The Tricep Pushdown, a staple of most Tricep workouts.
But are you doing it the right way?
Today we're going to find out.
What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM
The Tricep Pushdown, it's probably a staple of your tricep workout.
Or it should be at least because it's a great exercise for targeting the backs of our arms.
But are you doing it the right way?
So today what I wanted to do, was put together a video to see and the show you and actually
give you sort of our future modification of this.
What could we do to maximize the effects of given what I'm going to tell you about the
exercise.
Well, it starts with looking at the exercise itself and seeing what the differences are.
I'm sure guys you've seen plenty of people do this exercise a lot of different ways.
Forget about the attachment that you put on here.
This is sort of irrelevant to what we're going to talk about.
Because we don't necessarily care what's going on with our hands.
We just want to know what's going on at the elbow.
And the elbow, guys is simply a hinge joint, meaning it will open and close.
That's all it does.
It's doesn't allow for a lot of rotation or lateral movement.
It simply hinges up and down.
So that being said, the tricep is obviously going to extend the elbow and then let it
obviously eccentrically bend back up.
What you'll see though, what I want you to concentrate on here is the position of my
body in relation to the rope in this case when doing the exercise.
You'll probably see a lot of guys do the exercise like this.
Actually put the rope right up next to them and kind of do that.
Elbows flare out to the side, pushing down, ok, doing that.
Now the problem here and it's not necessarily a huge problem as you're going to see.
There's not just tricep work going on there.
There's a lot of chest involvement.
It's actually sort of a standing, almost a cross over, right?
Because what we're doing here is we're coming here and pushing down, alright here and pushing
down.
We're getting a lot of chest involvement.
That's why a lot of guys will load up the weight when they do that, thinking that they're
really pushing a lot of weight.
But the triceps themselves are not taking a lot of that effort, you know they're passing
it on to the chest.
So is that a good thing?
Hold on we'll determine that.
The next thing is you'll see guys standing a little further away.
Or you'll see guys standing even further away.
Well here's the difference.
Whenever you try to figure out what's going on in exercise you should try to determine;
Where is the lever in relation to the line of resistance and what effect that has on
the muscle?
That's a little bit, remember we said a few videos back, It's Physics Bitch.
It's another one of those things, ok but I'll try to make it as easy as I can.
Physics, right, we have our level arm, in this case the lever is our forearm.
The muscle that is controlling the lever is the tricep.
The line of resistance is going to be the angle of your cable, right here, ok.
When a lever is parallel to the line of resistance, you will have the least amount of resistance
on the muscle itself.
When a lever is perpendicular, straight into, the line of resistance, you will have the
most amount of resistance on the muscle.
So let's go back and look at those two variations.
Straight up front here, forearm is pretty much perpendicular, right here, to the line
of resistance.
That means at this point, the triceps are getting the most amount of work.
Which would be the beginning part of the range of motion, ok.
But when I go down to the bottom, forearm is parallel to the line of resistance.
That means there's very minimal resistance here on the triceps, when I stand really close.
Yeah, they're contracting but I could stay here all day.
Ok, on the contrary, if I go out farther away, the line of resistance is now on an angle.
My forearms are almost parallel to the line of resistance.
It's not hard to initiate the movement from here.
But when I get to the bottom, you can see that my forearm is now perpendicular again,
to the line of resistance.
Meaning that there's a lot more effort being done by the triceps in this position.
Why is that really good?
Because, for you guys that are familiar with how much I talk about strength curves,
that's peak contraction and peak resistance lining up together, ok, at the end of the
movement.
Now what does that mean?
Is there one right way and one wrong way?
No, not necessarily.
Because it's good to have resistance in the beginning part of a range of motion.
And to also have peak resistance at the end of a range of motion.
So you're basically, matching strength curves.
That's when you're going to put the tricep through it's most work.
So, as we do at ATHLEANX, what if there's a way that you can create a matching resistance
curve with the one exercise.
And not have to switch devices or change anything during the middle of the rep.
Other than your body position.
Well we can do that.
Basically what you want to do is get up on one foot, ok, toe back here.
And what we're going to do, you know reach it back far.
You're going to basically get your hands in tight, up close.
As you push down, you're obviously using the peak resistance in the triceps, with a close
position.
And then as you go down, you want to lean back and pull your arms down.
So as I came down I changes the angle of resistance on the core here.
So that now my triceps are engaged.
I slide back in, down and I rock back, ok.
Up, down and I rock back.
Up, down and rock back, ok.
So we've got a way to match the resistance curve just by changing the orientation of
our body.
The key here though guys is, in exercise, is just an exercise when it's on paper.
It becomes an effective tool for getting you bigger, stronger and better when you do it
properly.
So you guys know, as a physical therapist, I find it very important to teach you guys
how to do these exercises so that you can get the most out of it.
And in fact in ATHLEANX, with my whole system, I want to make sure you're getting the most
out of it, so you're not just doing things that are on paper.
You're actually getting workouts in each and every time that are maximally effective for
getting you better each day.
Alright guys, let me know how you do the Tricep Pushdown.
Leave your comment below.
A thumbs up if you find it helpful
In the meantime, I'll see you guys back here in just a few days with another video.