Triceps exercises: pressing, pushdowns and overhead work

The triceps is the main muscle on the back of the upper arm, and a bigger one than the biceps, so it shapes more of the arm's size. It has three heads. The lateral head, on the outside, and the medial head, deeper and lower down, run from the upper arm bone to the elbow. The long head starts on the shoulder blade, so it crosses the shoulder as well as the elbow and helps bring a raised arm back down. All three straighten the elbow; only the long head cares where your upper arm is.

That is the key to training every head. With the arm overhead, as in an overhead extension, the long head is stretched and works hard at long lengths. With the arm at your side, as in a pushdown, the lateral and medial heads do a larger share. Presses work all three under the heaviest loads. No exercise isolates a single head, but covering all three arm positions across a week leaves nothing out. Each movement listed below this guide has its own technique page in the exercise library.

Every press trains the triceps. The bench press, the dumbbell bench press, the incline bench press and the overhead press all finish with the elbows straightening under load, and a closer grip shifts more of the work from the chest to the triceps. Dips do the same with bodyweight. For many lifters, pressing is where most of their triceps work already comes from.

Isolation work adds what presses cannot. The tricep pushdown is the easiest to learn and load. An overhead extension, with a rope on the cable or a single dumbbell, stretches the long head. A skull crusher, lying on a bench with an EZ bar, sits between the two and takes a good load. A dumbbell kickback is light but useful for a hard squeeze at the end of a session.

As for machines, the cable station does more for the triceps than any single machine: pushdowns, single-arm work and overhead rope extensions all happen on one pulley. Some gyms have a dip machine or a seated triceps-extension machine, which are fine for training close to failure but not essential. The cable machine and dumbbells pages explain the set-ups.

No set count has been shown to be ideal. Adding weekly hard sets is linked with more growth up to a point, nobody has pinned down where that point is, and the heavy work your triceps do in pressing counts too. A practical starting point is four to eight sets of direct triceps work a week across two sessions, on top of your pressing, with at least one overhead exercise among them. The hypertrophy volume calculator shows how pressing and isolation sets combine.

Presses usually sit in the 5 to 10 rep range and isolation exercises between 10 and 15, each set finished one or two reps short of failure. The elbows take a lot of load in triceps work, especially heavy skull crushers and dips, so build volume gradually. If your elbows ache, stop that exercise and get them checked by a doctor or physiotherapist.

• Doing only pushdowns. The long head gets its stretch overhead, so a plan without an overhead extension leaves part of the muscle short of work.
• Flaring the elbows on every exercise. Elbows that drift out turn extensions into presses and shift the work to the chest and shoulders.
• Stacking heavy isolation on top of heavy pressing. A hard bench session followed by heavy skull crushers and dips can leave the elbows sore; spread the work across the week.
• Short lockouts. Stopping before the arm is straight skips the part of the rep the triceps finishes.
• Using bodyweight to finish reps. Leaning over a pushdown bar or bouncing out of a dip moves the load but trains less of the arm.

With no equipment, push-ups with your hands closer than shoulder width load the triceps hard, and the push-up guide shows how to build up to them. A resistance band anchored high can stand in for a pushdown, and held behind your head it becomes an overhead extension. Dips between two sturdy supports also work if they feel comfortable on your shoulders; stop if they hurt. For steady progress beyond that, you need something you can add weight to.

RPM's floor photos show squat racks with barbells and colour bumper plates, flat benches, a dumbbell rack, a rack of fixed barbells that includes EZ bars, and multi-station cable towers on the training floor in Al Manhal. That covers the dumbbell presses, skull crushers, kickbacks and every cable exercise on this page. How a flat bench sets up in a rack for barbell pressing, and whether there is a dip station or a triceps machine, are questions for your free tour. A personal training session is a quick way to learn the set-ups with a coach watching.