5 Home Exercises That Make Your Triceps Happy

The triceps is the big but often neglected brother of the biceps. Give it some love and you’ll be amazed how much size your arms can gain!

Curls, Curls, Curls

When many guys say “arm training,” they really mean “biceps training.”

But why is everyone so focused on the biceps? It is shorter than the triceps, that covers the entire span of your upper arm. If you want the most bang for the buck in bigger arms, the triceps is the muscle you should put more focus on.

So here goes, five exercises for the triceps: two of my favourite compounds and three isolations.

Close-Grip Push-Ups

If you ever heard some crap about these targeting the “inner chest,” forget it. In reality these concentrate on the triceps, because the chest has little room to move. Still, just like regular push-ups, they work a whole range of muscles, and are the exercise I use to lead over from my chest to my triceps exercises.

Triceps Kickbacks

When it comes to isolating the triceps, kickbacks are where it’s at. There’s only one problem: they are one of the exercises most often done wrong. Your range of motion here is small to begin with, and when you then start getting the shoulder joint into the action, the effectiveness of kickbacks goes down to nil.

So make really sure you use good form on these. If you can’t keep the upper arm still while doing the movement, you are using too much weight.

Lying Triceps Extensions

These guys are another isolation. When you do them on the floor you again have to make really sure to use good form, because the range of motion is once more not that big:

Regular Triceps Extensions

If you are comfortable with it, you can of course do them standing. The range of motion certainly is bigger, but you have to watch out for your balance:

Triceps Chair Dips

Let’s finish with a compound, the triceps dip with the help of a chair. With these, keep a close eye on your shoulders, because for some people it can become uncomfortable really quick:

That’s Not All, Folks!

Of course there are more triceps exercise than these. Close-grip bench presses for example, which I currently do, but for the moment I don’t know yet how to show doing them in a video – the safety issue. Also there are dips between chairs, but those always kill my shoulders.