We’re back with another article on our favorite exercises for another muscle group. Most recently we tackled our favorite lower body exercises. Today, we’re focusing on a smaller area, the back of the upper arm, better known as the triceps. It’s a popular muscle for both men and women to work on, as well-defined tris are a favorite for many workout warriors.  There are plenty of great exercises that focus on the triceps, but we’re going to cover 5 of our favorites.

Cable Push Down

This is a super versatile triceps exercise and for a lot of lifters, it is a real favorite for burning out your tris at the end of a workout. It comes in lots of variations, with some of the main ones involving using a different attachment to the cable.

• V-bar - a v-shaped bar that allows you to hit the triceps at a bit of an angle.
• Straight bar - pure and simple, just a straight down pushing motion for your tris.
• Rope - a dynamic option where keeping the rope stable engages more muscles in your arms and you can choose to keep the rope straight or flare it out at the bottom of the rep.

Find a cable set at a high position (above your head) and then attach your preferred attachment to complete the exercise. Each of the attachment options is great, so it’s a great one to mix up from one triceps workout to another. Personally, I like the rope the best, but it’s just personal preference

Overhead Cable Extension with Rope

You can technically perform this exercise with other types of cable attachments (similar to the Cable Push Down, but the rope is the most comfortable for a lot of people). It also tends to be easier to shift into position than the other options.  This one can require just a bit of contortion to initially position yourself and the rope to complete the exercise.  I’ve also seen 2 variations on this exercise.  The main one involves placing the cable connection near the floor, standing straight, facing away from the cable machine, and extending your arms overhead, keeping tension on both hands and the rope. 

Another option is to put the cable connector above your head and then grab the rope behind your head, lean forward and extend your arms forward and over your head in this bent over positon.  I actually find this one more comfortable, but again - personal preference. 

Dips

These are a tried and true triceps exercise. You’ll want to use a dip bar where you put one hand on each handle, holding your body weight between the two, and lower yourself down until your elbow is at about 90 degrees and then lift back up to a straight arm. There are variations to this one as well.

For people who get fairly strong, doing this with just body weight can get fairly easy. So, you can look at adding weights to a weight belt or something similar in order to increase the difficulty. Conversely, if dips are a bit too hard to complete an appropriate number of good reps, then an assisted dip machine can help. In either case, this is a great exercise to really hit those triceps. It also hits your chest muscles a bit, so you get that as a side benefit. 

Close-Grip Bench Press

For this one, you’ll need a bench and a barbell. This is a variation on the traditional bench press, which is mainly a chest exercise. But, this one changes your hand positioning just a bit from the natural wide-grip bench press to focus on your triceps and remove your pectorals from the equation.

For this exercise, you get a close grip, where your hands are 8-10 inches apart in the middle of the bar. Then, complete the exercise by pressing the bar up and lowering it down toward your chest. Similar to many other triceps exercises, there are variations of this one with 2 dumbbells, a Smith machine, etc.  

Diamond Push-ups

We wanted to include one that doesn’t need any equipment whatsoever, and that brings us to the Diamond Push-up. This is a variation on the Close Grip Push-up, where the hands are positioned a bit differently.  We like this one because it is easy to describe and the name really is spot on. 

Set up like you are going to do a normal pushup, but bring your hands close together forming a diamond pattern between your thumbs and index fingers. Much like the Close-Grip Bench Press, moving the hands so close together takes a lot of the weight off your pectorals and shoulders and focuses it on your triceps. As you complete the push-up, try to keep your elbows in as much as possible to really focus the effort.

Using these five exercises in your workout routine should really help you build stronger and more defined triceps.