Many people think that the portion of the arm that is the most impressive is the Bicep, and to some extent they might be right. Everyone has seen the guys in the gym every day working the “glamor muscles”. That is the bicep and the chest. The reasoning behind their affliction for chest/arms (I call these people charms) is because when you flex your arm nobody ever drools over your triceps. This often overlooked muscle is responsible for propping up that bicep and represents 2/3 of your arm. So if you have an 18” arm, 12 of it is triceps. Triceps are the glue that binds the entire arm together. They make a flat arm look enormous and tie into the shoulder which add size to the posterior delts, as well as they make the back look wider from behind. So even though these muscles aren’t as glamorous, they are worth their weight in gold and certainly worth the time and investment. So if you are putting in all kinds of time on your biceps and neglecting your triceps in the meantime, perhaps you should transfer all that energy to your triceps?

I consider myself to have decent arms and, for me, nothing does a better job on my triceps than the skullcrusher. I love heavy skullcrushers. Of course heavy is a relative word, relative to who is using it, but nonetheless I like to get on the bench press, scoot my ass down away from the olympic bar and unrack from there. This is a little more of a reach than the regular unracking of the standard bench press but of course you wouldn’t be pushing such an extreme weight that you would hurt yourself. After a few warm ups I like to move up to 80% of my 1 rep max. I find these to be very brutal especially when it approaches 225lbs This improves all of the other exercises that require pushing as well such as the bench press, shoulder press, etc.

If you could only do one triceps exercise, what would it be?