The ONLY 2 Dumbbell Triceps Exercises You Need (NO, SERIOUSLY!).
What if I told you that here were only 2 dumbbell triceps exercises you need to grow bigger triceps, would you believe me? In this video, I am going to show you how only two dumbbell triceps exercises are all that is required to build big triceps. Remember, it comes down to not only the choice of the exercise you make, but how do them that makes all the difference.
The first exercise out of the only 2 dumbbell triceps exercises you need to build bigger triceps is a variation of an already popular triceps exercise. You might recognize this exercise as the dumbbell overhead triceps extension where you stand in space and hold a single dumbbell behind your head with both hands. This is a great exercise for targeting the long head of the triceps - the head of the muscle that makes up the most size of the triceps.
However, for many with limited shoulder mobility, it causes shoulder discomfort with the arms up overhead and with hands back behind the head. This can be fixed by making one big alteration to the exercise; using an incline bench.
By leaning back against an incline bench, you provide your shoulders with a much more comfortable position where your arms are not directly overhead, but rather slightly in front of you. This eliminates the shoulder discomfort but allows for enough stretch on the long head of the triceps that you will still see the benefits of the exercise. This more natural, comfortable position will also allow you to keep your elbows pointing straight forward instead of flaring them. This means that you are remaining in the scapular plane and are preventing internal rotation of the shoulder joint with elevation.
There is also an added safety factor to this version of the exercise outside of the shoulder positioning that will allow you to keep building big triceps as time goes on. The incline version of this exercise allows for enough clearance so that you don't ever hit your head with the dumbbell at any point in the range of motion. Add in that once you reach failure, you don't have to worry about dropping the dumbbell. Instead, simply slide down the bench and allow the dumbbell to catch itself on the top of the bench where you will easily be able to manipulate the dumbbell in space, safely.
The second exercise of the only 2 dumbbell tricep exercises you need is one you might have stopped doing a long time ago: the tricep kickback. The kickback gets a bad rap from many online influencers and keyboard scientists arguing that active insufficiency makes the exercise worthless. Basically, they are saying that you are actively minimizing the amount of force the triceps can produce and thus you must subjugate yourself to light weights that won't build muscle.
If active insufficiency was a real problem, then we should be avoiding exercises like leg extensions and preacher curls because they don't allow you to lift as much weight as a barbell squat or curl. The argument against the kickback is flawed because muscles don't know what weight is measured on the side of the dumbbell, but instead respond to overall tension. If the triceps are subjected to high tension due to muscle length shortening plus the weight of the dumbbell, we still have an opportunity to build muscle.
The kickback works as perfect compliment to the incline powerbomb because while we have trained the triceps with the long head on stretch, we need an exercise that trains the triceps with the long head in it's most shortened / contracted position. This requires getting the elbow and shoulder into extension (meaning your arm goes back behind your body).
We are going to utilize the incline bench once again, but this time, we are going to lower the incline to about 30 degrees. This is the perfect position to assume the proper posture and arm position required to make the kickback as effective as possible. This incline will allow for your triceps to be perfectly parallel with the floor when you reach the top end of the range of motion.
Hold the rep at the top for a second or two and realize exactly what you've been missing by skipping this incredible triceps exercise.
With those two exercise, you are training the long head of the triceps on stretch and in peak contraction - covering the whole range of motion of the triceps in order to build bigger triceps.
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