What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we’re going to talk all about the tricep pushdown.
I am going to show you how to squeeze every, single ounce out of this exercise to get the
best impact of it, because I know a lot of people are doing this exercise.
I’ve got to tell you; a lot of people are making some big mistakes when it comes down
to it.
We’re going to break it down from the anatomy of everything that’s going on in the elbow,
actually in the shoulder as well, to perform this exercise, and I’m going to show you
why the little things matter.
Where are the position of your elbows in relation to your side?
What that has to do with the effectiveness of the exercise.
Where your hands should be in relation to your body when you’re doing the pushdown.
The fact that your wrist and the placement of your wrist will have a key component in
terms of maximizing the effects that you see from this.
Also, when we’re talking about the wrist and the positioning of our arms and forearms,
what’s happening here when we supinate, or pronate our forearms?
Are we getting a different impact on the triceps themselves?
I want to cover all that here today because I’m telling you guys, if you add all these
things up it’s going to make this exercise a homerun for you every, single time you do
it.
So, what we want to start with is the position of the hands in relation to the body during
a press down.
It doesn’t matter which implement you’re using at the moment because we want to talk
about – even with a straight bar here – is how close are you to the machine?
Some guys will get right up on top of it like this.
Some guys will be a little further away, here.
Still, others will actually be away from it and when they press down their hands are actually
out in front of their bodies.
You’ve probably seen all three, but which one is right?
Which one should you be doing?
It depends.
The fact is, when you get up on top of the body here, the first thing you’re doing
is letting the triceps rest.
A lot of us will get our hands up in this position near our chin, and this is not really
placing a lot of tension on the triceps.
We know, in order for this to have the most tension we want this line.
The line here of the cable to be perpendicular to our forearms.
So that would mean, if we’re going to get really close to it, we want to have our hands
starting at about waist level to actually have tension on the triceps.
Then we would go from there.
So, the range of motion would go from here to here.
Whereas, we know if we take a little step back here, we know we could still be a little
more perpendicular to our forearms at a higher point.
Now, closer to our chest.
We go through here, we have a little more range of motion on the triceps in that position.
But we also realize that if we went too far out away from our body, now the arms – just
by virtue of being too far away – are going to have to drift.
As soon as the elbows drift away, in order to get this down, and back, we’re going
to probably initiate here with the lats.
By initiating with the lats, it’s not necessarily what we’re trying to do if we’re trying
to get the most work done by the triceps.
I’ve talked about position here, where we can actually do a rowing pushdown, but that’s
really to cheat the concentric portion of it to overload the eccentric on the longhead
on the way back up.
But that’s not what we’re doing here.
We’re doing a traditional pushdown.
So, you have two options.
You can either take that midpoint that we talked about, which would be hitting a longer
range of motion, and still getting the effectiveness of the exercise without compromising too far,
or too close.
Or you could do the rocking tricep pushdown, which is an exercise that I covered in depth.
I’ll show you the video that we covered it, and what it looks like here.
I want you to watch it when this video is over.
I’m going to make sure I link it at the very end.
That will show you how to get the most out of that exercise from the beginning to the
end, by changing the position of your body, in relation to that, by using this line of
resistance, and keeping it as perpendicular to your forearm as we possibly can.
Now with that covered, now I want to move on and start talking about the positioning
of the elbows and how far, or how much drift we’re going to allow before we don’t want
to have that anymore.
Now we’re talking about the elbow positioning.
What you want to make sure you’re not doing is allowing your elbows to start drifting
so much that it starts to put you into this position.
We call this the jackhammer pushdown.
It’s not a good thing.
I’m sure you’ve seen guys doing this all the time.
They get up here, they load the weight up, and they’re pushing down just like this.
That’s the jackhammer push.
They look like they’re operating a jackhammer.
The reason why you could use so much more weight to do that is because you’re not
doing a pushdown anymore.
What you’ve done is, by getting your arms here, internally rotated, and elbows out,
and now getting up on top of it, you’ve actually created a scenario where you’re
doing a standing dip.
Now what we’re doing is, if I were to take this and pushdown there’s no difference
than if I do a straight bar dip, or even a dip where I have my hands in closer.
Now I’m activating the chest a lot to complete the exercise, and we’re no longer letting
the triceps do the bulk of the work.
So, if you want to do this right, what you want to do is the opposite.
You don’t want the elbows flaring.
You want the elbows held nice and tight to the body.
By virtue of doing that, you’re going to get more longhead involvement that crosses
the shoulder joint, and attaches to the shoulder blade, that will actually want to be adducted
and have your elbows in tight.
Here’s the best way to do that.
You want to go for elbows tight, hands wide position.
As far apart as you can.
So hands like this, as wide on the bar as you can.
Elbows as tight as you can.
You could almost pull apart on the bar here and keep the elbows tucked in this way.
That’s going to keep you in this position right here.
So, we’re not allowing the drift of that.
We’re keeping it in tight, which now focuses all the movement on that arc of this extension,
and flexion here of the elbow, which is going to maximize the work of the triceps.
The next interesting thing is, whether or not it even matters, whether or not you’re
doing an overhand pronating grip pushdown, or an underhand grip.
A lot of guys will swear that when they’re doing the underhand grip they feel the longhead
of the tricep, way back in here, contracting with much more intensity.
Others will say it doesn’t even matter.
If you look at the science and anatomy there, at first glance you would say it doesn’t
matter.
Here’s what’s actually happening.
Look here at the bones of the elbow.
Really, if you look down a little lower you’re looking at the bones of the forearm here.
You have the ulna, and the radius.
Now, the ulna is actually the part of the lower forearm that is hinging on the humerus
to create the elbow joint.
That is the bone that the triceps all commonly come together and attach to.
That means, if that happens to the ulna there then, yes, you can argue that there will be
a difference, or an impact on what’s happening with the triceps.
However, the radius is what creates supination and pronation of the forearm.
The radius will roll over the ulna to create pronation, or supination here at the forearm.
But the radius and the radial ulnar joint does not impact what’s going on with the
ulna itself.
Meaning, that pronation and supination at the elbow should not have any impact at all
on the effect of the triceps.
But here’s what happens: it actually does because we don’t operate in a vacuum.
We have a joint that’s actually connected by virtue of being part of our arm to our
shoulder, through a kinetic chain.
That means, when we do things down here, we tend to do things up here as well.
What I’ll show you is, when I get here into this position and go into a pronated position,
what usually happens when I’m in this pronated position, my elbows will tend to want to drift
away from the body.
Even if I try to pin them as much as I can – you can do this without a bar in your
hand – you’ll see that it’s a lot harder to get your elbows pinned tight to your body.
Even back into extension, keeping them tight at the same time, if you have your forearms
pronated.
When I go underhand though, if I’m in this position when I go underhand into supination,
all of a sudden, those elbows will also come in.
It’s much easier to get my elbows tucked into adduction at my side and back behind
my body to get that longhead into full contraction by having my hands in this underhand position.
It has nothing to do with what’s actually going on at the forearm.
But more of what the repercussions of changing the orientation of your forearm will have
on your ability to keep your shoulders in the right position, to get into a better activation
zone for he longhead of the triceps.
That is why those that do this exercise and feel like – especially if they’re doing
a one-handed version of it – but if they get their arm back behind their body, that’s
what you’re feeling.
You’re feeling a better activation of the longhead because of that.
Not really because of what’s actually anatomically happening here at the forearm.
Now, get a little bit low here so I can explain this next one for you.
We want to talk about the position of the wrist.
That means what type of implement we’re going to use.
Is a straight bar the best thing you could use?
Do you want to use more of an angled V-bar?
Or ropes, in order to better hit the triceps?
I could tell you this, the straight bar is going to create limitations.
Especially if you’re someone that has wrist issues.
Here’s what happens.
If we were to get into the tricep pushdown here and we were to perform the exercise,
one thing we don’t want to happen is overactivation of the wrist flexors to perform the exercise.
That means we’re taking away from the work of the triceps.
We get down to here, the triceps can’t do anymore, and then the wrist flexors try to
cheat all the way down.
We don’t want that.
Some people even recommend just hooking fingers on here, and getting into extension, and pushing
down that way.
So, when I’m down at the full position here you can see that my wrists are into extension.
But what I’m now focusing on is making all the work happen through the triceps, just
by having elbow extension.
Here’s what happens, though.
When we’re in this extended position of our wrist – and you could do this yourself
– just lift your wrist up like that.
Now, what happens is, when you got into full extension, you’ll see that your hands will
actually angle a little more toward your thumb.
They’re almost turning up this way.
If I go into extension they’re not flat.
They’re actually angling toward the thumb side here.
So radial deviation is a component motion of extension of the wrist.
So, we want that, but if I take my hands – which want to be here.
Again, extended like this, and then up into this angle of radial deviation.
If I force that down to get flat, to hold onto a straight bar, do you know what’s
going to happen?
Likely, you’re not going to allow it to hurt your wrists anymore.
Or if you have a wrist restriction, to keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing.
What’s going to happen is this.
If I can’t keep my elbows in here, and now I’m in this position, and I want to turn
them down, and I can’t get them down anymore, what’s going to happen?
I’ll cheat them down by just going like this with my elbows.
So, if my elbows come out, then I’ll act like I’m getting more of this downward position
in my hands to grab the straight bar.
But what I’ve done is, I’ve just got myself into that same issue we just covered, which
is the positioning of the elbows too far away from the body.
You want to make sure you’re aware of the fact that your wrists are going to be a key
component of how you do the exercise.
If that means using a straight bar or using a rope to get into a position where your hands
can be a little more angled upward; that’s what you should do.
All right, guys.
Finally, we bring it all home here asking you the question “what are you actually
trying to train?
What area of your triples are you trying to train?”
Are you trying to train the lateral and medial head on the outside of your elbow here?
Or are you trying to train that longhead of the triceps?
That meatier area on the underside here, closest to your side.
You actually have the opportunity to do that.
How you perform the exercise will actually help you to get more, or less from any of
those heads.
Here’s what we want to understand though.
The two on the outside – the lateral head and the medial head – all they do is extend
the elbow because they don’t have an attachment over the shoulder onto the shoulder blade
it doesn’t matter what else is going on.
The only thing that’s happening is how much extension you have at the elbow or not.
So, if you were to do the exercise – going back to the beginning of the video that we
talked about – let’s say you were going to do the exercise and have it out in front
of you and just do this.
Let’s say we’re not allowing the elbows to move, so we’re not worried about overactivation
of the lats.
We’re just talking about extension, and then flexion.
Extension and flexion.
You could preferentially hit those two areas of the triceps better by performing the exercise
that way.
But if you wanted to hit the longhead.
You could actually do that too because the longhead exercises aren’t always the things
that put the elbows and the longhead of the triceps in stretch.
We also have to consider the fact that the longhead can be placed in a position to have
a stronger contraction, by getting it into its fully contracted position.
Which means close to the body, and back behind our body.
We could do that if we make some changes to what we’re doing here.
The first thing I would say is, it’s pretty difficult to use a straight bar to do that.
We already talked about the wrist limitations of that.
Even if I went underhand, as I’ve said, it’s a little easier to get back there,
but you still hit your body with the bar.
So, right away, if I was trying to get more longhead contraction here, or a stronger longhead
contraction I’d maybe want to go to a rope.
But here’s the thing with the rope.
I’m still going to have the same issue when I come down here.
Yes, I can get my arms tight and behind my body, but I’m going to wind up hitting my
body here if the rope isn’t long enough.
What I always recommend in this position and in this case is to have access to something
really long.
Now, my buddy Schmitty Diesel with the straps here, we have access to something much longer.
So again, it doesn’t matter what you use.
I just want to make sure that you have something much longer than a regular rope.
Now look what happens.
If I get into this position here, my elbows are tight and behind my body, look what I
can do now.
I can get way back behind my body with my hands into full extension because the rope
is going to allow me that excursion.
I can actually turn this pushdown into, almost, a standing tricep kickback, which we know
will hit the longhead of the triceps in that contracted range.
The fact is, guys, have a game plan and an area of what you’re trying to accomplish,
and you’ll be able to do it.
As long as you’re now armed with the knowledge of knowing how to attack the tricep pushdown.
Again, there’s a lot you could do with this exercise.
There’s a lot you could get out of this exercise.
But it’s really helpful to understand all your options and the best way to do it.
So, I hope we just did that for you in this video.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a training program that pays attention to the
details because they matter, guys.
The anatomy is our anatomy for a reason.
It sets us up to perform in a specific way that we can operate at our best.
If you apply that to every one of your workouts and exercises that you do, you’ll be amazed
at how much more you’ll get out of your workouts.
That’s what we try to accomplish with our ATHLEANX training systems.
They’re all available over at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, if you’ve found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what else you want me to cover and I’ll do my best to do that for you in
the days and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.