Wanting to tighten up the back of your arms? Here is the ultimate triceps training guide for women!

I can’t even recall the number of times a woman has waved her arms at me, flapped them around and asked me to ‘fix them’. Call them ‘tuck shop lady’ arms, or your ‘second wave’ – triceps are always the centre of the joke!

Your ‘tricep’ describes three muscles which run down the back of your arm from the shoulder to the elbow. It’s job is to straighten your arm, but it also assists the chest when it comes to pressing movements like bench press and pushups.

As far as chest exercises go, the triceps play a small role. For men it is often enough to train chest alone without having isolate the triceps, but I find for women, it’s best to do both.

How to choose the right tricep exercises;

When targeting any muscle group, you want to use the muscle across each plane of movement, and at different angles. For the tricep, this means you want to;

1. Press (this involves both your chest and triceps),
2. Extend with your tricep in a shortened position, and
3. Extend your elbow with your tricep in an extended position.

Pressing Movements

Pressing movements involve both the triceps, chest and shoulder (this is also referred to as a ‘compound’ exercise, as it uses both the shoulder and elbow joints). This ensures your tricep is strengthened alongside it’s supporting muscles.

When it comes to pressing, the closer your arms are to the body, the more the triceps have to work, so for this we are referring to dips, close grip bench or DB presses, or close grip pushups.

Tricep Extension in a Shortened Position

When we talk of a ‘shortened’ position, this refers to the tricep not being lengthened, or stretched, when performing the movement. We want to use both shortened and lengthened positions when training a muscle, to ensure all-round strength is achieved.

Examples include cable press-downs with a rope or bar, skullcrushers, or french press (which is just the DB version of a skullcrusher).

Tricep Extension in a Lengthened Position

Training a muscle in a lengthened position just means that it is somewhat stretched when we start and finish the movement. We have less power when doing this kind of exercise, and so you need to use a lighter weight to ensure correct technique.

Examples include overhead DB presses, and overhead rope extensions.

So that’s how you train triceps properly! You only need to choose one exercise from each category, and 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps is sufficient. If you want to train them twice per week, this will accelerate results even further.

STRENGTH TRAINING FOR WOMEN – The Complete Guide

If you’re interested in knowing more about female training, check out my Female Training program!

See you in the next article 🙂

Jen x