Acquired a cable machine? Then you definately’ve obtained entry to one of the elementary workouts to straight goal and isolate the triceps. The triceps pushdown, generally known as a pressdown, is completely suited to inexperienced persons and skilled lifters alike.
The cable’s pulley system places pressure — and plenty of it — proper the place it belongs. All it’s essential to do is straighten your arms and build some muscle. Okay, there’s slightly extra to it than that. Listed here are all the small print.
Methods to Do the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The cable pushdown is fairly simple. To place most pressure on the triceps and decrease involvement of different muscle tissues, your elbows ought to stay pinned to your sides as you lengthen your arms down. Right here’s a extra in-depth have a look at methods to get arrange and methods to get probably the most out of the train.
Step 1 — Set Up On the Pulley Station
Connect a straight bar to a high-cable pulley. Seize the bar with each arms in a palm-down grip. Take a small step again right into a staggered stance. This gives you 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 load from the stack. Your arms must be roughly according to your chest, able to carry out the primary rep.
Kind Tip: The farther you progress from the load stack, the extra your again and shoulders muscle tissues will likely be engaged to maintain your elbows pinned to your ribs. The cable working from the deal with to the pulley must be at a slight angle.
Step 2 — Straighten Your Arms
Squeeze your higher arms into your sides and fake you might be gluing them in place. Push straight down with each arms till your arms are straight however not totally locked. This maintains slight pressure on the muscle and will increase the muscle-building stimulus. Hold your arms according to your forearm with out bending your wrists.
Kind Tip: Hold a powerful, tall posture and an engaged core. It is best to solely be transferring on the elbows, not on the waist, as you drive the weights down.
Step 3 — Bend Your Arms to Decrease the Weight
From the practically locked out place, bend your arms and slowly return your arms upwards. Hold your elbows caught to your ribs. When your arms are within the high place, the weights must be hovering barely above the remainder of the stack. If the weights relaxation fully on the stack, regulate your stance and take a really small step backwards.
Kind Tip: Don’t permit the weights to drag 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 Errors to Keep away from
The cable pushdown requires tightness and stability by your complete physique. This could be a profit as a result of retaining your again, shoulders, arms, abs, and legs totally engaged builds muscular coordination.
Nonetheless, this total-body recruitment additionally creates a number of alternatives for approach issues to happen. Listed here are probably the most important points to look at for.
Misaligned Posture
Hunching ahead or arching your again when lifting or reducing the load will stop you from totally stabilizing your core. You’ll be able to’t tense your abs successfully with out a impartial backbone.
Having an unstable or angled higher physique reduces your capacity to regulate the motion. When your arms and torso aren’t vertical, you’re working by a unique angle of resistance and recruiting totally different muscle tissues. Extra importantly, an absence of core stability means you might damage your again.
Keep away from It: Stabilize your posture and alignment earlier than every rep. Pull your core muscle tissues up and in. Staggering your toes also can reinforce a powerful higher physique place as a result of it will increase decrease physique stability, which is transferred by the higher physique.
Shifting on the Shoulder
The first motion must be out of your elbows, not out of your shoulders. When your shoulders work to maneuver the load, stress is taken off your triceps and shifted onto your deltoids (shoulders) and higher again.
Don’t permit shoulder rotation to flare your elbows. In case your elbows level sideways to the partitions as an alternative of behind you, you’ve shifted out of place.
Keep away from It: Verify your elbow creases. In the event that they flip in, tightness in your shoulders or chest could also be pulling your arms ahead. Begin working towards shoulder and chest flexibility workouts to loosen up the realm. Hold the shoulder and higher arms locked into place. Hold 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 danger of harm. Hold your arms according to your forearms, with a straight line out of your elbow to your knuckles.
Keep away from It: If breaking on the wrist is a matter for you, take into account a glove with wrist wraps or wrist wraps. This exterior assist reminds you to maintain the joints in line. Gripping the bar laborious, as an alternative of passively urgent by your arms, also can reinforce a secure hand place.
Advantages of the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The cable pushdown locations the triceps muscle underneath fixed pressure at some stage in the set. This lengthy length of muscular stress is a key issue chargeable for muscle progress. (1)
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 progress. (2)
Higher Physique Power
The triceps play a task within the majority of higher physique workouts, both helping in chest and shoulder pressing movements or as stabilizers throughout pulling movements. Rising triceps-specific energy with cable pushdowns can carry over to improved strength in bigger higher physique workouts.
Aesthetic Muscle-Constructing
Cable pushdowns works all three heads of the triceps muscle, creating well-balanced muscle progress. The triceps are labored by a full vary of movement with fixed pressure, making the pushdown an environment friendly approach to straight goal the tris.
Muscle mass Labored 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.
If different muscle tissues get fatigued earlier than the triceps throughout a set of pushdowns, it’s an indicator that your approach is off. Scale back the load and be extra targeted on making use of correct kind.
Triceps Brachii
The triceps is a three-headed muscle chargeable 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) As a result of the lengthy head runs alongside the shoulder joint and attaches to the shoulder blade, additionally it is activated throughout shoulder actions when the higher arm is raised.
Pectoralis Main
The pectoralis main, or pecs, are the principle chest muscle. The pecs are chargeable for pulling your arms towards the centerline of your physique. Whereas the chest isn’t a main mover throughout pushdowns, it’s labored statically to supply higher physique stability and to maintain your elbows by your sides, significantly within the locked out place.
Higher Again
The higher again muscle tissues embody the trapezius, rhomboids, teres, and rear deltoids. This assortment of muscle tissues work in related roles to regulate the shoulder blades, shoulder place, and posture. Throughout 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 load.
Who Ought to Do the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The pushdown can be utilized by any lifter seeking to emphasize their triceps. The motion will be applied into strength-building packages, in addition to any arm day or muscle-specific routine designed to construct measurement.
Newcomers
Whenever you’re first studying methods to practice varied muscle tissues of the physique, the triceps cable pushdown is a helpful motion to start out with as a result of it isolates the muscle group. This focused work permits new lifters to really feel the muscle working all through the complete vary of movement.
Coaching for Muscle Development
Whether or not you’re a physique competitor or coaching for basic aesthetics, this train can assist to construct to triceps. Elevated triceps activation with out interference from different muscle tissues stimulates better muscle progress within the goal muscle main, merely, to greater arms.
Methods to Program the Triceps Cable Pushdown
The triceps cable pushdown is straightforward 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 tissues are recruited. Nonetheless, mild or average weights will be extremely efficient for muscle progress because of the excessive pressure offered by the cables.
Reasonable Weight, Reasonable Reps
Coaching the cable pushdown with three to 4 units of eight to 12 reps is a basic muscle-building strategy. This can be a time-tested approach to pack on triceps measurement and construct bigger arms.
Gentle Weight, Excessive Reps
Utilizing the pushdown as a finisher or burnout is a really high-intensity approach to finish any arm exercise. One or two units of 15 to 25 reps, reaching muscular failure on the final rep, is a superb technique for growing coaching quantity. The lighter weights make this strategy is especially helpful for lifters who want to reduce joint pressure.
Paired with Biceps Coaching
As a result of the cable pushdown requires minimal setup, one extraordinarily efficient approach to program the train is to superset it with any biceps train. By alternating between a biceps curl and triceps pushdown, you possibly can shortly and effectively practice 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 possibly can change issues up, add an additional problem, and work the triceps in barely alternative ways.
Rope Pushdown
Utilizing a rope attachment places your arms in a impartial (thumbs-up) grip, which will be useful for lifters coping with wrist or elbow ache as a result of it locations the muscle tissues round these joints in a stronger place, which relieves stress on the joints.
Whereas this variation doesn’t essentially recruit the triceps muscle in another way, it affords 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 strengthen strict kind. With a supinated (palm-up) grip, swinging your torso is much less efficient for the reason that bar is barely held in place along with your fingers, in comparison with a safer a palm-down grip which covers the bar along with your complete hand.
This underhand grip additionally reinforces correct elbow place as a result of it turns into harder 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 battle energy and muscular discrepancies that will develop from over-focusing on bilateral (simultaneous two-arm) workouts.
Single-arm pushdowns will 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 Alternate options
When 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 vital to problem the muscle tissues in numerous methods.
Diamond Push-Up
The diamond push-up, or close-grip push-up, is a dependable bodyweight exercise to emphasise the triceps. The slender hand place recruits extra triceps and comparatively much less chest muscle tissues to finish the motion.
That is one other extraordinarily environment friendly train to alternate with biceps coaching to create a fast arm-building exercise. Carry out any set of curls, drop and carry out diamond push-ups, relaxation briefly, and repeat.
Triceps Kickback
This dumbbell motion is usually carried out with very mild weights for very excessive reps. Nonetheless, sustaining good kind whereas transferring more difficult weights within the 10-12 rep vary could be a critical muscle-building train.
The bottom line is to maintain your elbows caught to your ribs and never recruit the again or shoulder muscle tissues to maneuver the weights. You’ll be able to enhance the time underneath pressure and muscle-building stimulus for the triceps by pausing within the high place for a full one or two seconds.
Dumbbell Cranium Crusher
This train works the triceps in a barely totally different airplane of movement, with the arms perpendicular to the physique as an alternative of alongside the torso. This will barely change the muscle recruitment of various triceps heads and result in a brand new muscle-building stimulus. (4)
Utilizing dumbbells additionally permits extra freedom for the wrist and elbows to maneuver, which might cut back pressure on the joints. Hold the dumbbells according to your shoulders. Within the backside place, the weights must be close to your ears.
FAQs
Do I have to work my triceps particularly?
Whereas 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 important for max muscle progress.
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. Constructing the triceps particularly, inside a complete coaching program, can play a vital position in enhancing general purposeful energy.
What if my arms can’t keep by my sides?
A bodily lack of ability to maintain your arms at your sides in opposition to resistance could also be brought on by 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 start out. As well as, 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 health club, it’s straightforward to pepper into your exercise routine. Utilizing 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 whole large urgent targets.
References
- Burd NA, Andrews RJ, West DW, et al. Muscle time underneath 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
-
Calatayud J, Vinstrup J, Jakobsen MD, Sundstrup E, Brandt M, Jay Ok, Colado JC, Andersen LL. Significance 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.
-
Kholinne, E., Zulkarnain, R. F., Solar, Y. C., Lim, S., Chun, J. M., & Jeon, I. H. (2018). The totally 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
Featured Picture: Slatan / Shutterstock
