Tricep bulking

Metal85 · Oct 22, 2011

<CENTER>Many people consider the biceps the what-all of arm training. When someone asks you to flex your arms nobody will give them a triceps shot. This is only natural, the biceps are the shape and meat of the arms and they bulge more. But when it comes to size it's time to drop the façade and get down to business with the triceps, because these babies are 2/3 of the arm-size. That means sixty-six percent of a 20-inch gun is in the rear of the arm, but still triceps rarely get the credit they deserved. </CENTER>Only a hand full of bodybuilders developed them to a point where they were noted for their incredible triceps, but all of them (Vince and Ernie Taylor, Mike Mentzer, Jusup Wilkosz to name a few) exuded a physique that was refined, sophisticated and powerful. The hinge of that appearance was the triceps. Triceps help in all lifts that require pushing, making them important to chest and shoulder-training as well. Someone with huge triceps simply has more strength in the key lifts there too, bench press, military press, shoulder press and so on. So large triceps show to the world that they don't want to mess with you. And they can be put on display a lot easier than the chest or shoulders.
Triceps form the missing part in the link, they make a flat arm look like a bazooka, tie in to the shoulders to add to the size of the rear delt and widen the physique when viewed from the back making an awesome impression combined with wide, thick lats. So even though these muscles may not be as high-profile as the chest or biceps, you can see that it is more than worth the investment of time an effort to develop them. Both for the recreational as well as the competitive bodybuilder.

Click To Enlarge.
Bodybuilders Like Ernie Taylor Developed Their Triceps
To The Point That They Were Known For Them.

Lack Of Range

It's no coincidence that there is a lack of bodybuilders with impressive triceps. The bulk of the mass in this area is towards the top of the arm, and can only be trained by bending the arm further than natural while holding a large amount of weight. This feels very unnatural and is all but easy, which is why most don't give the all-out effort needed to add the muscle in this area. You can solve over half the puzzle in creating triceps that complement your body by simply going deeper and further and still staying strict on exercises like French presses and skull crushers.
These will play an important role simply because things like cable press-downs and close-grip benches don't allow you to hit this area to its fullest. So take some time and make sure the triceps really feel the stretch when you train them, perhaps pause in the moment of the deepest stretch before attempting another rep will give a new meaning to the words working out.

Click To Enlarge.
Training The Triceps Recquires Bending The
Arm Further Than What Feels Natural.

Physiology Of The Muscle

The triceps consist of three main muscles, an outer, middle and inner head. Much like the shoulders and similarly shaped in a horseshoe, only longer and the legs of the horseshoe are pointing down. Imagine it as three muscles lying next to each other, but the two on the outside are about twice as long and positioned slightly lower than the middle one. This creates a horseshoe cut out where there is no muscle, or little of it.
The shorter muscle has the most leverage of course and provides the initial lift from stretch point out towards the point of contraction. Because that muscle, the middle one, together with the top of the other two, is situated at the top of the arm that is where the bulk of the mass will be. So that explains what is explained in the paragraph above, to stimulate most of it, you need to go deep. The lower portions located on the inside and outside will be hit in two different fashions.
You can target most of the inner head by using a palms down grip doing press-downs, skull crushers and French presses. To get more of the outside of the muscle, you'll focus on a reverse grip, as you would use in curls. You can do this on the same exercises making them reverse press-downs, reverse skull crushers and reverse French presses respectively bit also with hammer grip exercises like kickbacks and rope pushdowns which also target a bit of the middle head, mostly the bottom of it.

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Naturally there are other exercises but you get the gist of it. In fact no other muscle-group has as much of a selection of exercises as the triceps do. So boredom is not a factor here. What is, is using some of the more compound oriented exercises to stimulate growth and a good selection of isolative exercises to hit each of the heads separately. How we do that, we'll discuss later in this article.

Training The Back Of The Arm

The idea to start off with is to stimulate enough of the muscle to shock it into growth, get the pump going and the ball rolling. Use exercises that recruit a lot of fiber like standing barbell French presses, skull crushers or close-grip bench presses to do this. Standing barbell French presses are done by holding a barbell, loaded, overhead with hands about shoulder width apart and hands upwards. Elbows should remain pointed at the ceiling and upper arms perpendicular to the floor. The keys to this exercises are, as you lower the forearm, to go as deep as you possibly can before coming back up, and above all to keep your elbows as close together as you can. Both when lowering as well as coming back up try to squeeze the elbows in so they don't flare.