21 Reasons Your Triceps Won't Grow (Fix for Massive Arms)

all right hi everybody john meadows here and today we're going over some reasons why your triceps aren't growing a lot of reasons we did this for biceps and everybody said Oh what about triceps everybody seemed to like the bicep video of course we did a chest and back video too so today we're going to focus on triceps we're gonna do these for basically our whole body so if you subscribe you'll get that little Bell thing but anyways so let's talk triceps all right so the very first thing that comes to my mind when I talk about triceps is it is something a little different that's more driven by experience and not anything I've read anywhere the way you sequence your exercises for triceps are going to make a big deal particularly as a results to elbow injuries one of the things I've seen over the years a lot of people have trouble with their triceps because their elbows are always hurt and one of the things when I started lifting in the 80s and I saw everybody doing was very heavy skull crushers and lying extension type exercises to kick off their workout of course I tried that that's what all the big guys were doing I always had some swelling in my elbows I remember that remember the days went been marm and I'd look like an egg stuck in my elbow so at some point I decided you know what maybe it's not a good idea to start with a line a Skullcrusher line extension type movement any skull Crusher's or even an overhead version I think are very hard on your tricep or your elbow and if your elbows are always banged up and hurting you will not get good triceps okay so what we want to start with is a push down variation as I feel those are about the easiest you can get on your triceps that's number one and that is absolutely huge and very underrated okay speaking of push downs let's start with push downs more specifically your range of motion so I want you to watch watch me on this what I see with a lot of people is a push down that looks like this and that's not a bad thing it's more of a partial range of motion but what I like to see people do is let their wrists come up higher so that they're actually getting more range emotional or triceps okay so you see how my forearm is up smashing it's my bicep here as opposed to just coming here now you got to be careful that when you come up you don't just rest you want to keep tension on a tricep but I'll i personally like that range of motion when i'm coming all the way up so i can stretch the belly of the tricep out a little better so one thing i want you to think about is just simply letting your wrist come up now let's follow that up with where do you push down you push down in front straight down behind you again all those things potentially work but what I like to do is I like to think of you know where am i applying the force you know kind of where how am i lined up and I feel like if you're pushing straight down you're keeping all the tension on your tricep what I see a lot of people do is once secretly when they get to a heavier weight they start turning this into something a little bit of a lot exercise so they start this like this and then they get a little bit of tricep but it's so much lat I would rather see you push straight down I very rarely see people pushing straight down in the gym but this is my favorite direction to push which it's just straight down so I'm standing back the tension is on my triceps right now it's already starting to burn just from holding it and I'm just driving straight down okay you don't need to snap and lock the elbows out real hard just nice and smooth tension doing your triceps notice that notice I didn't stop right here notice I came up and stretched looking at a mirror if you can when you're good nose and just make sure you're coming straight down number four and another just personal thing I live from experience I have exact I have no scientific evidence to back this up I like to do push downs with spongy grips now this one's pretty soft I like this one I don't like the metal grips when I do these but if you remember on any of my bicep videos you might have seen me do a preacher curl with dumbbells where I'm smashing them together is like her well this is very similar so I'm gonna push down I'm not really smash them together but I'm keeping them together so there's something it's there's something about having a little grip that's kind of spongy that really really I feel it's almost like I can feel it deeper in a long head of my tricep even though it's a push down which you typically think is more for the lateral head of your tricep that's essentially what that lateral head does it just extends your arm I feel these actually digging into the long hip so I'm a huge fan of these spongy grip push downs again range of motion right straight down but I like and then if you want to if you're your first I read I'm free to move so you know your wrist might move a little that's okay this right here feels awesome one of the things that I saw a lot when I started training a world gym and on East Livingston Columbus Ohio in the 90s back before it became the bingo place we used to do these Close Grip pipe push downs with this style right here where you would lean into it and what you in what you were trying to do is use your chest and it wasn't a tricep exercise it was kind of an upper body exercise so you're using your triceps your chest your shoulders you're loading the whole stack off but I think there's a better way if you want to use an exercise to really load your triceps and in later in the 90s I went to West Side barbell and this is where I learned that so we're going to walk over to a bench now and I want to show you a little better alternative if you want to really load up the heavy weight for your triceps alright next tip so we've done our push down but you got our elbows warmed up and now you want a good meat-and-potatoes exercise that's going to really bulk up your triceps um I mentioned that I trained at Westside some of those guys had phenomenal triceps or kidney Patterson george halberd Chuck Vogel Poole certainly those guys were awesome Dave Tate had massive triceps all all those guys did real heavy pin presses the advantage - this is you know when you get to the bottom of a bench press it's mostly will say chest for the most part and you're weaker there than your lockout but if you just focus on the lockout you can direct a lot of stress through triceps and with a heavy weight so it's more specific to your triceps and your chest is not a limiting factor so what we do for our bulking exercise well they're all balking but what we do for our good mean potatoes exercises we do a pin press it looks like this so you set pins up this is why it's called a pin press you set the pins up here by the way this is one of my favorite exercises I absolutely love these you're not gonna do them why'd you wanted to do them in a little closer okay so you're a little closer and you're just locking out with your tricep you're squeezing the bar another thing that they always thought told me at Westside barbell was a really squeeze of our heart just squeeze a bar and lock out with your triceps and one of the things you can do too is you can just kind of play around with the height you can do a little shorter range of motion whatever it takes for you to really fill in your triceps sometimes I start too low and I start feeling might in my pecs so I just move the pins up a little bit so rather than using that kind of that push down when you're using your whole body I look much rather you see see you work a lock out a pin press heavy for your triceps and again your elbows are warmed up so you're not gonna hurt yourself using heavy weight this is a great approach for longevity and then the next tip would be just generally speaking a close grip bench press and range of motion a lot of people program closed for bench presses and for the triceps and the problem again is the chest there's so much chess work involved they can't really focus on their triceps so if you limit your range of motion to what we're doing on pen press here it's going to be much more effective for your try so use the pin press for a balky movement and then think range of motion a close grip bench press although it's a great exercise if your problem is specific leads your triceps are lagging I'd much rather see you do this than a full range of motion close grip bench press where your chest is probably going to fatigue and limit your ability to use a lot of weight so hey one other just one other just kind of side note I was thinking about before I walked off here some people might not have these I try to tell you out of these videos to the basic equipment so you can all get the advantages of it a for press just laid on the ground is another alternative way to do these so you can lay on the ground just to a floor press you've probably seen people do those okay next tip another great second movement for mean potatoes as dips dip variations I love them always have now it's been watching a lot of my videos you'll see me doing these with a with a wide grip they kind of look like this so I'm out here I got my feet in front of me and I'm dipping like this okay that's for chest that's more chest but what if you want to use these for triceps so normally if I'm going to use them for triceps you're gonna see me change my form I want to now want to face this way and rather than letting my elbows flare out they're gonna come more instead of in this way they're gonna come more backwards and what I try to think of in my head when I'm doing a dip is I try to think I'm going to push this into the ground so so I'm not so wide okay I'm not real wide I'm closer I'm in here I'm not out there okay and I'm feeling weak today so I'm going to use the assist here so instead of my elbows going out they're coming back okay range of motion you're doing just fine if you come down halfway you come down right here that's good and again push down into the push down into the bar try to drive it into the ground okay if I start going all the way down like this that's okay but now I'm engaging a lot of chest and the reason why you're watching this video is you're trying to work more on triceps so I want you to modify the range of motion so that it's more intense when your triceps so elbows back and dried your hands to do the little pole here this is also something I like to do with a real good smooth tempo you don't want to get sloppy ever but you particularly don't get sloppy on something like a dip but you hurt your shoulder you're her travel definitely hurt something now if you don't have one of those assist machines there is a an old kind of an old-school technique they're called dips between benches where you put your feet up on a bench and do dips but you only not to do that do you doing that to put your feet up you can just you're gonna do still like this what I would caution you on here caution you want here is it's a little bit risky on your shoulders when you get down really low into that position I'm not a big fan of that position I am okay with these if you want to come down about right here about halfway and squeeze that's okay but when you start seeing your shoulder see what my shoulders are doing watch good good good now watch you see how they're dipping I'm not a fan of that that feels very uncomfortable so this is um you got to be real precise if you want to use this version of a dip or you'll hurt yourself so bench dips are okay but you got to really limit that range of motion specifically that kind of rotation in your shoulder hi I'm Alexander I'm going to show you guys ripcord now as you move on to your next exercise we've done a pushdown variation and we've done a real mean potatoes type heavy movement like a pin press for press or the dip at this point you should have a pretty good amount of blood in your elbows our excuse me your triceps and your elbows should be warmed up now you put in the lying extensions the line sections are now gonna be much safer not gonna tear your elbows up and what I really like about the line extensions is it gives you the ability to really stretch your tricep balance now the long head of your tricep that's the kind of the inner part inside there you know it's a little bit more unique in the way it attaches to the back of your shoulder whereas the other the other ones don't so if you want to put a really good stretch on it there's a couple ways to do it one way is actually with the push down which we're gonna get to the other way is anytime the humerus is kind of lifted you know I should mention I should mention that a lot of times people think you're gonna isolate ahead of your tricep like you can isolate your lot or head you can isolate your long head isolate the medial head you can't really isolate the head you can't shut everything else off you're just trying to buy us a little bit more of the muscle action than one of the heads but I'm not I don't want to I want to I'm not trying to tell you guys that if you do a push down it's only gonna work the lateral head or it's only gonna work long hair it's only work to me do it none of these exercises exclusively isolate anyways I'm getting off track so I like an extension because of the stretch I can get now and there's nothing better than getting an awesome pump in a movement pushing some weight and then stretching the muscle what I like to do on line extensions is I actually like to use a kettlebell now what I like about these is if you look at my wrist with the dumbbell lot would be right here okay with a kettlebell I'm right here also look at the width of the kettlebell it's pretty narrow so I can come in we get a nice stretch right here now I like this I like this grip because I feel like I can really stretch the tricep good with right no belly of the tricep if I try now the dumbbell out smash my face and I would get even goofier looking than I already am so if that's possible so right here now let's say you want to stretch even more come down and even you can even let your elbows start to ride up a little bit that's okay that's even more stretch all right and by the way another tip while I'm down here is you remember when we were talking about push downs and how I like to keep that straight line of force same thing here straight up and straight down because when you start coming back this way you're losing tension on your triceps so straight up this is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when they're doing are lying sentients they do too much of this swing and losing tension keep the tension right on your triceps right here straight up and down straight up and down okay now if you're creative you could you could somehow hook a band up and then you could push against the band I've seen Jeff Cavaliere do that I thought that was very injured very engine what's the word ingenuity that's showed a lot of ingenuity I thought that was really cool we used to do these also at Westside with chains so as you've got those were with a barbell but as you got up higher the chains would get heavier and it would make the load heavier but anyways so straight up and down right here okay now you may not have kettlebells at your gym that's okay so I want to show you a movement that I do like with dumbbells okay so one of the reasons I've talked about on triceps and reason why they're not growing is range of motion a lot of times that happens online sentence too but watch what you can do with the dumbbell when you're laying down I think this is pretty cool so first look at where my hand is it's at the top of the dumbbell so what I do is I stretch I take the dumbbell down to my shoulder so look at that stretch I've got on my tricep that's a wicked stretch so you can take it down like that and if you want to set them down on the ground you can even do them explosively this uh this was a Kenny Patterson favorite of one of the best spins pressors ever in history Kenny used to do these like hundred pound dumbbells it was amazing so this way look at that range of motion stretch and then kick them up right there absolutely love these you thought I hated dumbbells I don't hate dumbbells I just like certain tools for each exercise so now obviously that lying down version I mean lying down really literally on the floor not on a bench so you can get that Paul's if you wanted and it's just a it's just a real cool exercise once you do a set or two of those I think you'll enjoy it so you may have noticed I didn't do an overhead movement I find these incredibly uncomfortable okay so a dumbbell this way it just feels very uncomfortable it doesn't feel natural the stretch doesn't feel right it doesn't feel like a good choice for me I've hurt my shoulders known as before which probably plays into my reason for not liking them you could do if you want you could do one arm version that's okay again I would save these until the end but I would probably avoid the heavy dumbbell ones if you have any kind of shoulder tightness at all now I get my shoulders worked on every week I get a lot deep deep tissue work I very flexible shoulders and you see the rotation there and they still don't feel real good for me I think as you get bigger and you get more muscle mass up to here it's a very difficult exercise I'm not a big fan of those not saying it's a bad exercise for your body but I think there's better choices I think the dumbbell moves and at 11 as I showed you are my opinion they're a little better or easier on your joints and they're more under triceps so all right so you may think I don't like overhead extensions but I don't mind them I would just use a cable or actually a rope or opener cable if I weren't to do them so now on this gym we don't have one of the little benches with a back support that's what I would want you to do I would want you to sit down and have your back supportive when you do these so just pretend there's a magical seat here of my back supported so these I actually really do like so we come over ahead now look at this nice stretch you get it I got a little freedom of movement here which I don't have with a dumbbell okay and nice stretch and up these are phenomenal and look at that stretch beautiful exercise I love you great exercise overhead rope extension and I program these into all my pro my training programs for people because I love this exercise ok now why we're on the cable while we're on the cable here I want to show you something else so let's move this up do you remember earlier when I said the long haired the inner part of your tricep has worked a lot like this but there's another way it's also work it's also worked by this dual rope push down you could put this in the beginning of the workout with the other push downs or you're getting put in the end honestly I'd probably put in the beginning but since we're talking a little bit more about the long head of your tricep I want to talk about it now the way we really hit that in her head on this exercise is you just got to have your elbows up and you got to get full extension so something like this okay and if you didn't have the dual rope you wouldn t able to pull back it would like to stop right here so the dual rope gives you the advantage of being able to get back into full extension so these absolutely crush your triceps another one of my favorite movements so use two ropes okay and get back into full extension and again notice my elbows aren't here I want your elbows back okay so keep your elbows back I'm still getting a full range of motion see how I'm letting arm come up let Marne come up boom stretch contract but keep that don't let your elbow start to drift down unless you want to a cool little superset you could go to failure then you can let them drift down you could do that that'd be okay anyways this dual rope push down is another awesome variation for the long head of the tricep so you don't just your only option isn't to just overhead alright I want to talk about another concept here and this is this whole notion of reverse reverse grip I'm personally not a big fan of it mainly because it it doesn't feel good on your wrists you'll even have a lot of forearm fatigue where you can't really use much weight on these and there's no real benefit with doing this over this this is putting you in a stronger position I just don't see huge benefit I can see how your elbows are lined up a little better so you can just bring your arms straight down but again you're putting a like all your pressure right here on you're kind of right here if you crank and you're really drip it hard you can do it but I just think it puts you in a really weak position I don't know anybody can do much weight this way I'm just not a big fan of it so even if you use a single cable even the spongy grip that I love I probably would not use too many of these if at all I'm just I just think there's much better alternatives in this exercise maybe if you're just working on your mind muscle connection you're warming up you just want to feel your triceps that's okay but generally speaking just not a big fan of reverse grip work okay let me give you a little tip on tricep kickbacks - there's a version that I start maybe I don't know 10 12 years ago where I do the kickback pronated okay so instead of there like that I'm actually gonna like this it gets more your medial head and long head so you'll feel your whole tricep work anymore and by the way if you're looking for something to really pump your triceps really jammed blood in there this is a great exercise to do that just keep your arms your humerus up and just flex okay okay and our last tip which actually could be the best one of all look I know we're into these push-pull programs and I love them I've designed many of them but if your triceps are really lagging I wouldn't just do a an exercise or two effort into chest I would actually build in a separate bicep and tricep arm day a separate arm day will give you a lot of focus you'll train them when you're fresh and I would do them first before your biceps so a separate armed a probe programmed in triceps first and I think just that that focus alone will help a ton of people I know a lot of times when I do push-pull by the time I you don't chest shoulders there's nothing left in my tries so I'll do I'll literally do one exercise maybe two but I'll certainly never do three to max so anyways I hope you enjoyed those tips and comment below and let me know what you think as always thank you for all the support we appreciate it and we'll see you next time

Channel: mountaindog1

Views: 305,924

Rating: 4.9730859 out of 5

Keywords: how to get massive triceps, how to get big triceps, how to get big arms, why your triceps won't grow, 21 reasons your triceps won't grow, how to get 21 inch arms fast, 21 inch arms, workout for 21 inch arms, john meadows 21 inch arms, why your arms aren't growing, why your arms aren't getting bigger, how to get bigger arms, how to get massive arms, athlean x arm workout, jeff nippard arm workout, john meadows arm workout, triceps, triceps workout, tricep exercises

Id: xx-1HGpNmBU

Length: 25min 19sec (1519 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020