What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
Today we're going to talk about how NOT to do the Skullcrusher if you are trying to get
bigger Triceps.
And like we do here at ATHLEANX, we're going to put the Science behind the Strength but
I want to keep it simple.
Because I know a lot of guys out there, do this exercise incorrectly.
And we have to make sure that you're doing it right, so I want to break it down.
Keep it really really simple and we're going to do that with just a couple stick figures,
ok.
So now we're looking at the Skullcrusher, we know we're all familiar with the exercise,
down here, build up bigger Triceps with a easy curl bar, whatever we do.
You've got a guy laying here on his back, here's his head, his arm goes straight up
here, right.
And then we've got the barbell, the dumbbell, whatever he's holding there, in his hand,
and this is the finished position, ok.
Stick figures, Dick and Jane right, we're going to call this one Dick, ok.
So here's Dick.
Then we've got the other guy, this is hopefully going to be You after this video is over.
We've got You, laying here on the bench, here's your head and your arm's going to be angled
back that way,
And then of course the bar is there and that's the finished position.
Now if you move this barbell, dumbbell down in an arc, what happens is this hits this
guy in the Skull, the Nose, the Skullcrusher, Nosebreaker.
And this guy, it actually never comes close.
The arc goes back and forth back here.
This is the one that's right.
See, you don't want to be a Dick when you're doing your Tricep Extensions.
Ok, you never want to train like a Dick.
You want to do this right.
So what you do is, you position the bar or the thing at an angle here so that we get
better Tricep involvement.
Because this is doing nothing.
See putting the physics here back into what we're doing here, you always have to remember
that,
whatever the lever arm is, ok let me take out a different marker here, the lever arm
in the case of the Triceps in this exercise is your Forearm.
You never want the lever arm to be parallel to the force that's acting on the weight.
And in this case gravity's acting straight down.
So as you see here, this is coming straight down, this is coming straight in line here,
these are parallel.
There's no work being done by the muscle in question when the two forces line up and are
parallel to each other.
You don't want this, right, this is training like a Dick.
So what you want to do is, you want to make sure that your arm here, even at the fully
contracted position is not parallel but is at an angle to the force of gravity.
You've got an angle here, you've got an angle like this, so you've actually got some work
still being done in the fully contracted position.
This isn't doing anything.
So I think the biggest problem here is the name, we're following the name of Skullcrushers
and we're following the name of Nosebreakers,
both things that you don't even want to come close to doing.
So if you watch me do this exercise here you'll see.
I'll do it improperly, I'll train like a Dick.
And then I'll show you the right way to do it, train like You, right here.
So there you have it guys, hopefully this little tutorial,
again keeping it simple, stick figures and all,
will help you to understand how to do this exercise properly, especially if you want
to use it to build bigger Triceps.
And if you have people that are telling you to do this exercise this way, we know what
they are guys, they're Dicks, they're training like Dicks.
We need you to start training like an Athlete, alright.
So guys, head to ATHLEANX.COM if you want to train like an Athlete not a Dick, start
training with the ATHLEANX Training System.
I hope you guys found this helpful.
If you need me to draw more stick figures and cover some other exercises,
I'll show you how Not to train like our friend here and how to start training like an Athlete.
Just let me know below and I'll make sure I do more videos like this in the future.
Alright guys, I'll be back here again in just a couple days.