Have Non-Existent Triceps? Use These Horseshoe Building Tricks
Triceps and biceps are two sides of the same coin, and yet the tris don’t get the same love as the bis. Training the tris effectively can be trickier as you need to hit the three heads of the triceps as compared to the two bicep heads.
Bodybuilding is a game of illusions and having meaty triceps can make your arms look bigger. A pair of shredded triceps should look like a horse has kicked you in the back of your arm.
The Best Horseshoe Triceps Building Tips
Start With Compound Exercises
Most people make the mistake of starting their tricep workouts with isolation lifts. If you perform exercises like the cable tricep press-downs at the starting of your workouts, you’ll be fatigued by the time you get to the compound moves.
While it might be a good idea to perform the isolation exercises to pre-exhaust your muscles when you’re training the bigger muscle groups (like chest or back), it can have the opposite effect for your tris if you’re fatigued by the time you get to the functional lifts.
Know The Muscle
It’s always a good idea to do some research about the muscles before you start training. The triceps is composed of 67% fast-twitch fibers, so train it according to the adage, “go heavy or go home.”
For the uninitiated – fast-twitch fibers means that you’ll get the best results from your exercises if you keep the TuT (time under tension) short and overload the muscles with heavier weights.
Use Advanced Training Principles
In the sport of bodybuilding, people are always chasing the pump, and in doing so they favor performing a higher number of reps to flush their muscles with lactic acid. Using the advanced training principles while training the fast-twitch muscles can get a little tricky.
If you’ll be using advanced training techniques like supersets, drop-sets in your training, you should make sure you’re using heavier weights (with the right form) and are performing 5-8 reps on each set.
Stretch It Out
By not stretching and posing during the workout, many people leave gains on the table. Not only will stretching improve the muscle pumps, but it will also help establish a better mind-muscle connection.
Holding an overhead tricep pull is one of the most effective tricep stretching moves. Using resistance bands, hitting the bodybuilding tricep poses like the side chest are great ways of flushing the muscles with lactic acid.
Increase The Training Frequency
If your arms are nothing more than small tree branches, you’ll have to put in more effort. We recommend training the muscle twice a week if you have lagging tris. Don’t experiment too much with the exercises and follow the same workout on both the tricep training days in the week.
One of the days should be a single muscle day where you only train your triceps. For the second tricep training day, club your tri workout with bigger muscle groups like the chest or back. Make sure you’re maintaining a balance between training all the three (medial, long, short) heads of the triceps.
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