, when we're doing the two arm overhead extension,
02:58the great problem with this is again,
03:01you're slipping into internal rotation
03:03at the shoulder joint.
03:04And yes, you're gonna get an okay squeeze with your triceps,
03:07but at the very top of the motion,
03:08you're also not getting a whole lot out of it
03:10because our joints essentially get to stack.
03:12So what we wanna do instead of doing this with a dumbbell,
03:15we can basically do a cable overhead extension.
03:18You can do this on an incline bench.
03:20Now you're gonna get a really, really good stretch
03:22at the bottom.
03:23At the top, we've still got tension from that cable too.
03:25So you get a really, really good squeeze on your triceps.
03:28And we can work to get our elbows in tight
03:30and we can work to keep our shoulders
03:31out of internal rotation.
03:32That's gonna get you a lot more life
03:34and a lot more health for your shoulders in the longterm
03:37while still crushing your triceps.
03:38The worst exercise when it comes to training your triceps
03:41is an exercise you think you can take anywhere,
03:43but it just doesn't travel as well.
03:44And it just isn't as useful as you think.
03:46And that is the diamond pushup.
03:48Now in the diamond pushup,
03:49we're gonna get into a standard pushup position,
03:51but we're gonna make a diamond shape
03:53with our hands.
03:54That's pushing our shoulders very close
03:55and it's really, really easy,
03:57especially when we're obsessed with that diamond position
03:59to slip into internal rotation at the shoulder joint.
04:03And so we're just not putting our shoulders
04:05in a healthy position,
04:06even if we do get a relatively good squeeze on our triceps.
04:09Now, instead of doing the diamond pushup,
04:11all we're gonna do is change our hand position
04:13and make this a basic close grip pushup.
04:16When we're in this close grip pushup,
04:17we wanna get our hands ever so slightly narrower
04:20than shoulder width.
04:21But because we're in that position,
04:23we're still gonna get the same benefits
04:25of the diamond pushup
04:26without placing our shoulders at any risk.
04:29We still get to drive all the way down
04:31into the bottom of that close grip pushup position.
04:33And when we come up,
04:34we're getting great elbow extension.
04:35This is another exercise that you can load
04:37so you can really push things farther.
04:39So get the diamond pushup out of your repertoire
04:42and let's go with the standard close grip pushup instead.
04:44Your shoulders will feel much better
04:46and your triceps will still get blowed up.