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Modern Meathead Notes:

• I believe many people have trouble with this motion because of how unstable the upper arm is without some kind of support. The simple fix here is to use a bench (or something similar) to stabilize the upper arm!

• More stability = more specific tension in the triceps - not less!

Weekly Meathead Deep-Dive: Triceps Training

Most people love to train arms.

If you’re one of those people, it’s likely that you’ve done every exercise variation for the biceps and triceps that you think of.

But not all arm exercises are created equally. Some arm exercises are much more sensible than others in terms of maximizing the stimulus to the biceps and triceps.

What are the qualities of an exercise that allow us to maximize a stimulus?

The exercise…

• Uses a resistance that requires the target tissue to respond.

• Is stable - meaning that it’s easy to create motion where we want it and limit motion where we don’t.

• Is straightforward to learn - meaning that it isn’t overly complex to coordinate (and this goes hand-in-hand with stability).

• Is easy to progress - meaning that we can add more weight or more reps seamlessly over time.

Many of the “traditional” biceps variations check these boxes: exercise like preacher curls, EZ bar curls, cable curls, and machine curls all are relatively easy to stabilize, learn, and progress.

But many of the traditional triceps variations - in my estimation - are a bit more difficult for people to stabilize.

And this is because of a clear physical difference between curls and extensions.

When we do curling variations, it’s very easy to set up using benches, preacher curl pads, and even our own body (in the case of “concentration curls”) to stabilize the shoulder so that we can just focus on curling.

But in order to stabilize the shoulder to train triceps, we need to be more intentional - and perhaps be willing to look weird - to stabilize the same way.

The Triceps Stability Conundrum

When we perform the common cable triceps extension - whether with 1 or 2 arms - the cable pulls our entire arm forward and upward, like this:

Many people tend to just assume that the only loaded joints here are the ones in the hand, wrist, forearm, and elbow.

But the shoulder functions as the anchor off of which we can move the forearm and hand.

Because the cable pulls the hand upward and forward, it pulls the entire upper arm forward with it, as the green arrow indicates here:

Unlike in a traditional biceps curl setup, we can’t put something behind the elbow (in this case) to create stability at the shoulder.

And this is why you often see people moving their shoulders all over the place while they’re performing triceps extensions - common examples include rounding/slumping the shoulders forward, swinging the arms forward and backward, and shrugging the shoulders upward in an attempt to push the weight downward.

The additional of shoulder motion isn’t always detrimental to the stimulus we receive in our triceps, but it makes these kinds of motions much more difficult to manage, learn, and progress.

On occasion, people also report feeling a variety of discomforts and “clunkiness” in the shoulders and elbows, which I believe to be a consequence of not having easily accessible anchors to control and limit shoulder motion as we do extensions.

So What should we do?

If a cable is pulling the shoulder forward in a triceps extension motion, we need an external object that is going to prevent the shoulder from moving in the forward direction - meaning that we often need something in FRONT of the upper arm to prevent it from getting pulled forward and upward.

There are exceptions to this rule - which we’ll touch on later - but in many cases, the shoulders end up moving all over the place to the detriment of stimulus and comfort.

One way to anchor the upper arm for triceps extensions is with some kind of belt or chain. I personally love using daisy chains (which are very cheap on Amazon) to do this:

The red arrow represents the direction that the daisy chain is pulling my arm - as long as I’m leaning into it - and the green arrow represents the direction that the cable is attempting to move my arm (just like in the variation above, forward and upward).

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