Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 301 - How to Get Bigger Triceps!

Episode Date: December 30, 2019

In this episode we are talking all about triceps! In episode 300 we told you how to grow your biceps, today we are giving you tips on how to build the other side of them arms, the triceps. In similar fashion, Mark and Nsima are giving you tips you can use right now to grow bigger triceps and Andrew shares what has worked for him in recent years. Let us know what your favorite tricep exercises are! Huge thanks to Philz Coffee in Davis, CA for letting us record right in the middle of their coffee shop. If in the area, you MUST stop and get a great cup-o-joe!  Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/shop.aspx?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Power%20Project for 25% off your order plus FREE Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢Quest Nutrition: https://www.questnutrition.com/ Use code "MARKSQUEST" at checkout for 20% of your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Hello, hello. Ooh, I sound loud. Oh yeah. Oh, wow, wow, wow. Whoops. My bad. Why don't we put that on like one of those buttons? Yeah, I know. We need that, don't we?

Yeah, like you could just have one of those sounds. Andrew, do you know how to do this? Yeah, I can easily do that. Andrew, you know how to fart? We got more background a little bit right now than we had before. I mean, I guess that's okay. It's just because it's louder now. I switched the setting on here because I was like, why am I maxed out?

Like, this shouldn't happen. But I switched. Dude, did you hit the wrong button? No, no, no. We're recording. And then the whole episode was gone. Oh, my God. That's not happening again. I didn recording. And then the whole episode was gone. Oh, my God. That's not happening again.

I didn't even clarify on the last episode. That wasn't my fault. I know. The power went out to the board, and then that just totally disintegrated the SD card. So then why didn't you check with the power company before we started recording? That was your fault. It is all your fault. We were in L.A.

You know how long the wait times are when you call anybody down there. Yeah, you have family in L.A., right? I couldn't. Yeah, SoCal-ish. Exactly. No excuses. Dude, don't sass me right now. I don't appreciate you attacking me.

It's not very nice. All right, what is this, episode 301, I guess we'll call it? 301, yeah. Or it might be something different. I don't know. Yeah, I guess it could get shuffled, but we're at least over 300, and we're still at Phil's Coffee in Davis. So episode 300 was the epic episode about the biceps.

Yes, it was. And I think we got something else to talk about now because you can't just have big biceps. It might kind of look weird if you don't have some thickness to them triceps. Yeah, true. Unless you just like wear certain shirts that accentuate the biceps only. Right. It's just like assless chaps, but it's just like.

Exactly. You know, I think the definition of chaps is that they don't have an ass. So I've always been confused why they're called i guess assless just kind of like makes it sound worse or better i guess yeah it's a word you want to use assless chaps your your watch keeps getting me you don't you don't normally you know it's it's blinding you sorry about the shimmer let's see if i can bring it down a little bit that's great anyway yeah we're talking about the tr. Let's see if I can bring it down a little bit. That's great. Anyway, yeah, we're talking about the triceps today and, um, you know, trying to get the arms to grow can be kind of difficult. And I think for some reason we train our arms, we start to apply

different rules to them and they don't really need different rules. They should have the same rules that we have for our quads, same rules we have for our hamstrings. You want any body part to get bigger, then we obviously need good food. We need good sleep and those things. And supplementation may fit into your training regimen as well. But we're not talking about that today. We're going to talk about how do we just get the triceps to grow from a training perspective. Yes. Yeah. we're going to talk about how do we just get the triceps to grow from a training perspective yes yeah the triceps i've have a i have a love hate relationship more nowadays a love relationship

with my triceps because yeah man they were wow i didn't see that coming did you yeah no they are and always have been my toughest muscle group to make grow shoulders would grow chest would grow biceps would grow triceps were a bitch like my first ever show that I did, the judge was like, you need bigger triceps. I'm like, I know, I know I do. So yeah, I love talking about triceps. You're like, thanks, I'm going to go kill myself. Appreciate it, bro. Almost any movement early on that I did, I would get off whatever it was.

And I'd be like, Mark, man, I really feel that in my triceps. I'd always be so baffled. We just did lat pull-downs, bro. And I would feel it in my triceps. He's like, you say that after every freaking movement. I'm like, I don't know. I'm tricep dominant. I guess that's one way to build them up is just every movement,

you just only use your triceps. It is weird, though, when it does happen on back exercises, like something like a pullover or something. You're like, that's weird. I got a crazy pump in my triceps somehow. Like I don't know I wasn't really going for that. Yeah. But no seriously the triceps for me

like when you think about them there's like what people talk about the three heads. That sounds weird. Three of us. The lateral medial and the long head. But like yeah for me I think that Three of us. The lateral, medial, and the long head. Ooh. Yes.

But, like, yeah, for me, I think that I started focusing more on that long head because it was so big. And, like, I love, I mean, I think a lot of people do overhead movements for the long head of the tricep. Right. And that's great. Like, I like doing overhead. I love the cable machine. So I like doing overhead rope cable movements. But there's a lot of other overhead movements that people like to use for the long, long head of the triceps. We're inside of a coffee shop today.

We're here at Phil's Coffee in Davis, and if we're going to be talking about triceps, I feel like we've got to talk about the French press. Ah, I see what you did there. I wonder why it's called a French press. I mean, from a lifting perspective. That's just with the weight behind your head, right? The French press? Yeah, I don't know why it's called a French press, but it, from the lifting perspective. That's just with the weight behind your head, right? The French press? Yeah.

I don't know why it's called a French press, but it is a great movement. It is a good movement. Well, you get a good stretch. I think movements that get a good, healthy range of motion and get you to stretch, I think, are great. A stiff leg deadlift is going to stretch the hamstrings a lot and kind of open you up for kind of longer muscles and a further range of motion. And then when you're doing triceps, that's going to stretch the shoulders and stretch your triceps at the same time. Lunges can be like that a little bit for your legs or something like a step up or something. You're kind of getting a little bit or a fly, cable fly, pec fly of some sort.

That'll kind of get the muscles to open up a little bit. But I think, you know, to get, there's a lot of different ways to train. And we were talking about biceps. We were talking about, you know, maybe you should try to go a little heavier. You know, maybe that would be a key ingredient because maybe you're starting your workouts off with kind of some fluff and some pump and you're not really getting into the heavier, bigger movements. Now, you can work out any different way that you'd like, but from our vantage point, we

feel that it would be best if you started out with the bigger exercises, if you started out with movements that allow you to use more weight. And in this case, you might want to start out with something like a closed grip bench press because a closed grip bench press is going to allow you to handle the most amount of weight. Are you going to be able to do a 300 pound skull crusher? You're probably just going to crush your skull. Yeah. Probably not going to be able to do that, but are you going to be able to do a, uh, you know, 300 or 200 pound closed grip bench press? Uh, probably eventually if you work at it, you'll be able to do something like that. So you're going to be able to handle a lot more weight. And I feel that I feel strongly that that's a great way to kind of kick off your tricep

workout. No, that's what that's what I love, like the close grip bench press, especially for me, just because when I overworked my biceps for that pretty much a year and a half, I started getting some like elbow issues, but I could still close grip bench press. So starting off with the close grip bench press, like you off with a close grip bench press, like you would progress any movement. I think we talked about this in the last episode for lower reps, multiple sets, and then moving into the rest of your tricep movements is a great idea. But when you do the close grip bench press,

it's a good idea not just to, I guess, just throw around the weight. It sounds kind of boring, but you want to actually, if you're focusing on your triceps on that day, try to really feel it in the triceps. You know, it may be kind of tough to do, but again, if you slow down the weight, you'll probably end up feeling it there. And there's a lot of other exercises you can do to help build the triceps. I mean, we've got a wide variety of things you can do. You can do all different kinds of variations of tricep pushdowns and things like that but i think if we're all just being honest with ourselves like the rope tricep push down is not really doing a whole lot in terms of helping your triceps to grow

big and be like real full it might give you a pump and it might feel good and it might be fun to do and it's probably the most popular exercise in the entire gym and one of the simplest that's the kind of great thing about a tricep push down is that it's like anyone can kind of figure it out how good does it feel when you can like almost do the whole rack with eat not with ease but like you just load it up and like yeah i can do that and you just wham you just go up to it you just kind of use your whole body weight and you get all fired up and you slam the weight down yeah but i think you'd be better off in almost in almost all cases i think you'd be better off trying to start out each thing that you do with some sort of barbell movement.

So in this case, we're talking about we have the option to do a closed grip bench press. You could also try something like a floor press. You can also try what we do quite a bit at Super Training Gym, which is board presses. That is a shorter range of motion. You can try what's just called a half press where you bring the weight halfway down, and you're trying to stop approximately in the same spot every single time. You can use our product called the slingshot, which is going to give you a little help off your chest, but then you're going to have to lock the weight out the rest of the way. And then we get into some really

fun and really cool stuff. You got like bands and chains that you can use. Andrew mentioned loving to use chains when he does curls. But holy crap, if you've never used any chains on tricep movements or bands, it's amazing. And using chains on a tricep extension is awesome. So we take the single handle in our gym and we connect that to the chains. When you bring the weight down, it's almost completely unloaded. So right where it would hurt your elbow the worst,

right at that transition point, the weight is unloaded for you. It's not really heavy in that position. And then as you progress and as you go to lock out, more and more weight stacks on there. So I think it tends to want to match your strength curve a little bit more naturally than just the kind of brute force of, of just the weight.

So some chains or some bands can be really beneficial. Yeah. I was going to say, so like my love of using change for curls is the exact same for doing tricep work. Uh, skull crushers crushed my soul. Like I,

they hurt like my elbows, like I, you know, when you hit like on your funny bone and it just like tickles, but crushers crushed my soul. Like they hurt like my elbows, like, you know, when you hit like on your funny bone and it just like tickles, but it's not very funny. I get that exact same feeling when I do a skull crusher, but when I'm using chains, it pretty much goes completely away. Like it just feels so good. And then again, I can really get a good pump out of that, which, cause I think everything Mark just said, you know, there's no weight at the bottom. And then as you're getting stronger, so does the weight. Like it pushes against you. It's sort of like, you know, when you have a gym bro helping you get through like a hard set.

Like it just kind of like boop, boop, boop. You know, I can't recommend using chains with triceps enough. So what specific movements would you want to use chains with when it comes to the triceps? with triceps enough. So what specific movements would you want to use chains with when it comes to the triceps? Just mainly I would say with, you know, sticking them on the end of a curl bar or using them. You can use them on the bench press as well.

And you can use them in the case of like a single arm movement like we do at the gym and we connect it to that single handle. But using it for, you know, using bands or chains on a bench press is highly beneficial as well because it's called accommodating resistance. The weights are heavier at the top and they're a little bit lighter at the bottom. And for those of you that are in a commercial gym, it might be really hard to have access to chains. And they're like, are you going to lug a bunch of 20-pound chains into the gym?

Like, that would be a little weird and it would be very inconvenient. But hooking up some bands to a bench press isn't that complicated. You can figure out a bunch of different ways. There's tons of tutorials on YouTube of how to set it up and how to do it. So utilizing bands might be an even better benefit to you since the chains might not be available. And then just, you know, doing like a close grip bench or any variation of a bench press, the board presses, even like a pause bench.

You know, pausing the weight, you know, we talk about pause squats a lot, right? Pausing the weight on your chest for a good three or four count. Well, now it's, you don't have that momentum of kind of bouncing that weight off. We don't have the energy from our muscles being kind of elastic to carry us through the top range of that motion. If we stop on the chest for a three or four count, now we're really screwed and you have to press through it really hard. So some band training can go a long way. I actually think that a lot of the stuff I did years ago, a lot of the West side barbell stuff, doing the eight sets of three

and doing the fast, uh, explosive work actually helped my tricep growth tremendously because we were almost always using bands and chains on that day. Okay. One thing I think to think about here too, is just because again, I've had a really tough time, is for people that if you've been training for a while and you think you have a tough time growing your triceps if they're just not moving forward as fast, if you have a day, if you have two days where you're doing pushing-type movements, like chest and triceps or whatever, on one of those days, maybe just start off with tricep movements. So, yeah, you can do your close your close grip bench press, but if you typically do like a lot of pushing movements, start off with a lot of tricep focused movements and then move into like maybe your dumbbell benching and all those other pressing movements so that you can

move more overall weight with your triceps first. Cause that like, that'll help your progression a lot. That helped me out a ton. For yourself, where did you put your tricep training? Did you have a day that was bicep tricep or did you finish off your bench pressing with tricep movements or how did you do it? So when I was really struggling, I had a three-day thing. One of my days was an arm day, but it was an arm day that started with triceps. Another day was a push day, but again, it was a push day that started off with, I would do close grip bench pressing. I would move over and do cable pushdowns. I'd then go over and do single arm dumbbell kickbacks. I'd move into another tricep movement. Then I would do all of my chest movements because my chest was never really a problem

to me. Yeah. And so you guys kind of understand like because Encima didn't have an issue with his chest, had an issue more with his triceps, the focus shifted to the triceps. And so some people are like, man, I would never do that because I want to like bench as much as possible. But in your scenario, you still could. Yeah. Because that would be something that is, you know, still targeting the triceps maybe indirectly in the beginning of the workout. And it just allowed me to progress my triceps more because they weren't,

since I wasn't saving them for towards the end of the workout, they weren't as fatigued. And since they weren't as fatigued, I can move way more training volume towards them, and that's what allowed them to grow a lot. So is there a difference between going for training your triceps for aesthetics versus trying to lock out your bench press? I would say that they match up well together. Because most people that have really big triceps are usually very strong. You know,

it would be rare for someone to be like, yeah, I benched two 25 and they just have, you know, some 20 inch arms, right? I mean, you're not going to really see that most,

most people that have benched like over 500 pounds, they're going to have like a 20 inch arm. And, and part of that reason too, is, is just body weight. We mentioned in the bicep episode, like just gaining weight. You know, you want your triceps to be bigger.

You want your legs to be bigger, like the fastest. And you want to be stronger. The fastest way, in my opinion, and from stuff I've seen personally, is to just gain weight. Now, we don't want to do it. You know, we don't want to just gain weight like whatever way that we can. I think there's still a healthier way. There's still other options to do it. And you're really trying to get the advantage of gaining more muscle mass and not just fat.

Maybe it's a combination, but you don't want to just get fat. That's not really going to help anything. And no one's going to think your arms look impressive if you're just like big and fat. Because they won't have any shape to them. They won't really look like anything. Yeah, I just brought that up because, you know, you hear powerlifters often saying, like, I'm not focused on that. I'm focused on the strength, so I'm going to do whatever it takes to get there. But in this case, literally going for the looks is actually helping the bench.

Right. No, it helps tremendously. Some other exercises. So one of the problems that I don't think you run into, an issue that I don't think you really run into when you're training your biceps or when you're really training anything else now that I kind of think about it. I guess you run into shoulder issues sometimes with pressing. But the elbow is a real bastard, you know. And that can be really, really annoying and excruciating. That's a whole entire podcast in and of itself. And we could bring in someone like a Kelly Sturette and sit down with him and ask him a bunch of

questions and ask him if he's ever fucked his elbow. But, you know, to try to get past that is very limiting. And my suggestion is I think a lot of times I have people that tell me they're like, I can't do skull crushers. I just can't do them. Like it kills my tricep or it kills my elbow rather too much elbow pain. I got the, you know, my elbow feels like it's on fire and they almost always grab like the outside of their elbow, um, kind of near the tricep area, or they grab like the inside. You either got like, uh, you have either like tennis elbow or golfer's elbow. I believe golfer's elbow is on the inside. And I think tennis elbow is more on the outside of the elbow, but we've all had that pain. It's annoying. And when you try to do something like dibs, or you try to do something like tricep extensions,

it's a real, real killer. But what I've noticed with almost everybody I've ever worked with or talked to about this, the fact is, is that they actually can do it. They just choose not to do it because of the pain associated with it. And because they're not using their head, they're not thinking intelligently and they're not doing it without pain, without too much discomfort. So if you're thinking in your head that I can't do it, I bet you that you could. I bet you that you could do a skull crusher just fine with the bar. Now let's take the bar and let's see, like, can we add something to it? Can we add more weight?

Would we be able to add chains? Would you be able to loop a band behind your back and then try tricep extension that way or skull crusher that way? Because now it's almost weightless at the bottom. I bet you there are some ways or maybe even a reverse band set up. I bet you there's some ways that you probably could do it, but you're kind of being stubborn about it and you don't want to suck it up and you don't want to use the 10 pound dumbbells. That's OK. So let me ask you this, because that was one thing that happened to me after I like blasted the hell out of my triceps for a long time. My elbows became an issue and I have some things that worked well for me. But what would be your top suggestions?

Because I know a lot of people are like, fuck my elbow. What are your top suggestions for people to help deal with their elbow issues on tricep movements? Man, there's a bunch of different things you can do. Most of the things that you're going to do for your elbow bothering you are going to be like band-aids they're just going to be something that you put on there temporarily to give you some relief so a compression cuff an elbow sleeve some of these things can help icing it i'm a huge proponent i still think ice is effective um some compression on there could be really good get like one of those kelly Kelly Sturette voodoo floss bands.

Really what's aggravating the area though and what's causing a lot of the problem is probably a lack of range of motion in the shoulders. And that's a giant pain in the ass to try to solve that. But a lot of people, because they're trying to really lock in the tricep, they're trying to lock in the shoulder and they're trying to bring the elbow real close into their body. And I would say for bigger guys, especially with a wider shoulder base, I would suggest against that. I wouldn't even bother to try to do that. Just let your elbows kind of fall naturally. Smokey's giving us hand signals, and it's like I'm not sure to throw a –

am I going to throw a slider or a fucking screwball right here? I'm not sure. There you go. I think he just said that he loves Tupac or something like that. I don't know what he's doing over there. I just saw the movie Juice the other day. Juice is great. For the first time or just

going back? It's fine if it's the first time because it's an older movie. I've seen parts of it, but that was my first time going through the whole thing. We just totally shifted. I don't care. This is important. This is a really good movie. We have a list of movies within the culture that we got to watch and we're just kind of in what culture so no this is good because i've been

saying i need to make a list of black movies that in semen needs to watch because i'm like oh have you seen fear of a black hat he's like what's, oh, it's the better version of CB4. We just watched Boys in the Hood again last night. Good movie. One of my favorite things is when he's... That is an awesome movie. It really is. He's scratching the scratcher, and he's like,

man, you've got to be Mexican to win those. And then, sadly, he gets... He got blasted right after that. I saw, I was flipping through the channels the other day and Living Color popped up. And I was like, man, I'm like, that show was so fucking good. So good, it was. That crossed some racial barriers for sure. Yeah.

It was awesome. I remember being so upset when I was a kid when it went off air. I know. Jim Carrey. Those guys were geniuses. Yeah. Anyway, back to the triceps. You talked about elbow protection and stuff. Yeah, trying to the triceps. You talked about, like, elbow, like, protection and stuff.

Yeah, trying to protect that elbow. It's not an easy thing to do. I've had everything done to my elbow that you can possibly think of. I've had stem cells, which I don't think stem cells are effective. I don't think they do anything. I've had, you know, iced it. I've had massage therapy. I've had all the different therapies that you can think of. That was like the

Regenikine stuff, right? Or you had both? I've had all kinds of stuff injected into it. I've done a bunch of different stuff and there really hasn't been anything to really get the pain out of there. You've got to try CBD oil, bro. I know.

But for people that are aggravated by it and that are having a hard time with it, I would say that, you know, trying to figure out some ways in the gym, some things that are reasonable for you to do in the gym that are going to try to open up your shoulder a little bit, maybe training your rotator cuff a little bit will help. Like, those are all things that helped, and they still allowed me to bench press 578 pounds in a meet. It's just that, you know, it'd be aggravating. I'd be limited a little bit on some of the stuff that I could do.

But when it came to, you know, doing something like a skull crushers and stuff like that, I was still able to do them. I just always used a weight that was appropriate for my pain level. So let's say, uh, you know, you've got a pain scale, one out of 10, 10 being the worst and one being, you one being virtually nothing. I would just always make sure that it was nothing more than two or three. I would get a little negative feedback in there, but it was nothing that was killing me. And I would say wrap it up, put an elbow sleeve on it, just do whatever you got to do to get through the movements for that particular day. But make sure the pain's not so excruciating that it sets you backwards. Yeah, no, that, that like, I think the big thing there is lightening that load on the

tricep movements. Because what happened for me was like any type of like extension movement just felt like crap. So number one, I started lightening the load and doing a lot of reps on my triceps. Now, when I say a lot, I don't mean just like 15 reps. I mean like 20 to 25s with an adequate load where I could really feel it. That helped me out a lot. And then one odd thing that I started doing, it's not really that odd, but it worked pretty well for me. At the end of one of my workouts each week, I would do, you've ever heard of occlusion training? Oh yeah. I didn't have one of the, they have like cool occlusion things that you can use now that like at work, but I actually had tourniquets that you could put around. I put it around my, my bicep right here and I'd pretty much be doing like at the end of a workout, I'd tighten it up, do 15 reps, rest for 30 seconds, another 20, another 20, another 20.

And the big thing is that you could do really, really lightweight. It forces blood into the triceps. It keeps the blood there. A lot of blood, a lot of blood. It's painful, but you don't like your, since the weight's not too heavy, your elbow isn't hurting that much. Right. So I feel like for a lot of people that could be one of those things that helps them a lot. So you brought up something huge. And I know that we were talking in the beginning about, you know, getting a beginning about getting to a heavier weight. But are there ways that you could get yourself to perhaps use a lighter weight but still have a great response? And one way to do that would be through superset.

So we mentioned how you've got a regular standard tricep pushdown or pushdown with a rope. how like, you know, you got a regular standard tricep pushdown or pushdown with a rope. In this case, like if you have a lot of elbow pain, do something safe first, like a tricep pushdown, get some blood in there. Now that limits the amount of weight. We're intentionally doing that. We're doing that on purpose because we're limited on how much weight that we can use anyway. And you're also kind of cueing and you're kind of getting the muscle pre-fatigued for that secondary movement that you're going to do. So you could do two or three movements even right before you went into doing the dumbbell tricep extension or a regular style skull crusher.

And you could still get a great workout from it. So I think a lot of times with our training, we're trying to find, you know, how do we get a massive result with like the least amount of damage being done? And that would be a great way to do that. What about like because in the previous episode, you're talking about doing reverse curls. What about doing something as simple as like changing your grip to help? Like, have you noticed any difference in less elbow pain because of it? Yeah, changing your grip and changing like where your elbow position is. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes people are trying to really tuck them in and keep them close to the body

so you might want to try some different movements you might want to try like not different movements but the same movement but just done a little differently you know if you're doing a tricep push down and you have you when you're doing a tricep push down you're looking at your knuckles you can just turn your hand over the other way where your palms are up and you can push down, you're looking at your knuckles. You can just turn your hand over the other way where your palms are up, and you can push down that way, and you can try that way. You can try single arm movements would be a really, single arm movements would be fantastic because now you can move in a different way than you could normally.

So you take like a cable, and you do a single arm movement. Again, these are going to be exercises that you're unfortunately going to have to train a little bit lighter, but they're still really, really effective exercises. And you can almost look at them as being like therapeutic. These are things that can help. And we talked about getting into the muscle in the bicep episode. You want to get into the muscle on this too, but you want to also think about the healing powers and the healing potential of doing occlusion training, getting all that blood in there and of doing doing a single arm movement.

You want to think inside the muscle. Yeah, and I would say also for people who are still new to the game like myself, doing double, both hands, both arms, sometimes it's just like, man, I'm just not feeling it. And then I'll just switch to single arm. I'm like, oh, there we go. So if you're having a hard time chasing the pump, whatever it may be with the triceps or any movement try single arm because that that also you know we were talking

about the what changed that was one of the things because then i could learn like okay that's what it's supposed to feel like now let's implement it with both arms this is an oldie but a goodie but can increase your frequency a ton is to just do band tricep pushdowns and you could take a band and you can hang it up over top of a door or you could you know wherever you can on a pull-up bar or something like that uh louis simmons was a big proponent of that and he'd say do 100 every day you know so it's basically you know 100 every day who knows if you get to it every day but just any time that you walk past it if you have it set up at your house you're like all right i'm gonna bust out 25 reps or 50 reps get a little burn in there and it's also going to be therapeutic again uh for your elbow

because sometimes it's just kind of hard to get blood flow and it's hard to find movements that don't hurt but a band push down most likely won't hurt at all you know what i'm actually going to start doing that that's an amazing idea and i don't know why i haven't been doing that until this point it's great you can do it a bunch of different ways. You can have the palms up and push down. And it's something I did. That's how I got my first 500-pound bench. I don't think I've ever said that before.

When you went for it recently, I remember during training, you're like, I got to get 500 pounds, so we're doing 500 tricep push-downs. I'm like, oh, he was serious, and we did sets of like 100. I didn't do 500 every day but i did i did hundreds and hundreds of tricep push downs my elbow barely hung on for that that uh that last round 500 pound bench but hey it worked yeah and then they also make like super like affordable like door hanging things where you can just have it set up on like on a closet or something and you just walk up it's gonna do it on my pull-up bar i have a pull-up bar set up

so i'm just gonna hang the band on the pull-up bar. I have a pull-up bar set up, so I'm just going to hang the band on the pull-up bar and do push-downs. Damn, this whole time you've been hiding that from us? What, the pull-up bar? Yeah. I didn't know you had a pull-up bar. Did you know he had a pull-up bar? Smokey just gave us the peace signal.

I don't know what that means. I think he's peacing out. I'm not sure. He's going to the restroom. He's going to go poop. Ah, got it. Nope. Okay.

Oh, he's got number two going. I thought he did. Yeah. I didn't know that had a signal. One thing, too, because a lot of people have mentioned this problem, and I think I had this problem in the past, too. During close grip bench pressing, I wasn't able to actually feel my triceps that much. And one thing that you mentioned is something that I did a lot of,

tricep pushdowns or banded pushdowns before bench pressing because then you can preactivate the tricep, you can feel it, and and then when you start bench pressing you can actually start feeling it more as you go up and down so that's a really good idea like you should be warming up a little bit before these movements but you definitely want to do some pushdown type movements and that'll help you feel it more something i uh messed with more recently back to the band training is i took a band and fold it in half and then put it through the cable and did tricep pushdowns with it. And man, it's weird because the weights will oscillate. They'll bounce up and down. They'll move all over the place. They'll shift around. That's something we forgot to

mention too in your efforts to try to repair a banged up elbow. The bamboo bar can be fantastic. If you don't have access to something like that, you can take bands, you can kind of loop them through some weights and put them on the end of a barbell. And again, it's going to force you to use so much less weight that it's not going to be painful but effective. Yeah, just looping a band. Just take a band, you fold it in half, and then put it through a carabine on a cable and do a tricep pushdown with it.

And holy crap, that'll get your triceps just completely on fire. There's a lifter years ago named J.M. Blakely, and he used to do these presses called J.M. Presses. J.M. Blakely was one of the first guys to bench around 700 pounds back many, many years ago. And he was a big, big jack son of a bitch, kind of looked like an off-season bodybuilder. But anyway, he did these tricep movements that became famous because of how strong he got. But the reason why the movement was so good is because it was a hybrid between a press and extension. And when you take a hybrid movement like that, well, now we're able to take a great exercise like an extension, which is kind of primarily for isolation.

Primarily, you're going to use lighter weights with it. But now because he turned it into a press extension, you can use a lot more weight with it. So the JM press, you know, you're kind of taking a, it's almost like an extension on the way down and a close grip bench on the way up sort of thing. It's kind of a weird combo. But, you know, go on YouTube, check that out.

You can find a bunch of people demonstrating how to do a JM press. But, again, that exercise was great because he was able to overload the tricep. He was able to use heavy weight. Another great exercise is a reverse grip bench press. And with all the different elbow trouble I've ever had, a reverse grip bench press does not hurt my elbow at all. And it will light your triceps up like crazy. Just be very careful with it.

It's scary. Have someone lift off to you because it's like impossible to get the weights out of the rack and stuff like that. O'Hearn does. You guys have done that for like 315, right? Oh, yeah. O'Hearn did like five sets of 15 reps. With 315. With 315. right? Oh, yeah. O'Hearn did, he did like five sets of 15 reps. With 315? With 315.

I know. I have nothing to say about this. Well, he does 315 squat on his birthday every year. Yeah. For like however many years old he is, he does it for reps. Wow. Right. That'd be good for you to start doing now because you could do it now.

I could do it now. I could definitely do that now. Oh, wow. But you would be hurt. It would suck. It would suck. But, yeah, you got to start doing it now so you can prep to get the 30 reps, 40 reps, 50 reps.

And he's probably going to keep doing that. I believe. Yeah. Maybe even 70. Yeah. Wow. So So quick review. So top three movements to help build size on your triceps. I would say close grip bench press is great.

You got a skull crusher, and then you're going to have to kind of figure out. And then we didn't mention dips. So I would say close grip bench press of some sort could be incline, could be flat, could be even decline. No one does a declined bench anymore. Any one of those three would work really good to help build up some big triceps. And then, you know, from there, you got some sort of skull crusher type of variation,

whatever way you can handle. And then dips are fantastic. Maybe even some weighted dips. And let's also not forget about push-ups. I think we forget about push-ups all the time. But push-ups are amazing for your triceps for your chest all that yeah and i would say with dips uh throwing in the slingshot is huge because i mean it doing a dip hurts my shoulders but doing it with the slingshot i can really focus on just the triceps and it's incredible you might be able

to get more full range of motion in there as well yep yep um i'd agree there the close grip bench press i think you you could substitute the JM press too on different days just because it's the same grip, but it's a different type of press. I haven't really done JM presses, but seeing how they're done, you could alternate the two. Overhead tricep extension,

I like cable overhead tricep extension, but you could also do that with a cambered bar. Then the basic rope tricep pushdown. It's effective. extension, but you can also do that with like, you know, a cambered bar. Um, and then, I mean, the basic rope tricep pushdown. Yeah. It's effective. Yeah. The, um, one of the things, one of the movements I'm a huge fan of is a rolling tricep extension. That was a famous from Westside barbell where you take the weight, you have dumbbells, you're lying down on a bench, take the dumbbell, you take the top part of the dumbbell, the flat part of the dumbbell, and you're basically bringing it down to your shoulder.

You kind of drop it on your shoulder. You push your elbow up towards the sky, and then you kind of swing back the other way like you're swinging a hammer. And it's basically a cheating tricep extension is all it is. It's a cheating dumbbell tricep extension. And your back is flat on the bench, you said? Your back is flat on the bench. You're sitting on a bench, or I'm sorry, laying on rather laying down and you're gonna bring the dumbbells you know let's say it says 50 at the top using 50 pound dumbbell you want that five zero to land right on your

delt because you're gonna kind of go down um and drop that part right on the shoulder not not like drop it but uh go down towards the uh towards the shoulder you're gonna bring the elbow up a little bit towards the sky and then you're gonna kind of heave-ho everything in there that you can. And it's not the kind of movement where you're going to feel your triceps like burning. It's not like a rope pushdown. It's a different kind of movement. But, again, it allows you to use more weight.

And then someone might be like, oh, well, you're getting your lats in there too. And it's like, well, yeah, that's fine. I don't mind if my lats grow. And I don't mind if my rear delts and stuff grow too because when i'm bench pressing i'm going to be utilizing all these muscles as well so that is a really good movement and at west side barbell like one of the major things i've learned there in terms of bench pressing was just to really attack things from as many different angles as possible a tape press was really famous there a lot of people did those quite a bit.

You're going to get your elbow out high and rather than extending towards your ears, you're extending more towards your chest. You let the weight rest on your chest and then you kind of extend outward. That's a great movement. You can do them flat. You can do them incline.

And this is another great movement for people with a jacked up elbow. Try tricep extensions to your throat. Really try to like, you can hang your head off the bench a little bit so that your, your head is kind of out of the way and try to go towards your throat and try to really aim your elbow up towards the sky as much as you can. You'll get a little bit of a stretch in your shoulder. The amount of weight that you use is going to be like not great, which is actually good for this type of movement. You can use bands or you can use chains with a movement like that. But again, just to kind of reiterate, anyone who's got like a really jacked up elbow, it's really on fire. It's really bothering them a lot. Try to figure out a way to incorporate some bands and chains in your training.

It's going to be zeroed out at the bottom. The weight's going to be heavier at the top. It's not going to hurt coming out of the bottom of the movement. And you can do any variation of a bench press, and you can do any variation of an extension that way. Awesome. Yeah, and I was going to just add to those. You know, those are a little bit different movements than you would normally expect.

For me, cadence is crucial on those. Cause you can easily, you know, drop it on your shoulder and throw it up. But if you get a good rhythm going, man, Mark just said it, it doesn't burn too bad for me, man. It kills me. I can't forget what you mentioned about the single arms though, too, for people that don't feel the triceps. Yeah. That was one of them right there was because I would do two. I'm like, man, I don't know what's going on. And then I do one. I'm like, Oh, no wonder why it's like, so doing two, I could easily throw them both up. Yeah. Doing one is like, man, I don't know what's going on. And then I do one. I'm like, oh, no wonder why. It's like, so doing two, I could easily throw them both up. Yeah.

Doing one is like, oh, my goodness. Like, so I'd have to drop weight for sure. There we go. A lot of the principles that we shared in episode 300 about the biceps is very similar to this episode. There's really not a difference in the general principles that we shared about, like like gaining weight, doing the bigger movements first, um, you know, handling, handling shit that's heavy, you know, finding a way to do that kind of stuff and then starting to break down more towards isolation stuff later in, later in the workout. The only difference was just that your damn elbow can sometimes really bug you and really

be aggravating. So you might have to find some loopholes and some ways around that, uh, in your tricep training. Thank you guys for listening. I appreciate, uh, all of you out there. Um, we're going to, in the show notes, we'll give you an actual try to try to give you an actual tricep workout that you can actually follow along with. And, uh, Andrew, where can people find you? Uh, at I am Andrew Z on Instagram. And don't, don't forget to follow the podcast at Mark Wells power project podcast on Instagram at MB powerZ on Instagram. And don't forget to follow the podcast at Mark Wells Power Project Podcast on Instagram, at MB Power Project on Twitter. We're actually on LinkedIn. If you guys are watching this on YouTube,

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follow me on IG at Mark Smelly Bell on Instagram and TikTok and on YouTube. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch y'all later. Peace.