Here are the tricep exercises I’ve experimented with this week:
- Close-Grip Incline Bench (done)
- Close-Grip Flat Bench
- Dips
- Overhead Rope Extension
- Single-Arm Overhead Cable Extension
- Reverse-Grip Pushdown
- Straight-Bar Pushdown
- Rope Pushdown
Before this month, I always struggled with elbow pain whenever attempting tricep exercises. But 2 weeks ago, I discovered “elbow circles” warmup exercise which has thankfully fixed that. But now, every tricep exercise feels extremely awkward in one of two ways:
- It feels impossible to find a tricep exercise with a weight heavy enough to figure out my “6-rep max” (i.e. a weight which I can barely do 6 reps but not 7 even if my life depended on it). The limiting factor is always discomfort rather than the limiting factor being tricep strength (while keeping great form). This is less of a problem if I opt for more reps at lower weight, but I strongly wish to continue the “grease the groove protocol” method which has worked wonders for me the past 3 months and allowed me to move up in strength relatively quickly.
- Even when the exercise feels “okay-ish”, I rarely get that feeling of my triceps clearly doing the work. It often feels like my shoulders, elbows, joints, or just general awkwardness are the main thing I’m noticing instead. Despite tons of effort & exertion, I tend to notice that exertion everywhere else but not the triceps.
For someone in my situation, are there 2 or 3 beginner-friendly tricep exercises that feel natural, stable, and easy to progressively overload? I strongly believe that if I choose 1 or 2 tricep exercises to focus on daily (at low weight, low volume, just mastering the movement), that eventually it will feel comfortable and I can eventually grind my way up to higher weights once I practice letting my triceps familiarize with the movement pattern. I just want to skip the guesswork and only pursue the 1-2 most promising candidates.
Lastly, if you were teaching someone how to learn to feel their triceps working on a particular triceps exercise, what cues or form tips would be most helpful or educational?
i went a long way with just dumbbells doing single arm extensions. you may also be limited by stuff like grip strength and your joints. 6 reps is great, but if you can’t challenge your target muscle you might look into more like a 12-20 reps range until you can round out those weaknesses.
here’s some that i do that aren’t on your list:
Thanks for the reply. It’s entirely possible that since I’ve been avoiding triceps all year, that maybe I forgot what it’s like to start training a new muscle group. My premise may have possibly been flawed (that I should feel the muscle being targeted on day-1 of a new exercise). I did 2 working sets of tricep cable kickbacks yesterday (10+ reps) and 2 working sets of rope pulls today (10+ reps).
Tomorrow I will try the single & dual arm dumbbell extensions, as well as the skullcrushers but wanted to ask first if you use the “suicide grip” (with your thumb on the same side of the barbell as your fingers) or the “safe” barbell grip when doing barbell skull crushers? I forget the advantage of the suicide grip, which I won’t try right away but might transition to after a few weeks.
i haven’t paid much attention to my grip for that heh. i may do a mix of both. i’m mostly doing dumbbells with a hammer grip for skullcrushers. i have other grip/forearm exercises so i haven’t thought much about it here.
tbh, i don’t want to really speak with authority. i’ve only been lifting with intention for about 3 years, doing mostly calisthenics and high rep dumbbell exercises for 3 years before that. i subscribe mostly to some lifting influencers that try to profess a “science-based” approach, synthesizing stuff that makes sense and what works for me. but this does feel like a part of life that people will speak with authority on regardless of nuance, like diet.
that said, time working on it (with respect to rest time) and consistency is what makes progress. trying is progressing; i think that applies to a lot of things.