Got a cable machine? Then you’ve acquired entry to some of the elementary workouts to instantly goal and isolate the triceps. The triceps pushdown, typically known as a pressdown, is completely suited to newcomers and skilled lifters alike.
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The cable’s pulley system places pressure — and plenty of it — proper the place it belongs. All it’s worthwhile to do is straighten your arms and construct some muscle. Okay, there’s somewhat extra to it than that. Here are all the small print.
How to Do the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The cable pushdown is fairly simple. To put most pressure on the triceps and reduce involvement of different muscle tissue, your elbows ought to stay pinned to your sides as you prolong your arms down. Here’s a extra in-depth have a look at get arrange and get essentially the most out of the train.
Step 1 — Set Up At the Pulley Station
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Attach a straight bar to a high-cable pulley. Grab the bar with each arms in a palm-down grip. Take a small step again right into a staggered stance. This will provide you with extra total-body stability, particularly when utilizing heavier weights.
Bend your knees barely and tighten your core. Pull your elbows towards your ribs to boost the burden from the stack. Your arms needs to be roughly according to your chest, able to carry out the primary rep.
Form Tip: The farther you progress from the burden stack, the extra your again and shoulders muscle tissue might be engaged to maintain your elbows pinned to your ribs. The cable operating from the deal with to the pulley needs to be at a slight angle.
Step 2 — Straighten Your Arms
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Squeeze your higher arms into your sides and faux you’re gluing them in place. Push straight down with each arms till your arms are straight however not absolutely locked. This maintains slight pressure on the muscle and will increase the muscle-building stimulus. Keep your arms according to your forearm with out bending your wrists.
Form Tip: Keep a robust, tall posture and an engaged core. You ought to solely be shifting on the elbows, not on the waist, as you drive the weights down.
Step 3 — Bend Your Arms to Lower the Weight
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From the almost locked out place, bend your arms and slowly return your arms upwards. Keep your elbows caught to your ribs. When your arms are within the high place, the weights needs to be hovering barely above the remainder of the stack. If the weights relaxation fully on the stack, modify your stance and take a really small step backwards.
Form Tip: Don’t permit the weights to tug your elbows ahead. Tense your abs, grip the deal with laborious to interact your grip and management the bar, and pull your shoulder blades again to maintain a secure physique place.
Triceps Cable Pushdown Mistakes to Avoid
The cable pushdown requires tightness and stability by way of your complete physique. This could be a profit as a result of retaining your again, shoulders, arms, abs, and legs absolutely engaged builds muscular coordination.
However, this total-body recruitment additionally creates a number of alternatives for method issues to happen. Here are essentially the most important points to look at for.
Misaligned Posture
Hunching ahead or arching your again when lifting or decreasing the burden will forestall you from absolutely stabilizing your core. You can’t tense your abs successfully with out a impartial backbone.
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Having an unstable or angled higher physique reduces your potential to manage the motion. When your arms and torso aren’t vertical, you’re working by way of a special angle of resistance and recruiting completely different muscle tissue. More importantly, an absence of core stability means you would harm your again.
Avoid It: Stabilize your posture and alignment earlier than every rep. Pull your core muscle tissue up and in. Staggering your ft may reinforce a robust higher physique place as a result of it will increase decrease physique stability, which is transferred by way of the higher physique.
Moving on the Shoulder
The major motion needs to be out of your elbows, not out of your shoulders. When your shoulders work to maneuver the burden, stress is taken off your triceps and shifted onto your deltoids (shoulders) and higher again.
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Don’t permit shoulder rotation to flare your elbows. If your elbows level sideways to the partitions as a substitute of behind you, you’ve shifted out of place.
Avoid It: Check your elbow creases. If they flip in, tightness in your shoulders or chest could also be pulling your arms ahead. Start practising shoulder and chest flexibility workouts to loosen up the world. Keep the shoulder and higher arms locked into place. Keep your elbows pinned to your sides and concentrate on if/when your elbows begin to come ahead.
Bending Your Wrists
Don’t let your wrists crane again or bend ahead. Doing so will increase pressure on the smaller wrist joint and will increase the chance of harm. Keep your arms according to your forearms, with a straight line out of your elbow to your knuckles.
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Avoid It: If breaking on the wrist is a matter for you, think about a glove with wrist wraps or wrist wraps. This exterior assist reminds you to maintain the joints in line. Gripping the bar laborious, as a substitute of passively urgent by way of your arms, may reinforce a secure hand place.
Benefits of the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The cable pushdown locations the triceps muscle beneath fixed pressure in the course of the set. This lengthy length of muscular stress is a key issue answerable for muscle development. (1)
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Pushdowns are a foundational triceps train, permitting lifters to focus solely on their triceps, which might enhance the mind-muscle connection for better activation and development. (2)
Upper Body Strength
The triceps play a job within the majority of higher physique workouts, both helping in chest and shoulder urgent actions or as stabilizers throughout pulling actions. Increasing triceps-specific energy with cable pushdowns can carry over to improved energy in bigger higher physique workouts.
Aesthetic Muscle-Building
Cable pushdowns works all three heads of the triceps muscle, creating well-balanced muscle development. The triceps are labored by way of a full vary of movement with fixed pressure, making the pushdown an environment friendly technique to instantly goal the tris.
Muscles Worked by Triceps Cable Pushdown
The triceps cable pushdown is primarily for the triceps, although a number of muscle teams stabilize the higher physique and permit appropriate efficiency.
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If different muscle tissue get fatigued earlier than the triceps throughout a set of pushdowns, it’s an indicator that your method is off. Reduce the burden and be extra targeted on making use of correct kind.
Triceps Brachii
The triceps is a three-headed muscle answerable for elbow extension, or straightening the arm. It’s made up of the lateral and medial heads, which connect on the higher arm and under the elbow, and the lengthy head which attaches to the shoulder blade and under the elbow. (3) Because the lengthy head runs alongside the shoulder joint and attaches to the shoulder blade, it is usually activated throughout shoulder actions when the higher arm is raised.
Pectoralis Major
The pectoralis main, or pecs, are the primary chest muscle. The pecs are answerable for pulling your arms towards the centerline of your physique. While the chest isn’t a major mover throughout pushdowns, it’s labored statically to supply higher physique stability and to maintain your elbows by your sides, notably within the locked out place.
Upper Back
The higher again muscle tissue embody the trapezius, rhomboids, teres, and rear deltoids. This assortment of muscle tissue work in comparable roles to manage the shoulder blades, shoulder place, and posture. During cable pushdowns, the higher again is extremely activated to stabilize your higher physique and keep a secure higher arm place because the decrease arm strikes the burden.
Who Should Do the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The pushdown can be utilized by any lifter trying to emphasize their triceps. The motion may be applied into strength-building packages, in addition to any arm day or muscle-specific routine designed to construct measurement.
Beginners
When you’re first studying prepare numerous muscle tissue of the physique, the triceps cable pushdown is a helpful motion to begin with as a result of it isolates the muscle group. This focused work permits new lifters to really feel the muscle working all through your complete vary of movement.
Training for Muscle Growth
Whether you’re a physique competitor or coaching for common aesthetics, this train may also help to construct to triceps. Increased triceps activation with out interference from different muscle tissue stimulates better muscle development within the goal muscle main, merely, to greater arms.
How to Program the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The triceps cable pushdown is simple to implement into most routines so long as you’ve entry to a cable machine. The train isn’t well-suited to extraordinarily heavy weights and low-rep units, as a result of strict kind turns into unmanageable and extra muscle tissue are recruited. However, mild or average weights may be extremely efficient for muscle development because of the excessive pressure supplied by the cables.
Moderate Weight, Moderate Reps
Training the cable pushdown with three to 4 units of eight to 12 reps is a traditional muscle-building method. This is a time-tested technique to pack on triceps measurement and construct bigger arms.
Light Weight, High Reps
Using the pushdown as a finisher or burnout is a really high-intensity technique to finish any arm exercise. One or two units of 15 to 25 reps, reaching muscular failure on the final rep, is a superb methodology for rising coaching quantity. The lighter weights make this method is especially helpful for lifters who want to reduce joint pressure.
Paired with Biceps Training
Because the cable pushdown requires minimal setup, one extraordinarily efficient technique to program the train is to superset it with any biceps train. By alternating between a biceps curl and triceps pushdown, you’ll be able to shortly and effectively prepare your complete arm with excessive depth.
Triceps Cable Pushdown Variations
The triceps pushdown is extraordinarily versatile. With a easy adjustment of the deal with attachment, you’ll be able to change issues up, add an additional problem, and work the triceps in barely alternative ways.
Rope Pushdown
Using a rope attachment places your arms in a impartial (thumbs-up) grip, which may be helpful for lifters coping with wrist or elbow ache as a result of it locations the muscle tissue round these joints in a stronger place, which relieves stress on the joints.
While this variation doesn’t essentially recruit the triceps muscle otherwise, it gives a barely longer vary of movement. The arms start shut collectively within the high place and flare out to the edges within the backside place. Your elbows ought to stay caught to your ribs, solely your arms ought to transfer.
Reverse-Grip Pushdown
The reverse-grip pushdown isn’t usually seen in gyms, however it may be an efficient variation to bolster strict kind. With a supinated (palm-up) grip, swinging your torso is much less efficient because the bar is barely held in place together with your fingers, in comparison with a safer a palm-down grip which covers the bar together with your complete hand.
This underhand grip additionally reinforces correct elbow place as a result of it turns into tougher to flare your elbows out with this setup.
Single-Arm Pushdown
Performing a single-arm pushdown emphasizes every particular person arm throughout a set. This one-sided consideration helps to struggle energy and muscular discrepancies which will develop from over-focusing on bilateral (simultaneous two-arm) workouts.
Single-arm pushdowns may be carried out with a single-handle, a rope attachment, or no deal with in any respect holding simply the attachment anchor.
Triceps Cable Pushdown Alternatives
If you don’t have entry to a cable pulley, there are nonetheless loads of efficient choices to work your triceps. It’s at all times enjoyable to combine it up, and it’s necessary to problem the muscle tissue in several methods.
Diamond Push-Up
The diamond push-up, or close-grip push-up, is a dependable body weight train to emphasise the triceps. The slender hand place recruits extra triceps and comparatively much less chest muscle tissue to finish the motion.
This is one other extraordinarily environment friendly train to alternate with biceps coaching to create a fast arm-building exercise. Perform any set of curls, drop and carry out diamond push-ups, relaxation briefly, and repeat.
Triceps Kickback
This dumbbell motion is commonly carried out with very mild weights for very excessive reps. However, sustaining good kind whereas shifting tougher weights within the 10-12 rep vary could be a critical muscle-building train.
The key’s to maintain your elbows caught to your ribs and never recruit the again or shoulder muscle tissue to maneuver the weights. You can improve the time beneath pressure and muscle-building stimulus for the triceps by pausing within the high place for a full one or two seconds.
Dumbbell Skull Crusher
This train works the triceps in a barely completely different aircraft of movement, with the arms perpendicular to the physique as a substitute of alongside the torso. This can barely change the muscle recruitment of various triceps heads and result in a brand new muscle-building stimulus. (4)
Using dumbbells additionally permits extra freedom for the wrist and elbows to maneuver, which might scale back pressure on the joints. Keep the dumbbells according to your shoulders. In the underside place, the weights needs to be close to your ears.
FAQs
Do I must work my triceps particularly?
While the triceps are labored actively throughout most chest and shoulder workouts, in addition to serving a supportive position throughout most again workouts, direct triceps coaching is crucial for optimum muscle development.
The triceps additionally play a purposeful position in lots of every day actions, from closing a automotive door to getting up off the bottom after falling. Building the triceps particularly, inside a complete coaching program, can play a important position in enhancing general purposeful energy.
What if my arms can’t keep by my sides?
A bodily incapacity to maintain your arms at your sides towards resistance could also be attributable to chest or shoulder immobility. When the chest or shoulders are excessively tight, they need to pull the arms ahead and inward.
Performing a easy doorway chest stretch every day is one environment friendly place to begin. In addition, work on general posture and alignment to encourage general energy and stability.
Get Down with Pushdowns
The triceps cable pushdown is such a primary and efficient motion within the gymnasium, it’s simple to pepper into your exercise routine. Using strict kind and a full vary of movement will add measurement to your triceps, assist to maintain your elbows and shoulders wholesome, and assist your entire large urgent targets.
References
- Burd NA, Andrews RJ, West DW, et al. Muscle time beneath pressure throughout resistance train stimulates differential muscle protein sub-fractional artificial responses in males. J Physiol. 2012;590(2):351-362. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2011.221200
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Calatayud J, Vinstrup J, Jakobsen MD, Sundstrup E, Brandt M, Jay Okay, Colado JC, Andersen LL. Importance of mind-muscle connection throughout progressive resistance coaching. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2016 Mar;116(3):527-33. doi: 10.1007/s00421-015-3305-7. Epub 2015 Dec 23. PMID: 26700744.
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Tiwana MS, Sinkler MA, Bordoni B. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Triceps Muscle. [Updated 2021 Aug 6]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536996/
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Kholinne, E., Zulkarnain, R. F., Sun, Y. C., Lim, S., Chun, J. M., & Jeon, I. H. (2018). The completely different position of every head of the triceps brachii muscle in elbow extension. Acta orthopaedica et traumatologica turcica, 52(3), 201–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aott.2018.02.005
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