Any advice for inner tris?

littlemark

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Anyone have any advice how to more directly target the inner tri? I've gotten reasonable results on the outer head, but litle for inner. Just kind of hangs there all loose and crappy like.

Currently do skull crushers, weighted dips and cable pressdowns (usually with overhand grip) for tris. Each of there excercises seems to stimulate the outer head for me - even to the point of getting a pump there but not the inner head.

This issue has been going on for a while (all my past training has yielded the same things). Maybe its just genetic or something. Sorry for rambling but I'm damn frustrated with it.
 
spatch

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underhand extensions help me

How are you doing your dips? They hit your inner tri's a lot better if your elbows are in and your torso is upright

ps- try using a wider grip on skull crushers.
 

punta

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Skull scrushers killed my elbow. I cant do them anymore.
 
Grunt76

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There is only one exercise for hitting the 3rd head of the triceps: 45° extensions.

Lay on a bench, your head completely off the bench, shoulders lined up with the extremity of the bench.

Grab a light barbell, extend it to vertical above your shoulders. Slowly let the BB go back to where your arms are at a 45° angle. Now do simple arm extensions, keeping the elbows in place. At the bottom of the motion, the BB should be behind your head and at the "top" your arm should be fully straightened, at a good 45° angle.

This works really well.

 
jonny21

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^^^^^^
That works good for me. You can go real heavy and cheat up with your free arm and do reallllly sloooow and controlled negatives. I use DB, hold with hammer style grip.
 
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TheCrownedOne

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Just use a different grip.
Sometimes I do one-handed French presses with the dumbbell vertical. They always make my entire tricep grow.
 
Mach .78

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There is only one exercise for hitting the 3rd head of the triceps: 45° extensions.

Lay on a bench, your head completely off the bench, shoulders lined up with the extremity of the bench.

Grab a light barbell, extend it to vertical above your shoulders. Slowly let the BB go back to where your arms are at a 45° angle. Now do simple arm extensions, keeping the elbows in place. At the bottom of the motion, the BB should be behind your head and at the "top" your arm should be fully straightened, at a good 45° angle.

This works really well.


Try a reverse wide grip on a bent bar with this setup, it works. You'll have to use lighter weight because of the grip. It hits them hard.
 
Beowulf

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I think any overhead tri movement hits my inner tris well. Overhead tri ext w/ez bar or cable is best for me. The DB overhead feels like a different stimulus.
 
Grunt76

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There are 2 heads in the inner triceps. The one that reaches to the elbow, and the one that is all bunched up near the shoulder.

I dunno, I always do this exercise and that latter one is massive on me. I think it's called the "long head" of the triceps, which seems crazy because its looks to be the shortest. But it's also the widest.

Anyways, I've read somewhere by someone who was a true master of biomechanics that this 45° angle has truly unique properties WRT triceps development. Just to clarify. But I don't have a reference or anything, that was like 10 years ago but everyone who uses it swears by it. IOW I think anyone who doesn't do this is missing out on a lot.
 
stratvox

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inner head exercises

Grunt, thats a very cool diagram and i will add that exercise to my routine. One exercise that I do that has added to what I "think" is my inner tri, the area i see directly below inner bicep is the following. I dont know the name and will describe it as best as follows. Using an overhead cable with a single handle I stand facing the weight stack and grab the handle with my palm facing me. I then keep my upper arm straight with my elbow pointing towards the floor and bend at the elbow so that my hand ends up pointing at the floor. And then repeat and switch arms. I feel like amoron because i cant describe this exercise!! But, it has filled in that area nicely.
 

PastorofMuppets

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On the 45 degree extension thing...

It's funny, I started doing them just when experimenting with angles and such to find when I used that angle. Even the underhanded one as well.

Cool. At least I know i'm not the only one.
 
Mach .78

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I do that 45 degree thing but I let my head hang off the end of the bench so not to stree my neck. Kicks tricep butt.
 
Beast

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I have found that tricep rope pressdownws hit the medial head of the triceps well. Instead of pulling the two ends of the rope apart as you go down, just keep the a couple inches apart throughout the entire movement. Close grip bench also seems to thicken up the medial tricep head on me.
 

littlemark

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Thanks for all the replies. I'll be hitting tri's tomorrow so I'll give them whirl. Grunt - thanks for the diagram it makes it much clearer for me.
 

magic8ball

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Reverse-grip, two-handed cable press-downs with an EZ curl bar. Very easy on the elbows.
 

Andrew69

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Either the 45 degree thingy (technical term!) or over head one arm db extensions. The trick is with any exercise (when talking about long head of the tri's) is to start the exercise with a pre stretch in the muscle. That means the arm must be above the shoulder at all times. The 45 degree would allow more weight to be used, but for pure isolation work (if thats what youre looking for), IMO, you cant beat over head extensions.
 

nattheoriginal

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Just use a different grip.
Sometimes I do one-handed French presses with the dumbbell vertical. They always make my entire tricep grow.
i do french presses as well for overall grow, i find they hit all three heads nicely
 
Dungeon1

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I don't believe that any one excersize is enough to truly develope a muscle group. I do rather like the Lying French press at a 45 degree angle though. I think that sometimes we tend to over-emphasize the signifigance of individual movements and move away from structuring workouts towards our goals. Think of how poor your chest development would be if you only relied on flat bench barbell presses. Instead of settling for that mess, we all plan and plot entire sessions of multiple excersizes in conjunction with angles, set, and rep schemes. Triceps developement is no different. If your emphasis is on the inner head of the tris, train them first in your workout. I find that in order to really get a good pump in that part of my arm, I have to use higher than normal rep schemes, and usually will do sets of 2 excersizes at the same time that target that area. Like overhead dumbell extensions followed by reverse-grip cambered bar press downs, both for 15 reps, which is one set. No two workouts should be exactly the same and every workout should be deliberate and intense. Think of how to best FORCE the muscle group to bend to your will, not just one part of it.
 
sage

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if you're looking to target the medial head of the tricep, and put on slack the long and lateral, it helps to keep your arms out in abduction. since the long head is the only section which has a secondary function of adduction, the long is worked best when arms are pulled into the body's midline. So if you're trying to hit the medial head instead, positioning your tris in a fully extended position while keeping slight abduction will help. Exercises that most do this would be overhead ext and skullcrushers. But with all that said bro, I wouldnt worry to much about what exercises you're doing but keeping real strict form on the exercises you do, and all three heads should get a real workout.
Sage
 

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