Triceps

[Turkish]

I know that there are 3 parts to the triceps, and I was wondering if there were specific excersises which worked each one?

[Gohan]

There are different cable machines, handles, presses and extensions that are used to isolate a perticualr tricep head, but i think you end up hitting each head in any given press or tricep exercise.

[Speedfreak]

I wish I could remember where I read an article that addressed this.. It was a really insightful article. Here's what I remember in a nutshell (from about 3 years ago).

Your triceps have three muscles that collectively form the tricep. The downside to this is that as you said, it's very hard to work each one of the muscles. No matter what direction you rotate your arm, you are simply not going to be able to change the angle with which the triceps work. What the article advised was that explosive lifts would stimulate any and all muscles which could assist with the lift, and that and only that would work the entire tricep.

If anybody knows of an article on this, I would like to go back and read it again.

[Turkish]

So then I'll just keep on using different cables and handles, and doing skull crushers and hope I hit all three heads

cheers :

[monsta]

because the tricep crosses the elbow as well as the shoulder joints, it matters very much which way your hand/arm is rotated as to what part of the tricep you hit the hardest. try it.. stick you arm out in front of you and flex you tri's with your arm straight.. now rotate your and up or down while feeling the movement of the tri.
youl'll find that with your palms up you can feel the long head flex harder and with palms down you can feel the outer head.

[Turkish]

Originally Posted by monsta

because the tricep crosses the elbow as well as the shoulder joints, it matters very much which way your hand/arm is rotated as to what part of the tricep you hit the hardest. try it.. stick you arm out in front of you and flex you tri's with your arm straight.. now rotate your and up or down while feeling the movement of the tri.
youl'll find that with your palms up you can feel the long head flex harder and with palms down you can feel the outer head.

Thank you for that advice, at the gym yesterday I did sort of notice what you're saying, and now that I tried it like you said, I can see clearly that the positioning of your arm has a lot to do with it......thanks :

[Streax]

I try to do:
pushdowns with cable
overhead extensions with cable
dips
close grip bench

Between those four, I really feel like I blast all three heads of my triceps. For the longest time I was not training my triceps well, and the outer part of my tricep is now much larger in proportion to part on the inner part of my arm. It could be genetics partly as well, but added the overhead extensions has really helped out a lot.

[jay`]

my tricep training is similar to Streax.....for the horseshoe look i do pushdowns, BB extensions, skull crushers (often supersetted with BB extensions) and dips, and i may add kickbacks for the upper head.

[Speedfreak]

I do the same excercises as Streax as well, but I'll also throw in kickbacks once every month for a little added variance.

I did a little research on another board to find a little backing for my post, and here's what I found... so take it FWIW. :

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hreadid=210094

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hreadid=197927

[monsta]

them post from that bodybuilding forum were pretty inconclusive I thought speed....
a lot of the posts said that compound exercises were the go, and there is not doubt about that. And yeah, all heads work when doing different exercises, but because the different heads of the tricep attach at different points, they work at different levels depending how your arm is rotated. If you only did tricep work with hands supinated the long head would get strongest because its the one with the strongest contraction.

[Speedfreak]

hmm... okay, look at it this way then. The common lower attachment for the tricep is on the process of the ulna, right? Put your hand on your elbow and rotate your hand any direction you like. Notice how the ulna doesn't rotate at all, but the radius does? IMO, that's the main reason you can't isolate certain heads of the tricep, from a common sense perspective.

In all due respect, if you can find some backing about isolating heads of the tricep, I would like to read it.

[monsta]

yeah.. I can see what ya sayin, but only the insertion at the ulna is common for the didfferent heads. They originate from different areas (the scapula and the humerous). So the way I see it, each part of the tri is more efficient at different positions(arm rotated up or down). Any muscle with attachments in different positions will work different parts of that muscle harder depending on the angle its worked at.
I couldn't find much info to back myself up, but I havn't looked that hard. sorry, I'll have a look around later.