Triceps Training | ETP#158

Part six of our series of episodes named the “Design Series.” So far we have covered the Upper Back, Lats, Shoulders, Quads, Chest, and Hamstrings. Today we are talking Triceps! Bryan guides us through best approaching program design for effectively training the medial, lateral, and long heads of the triceps broken down from three equipment availability tiers, a commercial gym setup, a garage gym of CrossFit facility, and then DB / Bands only.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Life/episode updates
24:39 - Diving into triceps training
33:01 - Routines that you can do in commercial gym training
47:04 - Garage gym/CrossFit gym training
1:00:18 - Options on dumbbell/bands-only program

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Transcript

0:25

Fuck. Okay. What's up guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today's episode 158 and it is the first of the arms muscle groups that we are covering in our training series. Today we are talking triceps. So last week we covered hamstrings and then, please correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, the final muscle group we will be covering is biceps, potentially next week, potentially the week after. We will see. But before we dive into today's episode, as always, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please? Yeah, definitely should be biceps next week as the final muscle group. I don't think we are going to do a calves or abs muscle group series unless maybe we wanna link those together into one. We can kinda decide what we wanna do at that point. But yeah, it's been cool getting through all these different muscle groups and providing some valuable training feedback for people. The YouTube comments on the hamstring episode have been fire as well. Anyone interested, go check those out for episode 157. because there's some really cool feedback and I actually mean to, I've replied to a few of them and I want to reply to the rest, because there's definitely some cool insights and personal experiences, anecdotes in there. Regarding updates for me, so last week I dropped the information about my DEXA scan and we talked about that for a little bit in the updates section and then just yesterday I posted on Instagram a little bit about my DEXA scan kind of ahead of this episode on hamstrings dropping where we talked about it more in depth. And it was crazy yesterday to see the response from people on this. I mean, I think there's over 200 comments or something, close to 200 comments on my post. And yeah, it's been wild. So Greg Knuckles came out of the woodwork and sent me a really long DM about DEXA and my situation. and I got some really cool information from that. There's actually a lot of good information in the comments in general. One science guy came out and said that the calibration of, he asked me what Dexa I was specifically using and I sent him a screenshot, or not a screenshot, a copy and paste of the exact model and he was like, yeah, we've been having issues with that model in our research, there's some weird upgrades going on, blah, blah, blah. And so, kind of shortly after that, Greg Knuckles hit me up. And his response, there was two things I want to focus on in what he wrote me, but more globally, I just want to read his statement on DEXA. So it says, the basic problem with DEXA is that it's basically just taking a 2D picture, counting pixels of different colors. Since bone absorbs so much more energy than any other tissue, the machine has to just make assumptions about the composition of the other tissue above and below the bone, which is usually around 40% of the total pixels. or even more for leaner individuals. So if the assumptions underpinning the algorithms used to estimate the composition of tissue in bone pixels are wrong for an individual, the scan will be inaccurate for that individual. Also, different sets of assumptions can have pretty large impacts on the numbers it'll spit out. And then when he was talking about the assumptions, he put in parentheses the difference between the classic and the N. Haynes calibration. And so that means nothing until I explain it. Essentially the Dexamachine that I used was this Hoologistic model. Hoologic, H -O -L -O -G -I -C, the Hoologic machine. And so Hoologic machine is the one that that guy referenced in the comments that just recently had some upgrades and some calibration stuff. And Knuckles echoed the same sentiment, basically saying that... the classic model was the way that they have been using it and that just in the last few months, all of these Hologic machines got upgraded to the NHANES model. And apparently the NHANES model overestimates body fat by about 5 % compared to the classic model, which I just like, yeah, jump in, what you got. When you say overestimate body fat by 5%, is that let's say you're a true 10%. Is it going to estimate you at 15 or is it just a 5 % over baseline? The way that it was phrased to me makes it sound here. It says, N. Haines calibration increases body fat percentage values by around 5%. And then he sent me a link about calibration. So that would mean that if I was 16 % body fat, it estimates me at 21 % body fat. That accounts for literally the majority of the quote muscle loss that I saw because the 5 % body fat increase would correlate to. equivalent about 10 to 12 pounds of muscle loss to account for that. So if in fact that is the case that I was being graded on a classic machine and now I'm being graded on an N. Haynes model, then that would explain almost all of that deviation except for maybe one to two pounds of muscle, which you and I were literally thinking like, hey, you probably should have lost one or two pounds of muscle given all the cardio you're doing, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. So that was. very informative and I'm very appreciative that Greg sent that information and that everybody else contributed in the comments. What I guess I don't understand is A, why would they change the calibration so drastically on a machine? And B, should I be 21 % body fat on any machine? And so that's I think the part I'm struggling with the most is like who cares what the model and the recalibration and all of these things are, but like looking at me. when you have an idea in your head of what 21 % body fat should look like, just broadly, and then you see me with veins in my arms and a six pack abs and blah, blah, separation in my quads, all this stuff, and you're like, that dude is 21 % body fat. That to me doesn't make any sense. So. I think if I if I could interject here, I think there's. And I mean, we see this across, you know, industries and there's a certain type of like personality, I would say that that does this more, but there's the people who like their information is like good enough and they're like, OK, I got the answer. Like I'm going to go, you know, sing it to the hills sort of thing. But it's not the answer. Right. Right. And it's like you have if there's like, you know, a one through 10 level of understanding of a subject and. you know, let's obviously 10 is the most they might be at like a five or a six, but they think they're at like an 11, you know, or it might be one of those things where it comes down from who knows how the like, I know the DEXs are typically like, some of them are like bigger companies that are, you know, that they're operating a location of company X, like someone at company X may decide like, this information is like good enough, it's accurate enough. We care about our profits and obviously business being staying open like, fucking ship it sort of thing. Like I've been in the like back back when I worked in software, like there were times where things were like shipped that I knew were not ready and would break, you know, but it wasn't I wasn't in the position to be like, no, it's not going, you know, it would be like, you know, shut the fuck up, Aaron, it's going and then when it breaks, when it blows up, like you have to fucking deal with it, you know. So I do think that there is some level of that. And for honestly, probably Let's say 50 people walk through that DEXA scan, you know, place in a day, you are probably like one of two who's gonna be like, this isn't fucking right. You know what I mean? So we're probably in a small subset of users per se. Yeah, no, I agree completely. And I had another guy who's actually friends with Valerie Lusvardi from the N1 Valerie. And so she had him write me and he's like an engineer that's worked on these types of machines before. And he was saying that DEXA in general isn't really calibrated for anybody under 18 % body fat. He was saying that it's pretty accurate if you're over 18 % body fat. but that for leaner individuals, it really has trouble kind of discerning the specifics of what's going on in there. So between Greg Knuckles' response, that one scientist that responded in my comments, and then Valerie's friend who responded, it just kind of seems like, as we know, it was validation that we don't need to take it super seriously, take it with a grain of salt. And unfortunately, like, I don't know if I trust DEXA globally anymore, given the different models, the different calibration methods. the fact that it may or may not be effective for people under 18 % body fat. All of these kind of things go into a pot and just kind of diminish my confidence in that as a tool. And I think I'm like okay with it. Like it sucks given this experience, but I learned a ton from it. And now I know that this just probably isn't the thing that I should rely on when I'm assessing body composition. And there's just things such as strength in hypertrophy rep ranges, measurements. pictures and a few other kind of things that you can use to assess whether you're making progress or not making progress in things. And I think those are probably just going to be more reliable across the board. Yeah, especially the note that you give in like if sub 18 % body fat is really when the decks of from from from a coaching utility or whatever actually has utility, right? If you're 20 % body fat or like 24 % body fat and for the ladies out there, we're speaking about males, you know, for you guys at approximately 8 to 10 percentage points to that. If you're 24 % body fat, does it matter if you're 24 or like 21? No, you want to be under 20 anyway, from just a health and longevity standpoint. So you need to get under it pretty much, or you will want to get under it. But that's the kind of dagger in this is like the place where it seems to have the highest air margin is the place in the population of people who are most interested in using it as an assessment tool. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree completely. It definitely is unfortunate. So whatever, life goes on. I am at this point content with where this thing stands. I probably won't be Dexing anymore. And in some ways, that's kind of freeing. So yeah, I have two more updates, but let's jump over to you. What's going on in your world? Yeah, so still in Thailand, which has been it's really cool. I believe I touched on this a little bit, but it's a very nice, like best of both like Western world and being in Asia too. So if you get different drink flavors, like I have a Coke Zero here that's K wave flavor. That's like different where you get to have things there. Like I go to 7 -Eleven and buy like cool drinks. Whereas like you go to in 7 -Eleven in Bali. It's like you have water. You have like maybe a green tea. You have a one regular Coke Zero, or you have like these teas that are, you know, 60 grams of sugar, pretty much. So that's been cool. We've been to the hospital for, for obviously a number of different checkup things. Things are moving well with Jenny and her fertility program with, with us freezing her eggs. What's been, it's, I mean, it's, it's been useful, right? For a lot of, I would imagine women going into this. There's a lot of injections like daily injections and those sorts of things. And, and then one of them is, I believe it's a combination of, of, of recombinant FSH, follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. And the nurse is like walking her through this like reconstitution process and Jenny's head's like spinning. Cause the nurse is like, you got to take this fluid and you use this knee, the gauge needle. And she's like kind of looking at it and I'm like, I got it. I got it. I got it. So it's been one of those cool times where like my journey into, you know, PEDs and stuff. It's like, I know all this shit already, you know, so it actually has like a real world use case, which has been, yeah, it's been nice to like, cause I mean, it's important. Obviously we're spending a lot of money on it and Jenny's like kind of nervous. And I'm like, no, I got it. Like I know how to do all this shit, you know? So that's been, that's been pretty cool. And while I was there, I was thinking like, you know, I'm here, let me get some testing. Like I'm going to get some fertility testing to see what things actually look like, you know, cause you typically you hear at a, I believe the numbers like 60 % of males experience like a fertility shutdown on, you know, TRT and then PED. So it's like, let me find out where I am on that. I am very shut down. Like, to a, I believe the number is they want more than 20 million sperm per per like milliliter and 20 million, I believe was, it was a number and I was at 500,000. So like a fraction. of it. I'm honestly not concerned because I've been very deep on the research of restoring things, but it was just it was I guess I'm very big on like I want to see the consequences of my actions where I know a lot of guys and stuff will just be like, I'm not going to go get health checkup because I don't want to see if bad things are happening. Like that's just not how I operate because I feel like that's kind of I know that there are these risks, but if I don't look at them like they're not real, you know, and I just feel like that's kind of like a sort of. So I want to see like I want to see the negative side of the things and decisions that I'm doing. So that was like one of them. And then I went to a different hospital just to see see another one and I bought this like health checkup package, which is apparently pretty common here in Asia. Like you buy one, you go get things looked at and you get to see like what health what things look like on the inside. It's a lot more than just labs. So I bought it. I go I got like vitals, which is obviously the basics, blood pressure. heart rate, that sort of shit. Blood work, didn't get hormones tested because just didn't really need to. A coronary calcium scan, which I was very, very big on and nervous about. An echocardiogram. I was put on a treadmill stress test to test the heart under stress ramping things. Routine urinalysis. So they get an X -ray of my chest cavity and then an ultrasound of my entire abdominal cavity. So all the organs in the thyroid. So like pretty comprehensive, right? A lot of tests. The cool thing is I was in and out of there in three hours with all of that. And that included me going down to the first floor and having lunch for 45 minutes. And a meeting with a doctor to go over everything. Yeah, that's dope, man. I wish I could do that. I mean you can just got to fly to Thailand. Right, right, right. What was the cost of that for like an American money? 460 US something like that for something was like 420 or 470 somewhere in somewhere in the 400s. I remember specifically pretty cost effective there. So the good things zero on a coronary calcium scan, which was my biggest concern honestly and the echocardiogram was like perfect exercise stress. That's perfect. No a fib like irregular heartbeats anything like that. My thyroid has cysts on it, which apparently is kind of common. However, they would need to quadruple in size before they became potentially a cause for concern of like a biopsy or something. So at least I now know that and I have the values of them and that sort of thing and can monitor. Exactly, exactly. So that was... Obviously not information that I would like to receive, but I felt at least empowered to now know. And then the other kind of one is during the organ ultrasound, my kidneys, both of them showed, I forget the word, it's like, echinography, something like that. And what I looked up, it's basically just, it's a differing in color from the other organs, from an ultrasound. But effectively I looked it up. It's it's non -specific. It's okay. There is Potentially something going on here, you know get further Look potentially looking to further testing Fortunately one of the the PEDs I'm on we're pretty much one of two the other one besides testosterone is Classified as like renal toxic. So I know that that's likely what it is and Fortunately, I'm only on that one for another few weeks and then I'm off but it was pretty interesting because I'm only I started April 1st, right? It's June 4th. So in you know, eight weeks time that was already enough and not a very high dose to be picked up by you know an ultrasound a Believe it would be radiologists would be the proper terminology of the doctor with I disclosed no information about it So again, it was just like these things that I'm glad that I did so that I can see the consequences or the actions or the reactions, I guess would be the proper term, of what my actions and decisions have been. So I'm glad I have baselines in those sorts of things. I don't think it's a cause for concern. I'll obviously get it monitored and CISTAT and C and stuff is all fine when I got labs done last month, but it was just pretty interesting to see. Yeah, that is very interesting. That was actually, you answered the question about C -statin C, but that was gonna be my question is given the cysts on the thyroid and the kidney discoloration, if that was showing on any of your labs, and so you just said your kidney function seems to be fine as far as thyroid, I'm guessing all of that didn't show any signs either on the labs. yeah, TSH was super low, like a 1 .2 or something. Yeah. point where TSH could be too low and then it's bad that way or is it just always it wants to be lower? I mean, I'm sure if it was, I've never seen it. Maybe that would be like considered hyperthyroid potentially to look at, but there's typically gonna be signals. Like if you're running hyperthyroid, you're probably gonna have a hard time like putting weight on or keeping weight on or these other downstream kind of effects that would show up there, I would imagine. Cool. All right, sweet. Well, that's very interesting. My final two checkups, or updates here, are that we just took a trip to Vale. So I mentioned that on the last episode that I had some friends coming into town. So these are people I don't see too often, some of Kim's friends from college and their husbands. And we had a great weekend in Vale. We saw a big ass bear that climbed up onto our deck, which was pretty freaking wild. I... saw the bear on the deck and for whatever reason I wasn't scared. I was like, I went out to go close the door so that he couldn't get into the house and I was probably like four feet away from him when I did that. And then he just kind of like turned around and sauntered down the stairs and walked off. And I was just like, I don't think I realized how close I was to potentially dying until he was already gone and I was like, whoa, I was like four feet from that dude. So that was pretty wild. The trip overall was great. Like I, I think I, I, Because I have an introverted nature, I always feel like these weekends where I have to be social a lot are going to burden me and crush me and I'm gonna be so tired all the time and blah blah blah. And I just like, I was surprised by how engaged I was and how fun the weekend was. Just connecting with people, being in this kind of new environment, going out to dinners and whatever whatever. I did drink, I did drink for sure. Most of my drinks are now Crystal Light with vodka. And I just came up with this drink like a year ago, and it's been almost my go -to whenever I'm in these types of situations now, because Crystal Light is calorie-free, and vodka is relatively low calorie, and I can go a shot or a shot and a half in a big -ass glass of Crystal Light lemonade, and I just kinda sip on it and I enjoy it. It doesn't really feel like I'm tasting alcohol, and then I get a little buzz, and it's all good. and both days I stopped drinking after dinner where everybody else continued until like midnight or whatever. Like we would finish dinner at six or seven and I was just, you know, I'd have a drink with dinner and then I'd be done and we'd play cards at night, whatever, whatever. I felt really good about that and so I never felt hungover. I had some, I definitely had some morning HRV and resting heart rate issues but you know, to the tune of five to eight beats a minute. on my heart rate, whereas it could have been way worse. Like I've been in situations where I've treated my body so badly that 15 to 20 beat deviation is what happens in the morning. So my resting heart rate went from 42 to 48 or something along those lines. And that was to be expected, but I think overall I'm really proud of the way I handled that with the alcohol consumption and just kind of like taking care of my body. So ultimately. I've been talking about this so many weeks now on this podcast that I've had all these trips coming up where I'm forced into taking weekends off of exercise. And this happened again. I went the whole weekend. I didn't lift. I didn't do cardio. I just, you know, eat food, slept, drink some alcohol, whatever showed up today or yesterday. And once again, my bike ride that I did after the two and a half days off was insane. Like like every week after I take these two or three days off, I have the best rides. of the week and I am now just completely convinced that recovery is the secret sauce. I did a zone two ride yesterday that was like half a mile per hour faster than any other zone two ride I've ever done. Leading into the trip, I climbed this hill called Chapman Hill here. That's like an old fire road. I've only done it three times. So the day a few days ago was my third time. And when I did it prior, it was the very end of last bike season. So it was like September right before my bike race. And I did this hill in 2345, I think. So that's like freaking, you know, 24 minutes of being in zone four or higher, just constantly going up this hill. It's like a 2 .5 miles and 6 % grade, 7 % grade. So it's like a thousand feet of vertical. And I currently weigh 198 pounds. So when we talk about. You know me being unable to keep weight on during bike season. I have found the key to keeping weight on during bike season. It is chocolate covered almonds and And so I literally weigh more right now than I have even in the off season before I started biking again So I actually do need to cut back on my chocolate almond consumption But it has been nice to realize that I can keep body weight on Through this one little hack called chocolate covered almonds. So regardless I'm climbing this hill and 2345 was my best time ever and I was 182 pounds when I did that. So I'm 16 pounds heavier right now and I set a 40 second PR. So at a higher body weight climbing this hill, 2305 or something along those lines is what I hit the other day. And so I just, I'm super amped that A, I've been able to keep body weight on, strength has been super solid, it's still climbing. and that my cardiovascular performance is where it is despite having this extra weight on my body. And so overall, I'm just really amped about all of that. That's pretty significant. That's a significant amount of body weight to be up. Obviously you're not as deep into cardio season. And you came off a weekend of drinking. A lot of factors that if we got a bunch of people to place bets, a lot of us would be wrong on that performance. You know what I mean? So that's really, really cool to see. Yeah, I agree. And then the last thing is just that no one really cares about this, but the Unbound Gravel Race, which is the Super Bowl of gravel racing, just happened this last weekend, and it's a 200 mile bike race through Kansas. It basically goes across Kansas for 200 miles. And... I'm just kind of like a bike racing fan now. It's kind of weird, but I was following this on, they were doing live updates across Instagram all day long, and I was literally just like tuning into my phone watching this bike race, and then the guys who were the favorites, none of them finished in the top 10 even, so it was really cool to watch some of these people that were unexpected to kind of come through and place really well, and yeah, just kind of a new thing, a passion for me to be interested in, which is also kind of cool. Definitely, definitely. All right, any, are we diving in? It was. Yep. we're talking about triceps as Aaron mentioned in the intro. And as we usually do, we'll separate this into commercial or full gym, home gym or CrossFit style gym, and then dumbbell only or bands plus dumbbell program. And so like usual, we'll spend the majority of the time on the commercial gym focus here. because that's what most people are training with. And so I guess the first thing to mention when it comes to triceps training is that the triceps are called the triceps because there are three heads, tri, three heads. There's the long head, which is the only one that actually connects across two different joint structures. So it will connect into the, I guess, kind of where the lat and the deltoid meet, and then it'll also... connect into where the elbow is. And so it's called a biarticular muscle. Biarticulate muscle is kind of the terminology there. And then the other two heads, which are the medial head and the lateral head, they do not cross the shoulder. And so what that basically means as far as training goes is that to train the long head, we need to somehow get the arm elevated to a point where the long head can stretch. Not to say that the long head can't be trained in other planes as well, it can be trained with the elbow down by the side, but it does need to line up in a specific way. So if we're trying to train the long head, we either need to get the arm over the head in some manner. You could think like standing overhead dumbbell tricep extension, something like that. Or to train it short in its short position, you put the elbow down by the side, but you need to line the cable up. so that it's coming in line with the position of the elbow. If you're doing like a standard push down where your elbows are like in tight and you're using like a rope or a push down bar or something like that, it's not to say that there won't be some long head, because there certainly will, but it's likely that you're not lining up in a way that it's going to bias the long head exclusively. Similarly, when we put the elbow over the head, we do wanna make sure that if we're trying to bias the long head that we get that elbow into the scapular plane. which would essentially be this area between forward and to the side. Most people can find this position pretty naturally if you just line yourself up, your elbow will naturally kind of fall into a position that's in the scapular plane. So it's not directly forward and it's not directly out to the side. It's just kind of falling into that natural position. And if you can line the cable up with the arm position there, then you should get a solid amount of long head in that kind of scapular plane there. If you're going to force it forward or force it out to the side, you're gonna get a little more medial and lateral, depending on what position you're in, but you definitely will be getting some long head in there too. As far as training the medial and lateral heads, we will get into that a little bit more, but I think that the long head is really the main one that a lot of people try to focus on when they're training triceps, because the medial and the lateral heads seem to get hit pretty effectively through most other pressing movements. And we've heard this a lot, like even back in the day when I started training, it was always like, don't worry about triceps, they get hit through pressing movements. And that's true if you're talking about the medial or the lateral head, but you don't really train the long head through pressing movements. So if you do care about full development of your tricep structure, you do need to do some direct training for the long head. I guess the last thing I'll mention before I kick it over to you is that the long head does get hit in overhead pull down movements or pull ups. And so that might be one way in which you see people and you're like, wait, that person just does pushups and pull ups. How the hell do they have a fully developed tricep? And it could be that the pushup is giving them all of the medial and lateral head stuff. And then the pullup is actually giving them enough long head stimulation to grow it or at least maintain it. Which I think is interesting at least from like a conceptual standpoint, it is interesting that pulling movements train the long head despite. Like because you are putting your arm overhead, but it's not in exactly precise, targeted, direct manner like you would get by doing a more isolated overhead tricep extension type movement. So yeah, a lot to talk about here, but I'll kick it over to you for the moment. Yeah, it's actually funny. And unfortunately, I feel like it takes enough time and enough kind of size built before you can really start to just notice some of these finer details. But for instance, when you were talking about the pulling exercise on the training, a little bit of the long head, I had a push day today in the gym. And there was a period where I was in between sets and I noticed like, dude, I have like a pretty massive bicep pump right now. And then I'm like walking back through like, what could I have been doing to like facilitate this? And I'm like, is it just, am I just in my head? Is there something? I was like, no, like it's, it's rather significant. And I think that's something that there are, I mean, so much of the muscle groups are synergistic, right? Like one pulls on the front of the end of the arm, the other one pulls on the back and like they, there is like a push and pull to it, but it is something that I think can be kind of often forgotten too. Yeah, it's, I've recently gotten, this is a bit tangential, but I recently have gotten sort of reintegrated into the hard gainer training philosophy, which was, I think I mentioned this on a prior episode when I started my Alifters Life Story Instagram page, I kind of had been reminiscing a lot on my training history and the way that I used to train. And I went through a number of years of my life. where I didn't train arms directly. And that was from this idea in the hard gainer or the abbreviated training philosophy that the arms get hit plenty through compound movements and you don't really need to train arms directly. Personal anecdote is that I think my arms did totally fine with that structure. And then you and I have discussed before that we went through a half a decade to a decade of CrossFit training where, It wasn't even until the very end of CrossFit where we were like, hey, maybe we should do some curls. It was really like, you know, pull -ups, rows, presses, push -ups, things like that. We didn't really do any direct arm work through the majority of our time in CrossFit. And I don't personally think that I lost arm size during that period of time either. And you're shaking your head as if you agree too. So in some ways, like there is some validity in that. And I know that's not in line with, hey, here's how to train triceps, just do pushups and pullups. But I think it is important to note that the arms really do get hit through some of these auxiliary movement patterns. And that may be justification for periods of time away from training arms, for doing less arm work, for including that volume into specialization phases for the arms, a number of kind of different concerns to take into account there. Yeah, I mean, I agree. And there's a there's a specific photo I remember from one of the days that Rob Hammer was in taking photos of the gym. And it's I mean, obviously, it's a photo of me. But I'm like, my arms are pretty jacked. And I'm like, this is it was when we were in the new Garnet location. So I mean, this is like year four of me doing nothing but but, you know, CrossFit and effectively zero alarms. And they're. Pretty big. So I mean, there is a lot of validity to that. But one of my favorite things that you've ever said on the podcast is there's a lot to be said for volume and effort. And there was definitely no shortage of either, you know, in the programming you were providing us at that time. So. Yeah, volume and effort go a long way. And I mean, I'll also say for whatever it's worth, you know, soreness isn't gonna be the best proxy for anything, but it does tell you what muscle groups got trained. And I had plenty of days in my CrossFit days where my biceps and my triceps were sore as fuck from doing butterfly pull-ups, skipping pull -ups, whatever dips and push -ups and handstand push -ups. Like, I mean, just a variety of different kind of pushing and pulling movements. So. There is that. What's that? I accidentally clicked a button in the UI and now the UI is all different and I don't know what to do. So that's why I was like kind of just mouthing to myself like, no, no, what's happening? okay, all right, get it fixed. So moving on to kind of like specifics of tricep training, my general thought is that the majority of tricep work in a commercial gym is going to be based around cables. And cables provide you that even more even resistance curve. It allows you to manipulate the resistance profile of the movement, whether you want it shortened or lengthened, biased based on where you set. cable right so something like an overhead tricep extension which I've been using a lot as a reference here even though this is a movement that trains the tricep at long muscle lengths because it is getting your arm over your head and it's stretching the long head because that trains the tricep at long muscle lengths doesn't mean that the most tension in that movement is at the longest muscle length. and that's where you can manipulate things with cables. So if you put that cable down low, kinda down by your like waist or whatever, maybe your knees even, the lower you go, the more short overloaded it's gonna be. Because remember that any time you're doing a single joint movement on cables, the point of maximum resistance is the point where your forearm is perpendicular to the cable. So if you set that cable directly at your shoulder, which is gonna be the bottom position of your overhead extension, then your forearm is literally perpendicular to the cable at the bottom of the rep. So that would be training it at long muscle lengths with the most tension in the length and position. If that cable is down lower, then the short position is going to be significantly harder as that's gonna be the point where the forearm gets more perpendicular to the cable. So I think that just goes into that kind of whole milieu of it's not just training at long muscle lengths, it's making sure that there's tension at the long muscle length. which is something that we'll see a lot with like an incline dumbbell curl, where people are like, the elbows behind the body, you're really stretching the bicep out. And then it's like, yeah, but there's no tension there because you're actually just going against gravity. And so I think it's really important when you're looking at that whole stew of arm training that you're working on getting tension at long muscle lengths, along with training at long muscle lengths, if that's a priority for you. But like going back to the cable thing, it's just cool that you can manipulate that with cables. And so that would be one of the main reasons why I think cables are such a great tool for tricep training in a commercial gym here. Aside from being able to line things up perfectly too. So like I was saying, if you're doing just a standard push down, your long head isn't going to be as activated as it will be if you have that nice cross cable set up where you're pulling your right arm from the left side and you're able to get that cable lined up perfectly with the path of the elbow there. So. That would be, yeah, jump on in, what you got. I just wanted to make a little interjection. Something that I did with biceps first, but actually was shown how to do it with triceps just last week, is using the prime short bar and then using cuffs that you wrap around the palm to line up better with the wrist with the elbow, with that elbow down by your side. So that was one that... I felt kind of dumb because I was already doing it with the biceps, you know, to line up my elbows a little bit better because I've been getting some pretty cranky joints on the inside of my elbows. And it worked wonderfully for the triceps as well to really kind of light up the long head in performing them that way. not pulling across the body, you're pulling straight down, but you have your arms at shoulder width, so it's in line with the elbow. Yeah, no that's dope. Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, totally, no, I love that. So I think when we're talking about training long head, you can train it long, you can train the length and position by putting the arm overhead like we talked about. That can be done unilateral or cross cable with both. It could also be done similarly to what you said, like you don't have to go cross cable. You could set up with a short bar, a long bar. You could have two cables that come out, but as long as those arms are overhead and the elbows are lined up in the scapular plane, you will be hitting the long head lengthened. Then your second one for the long head is gonna be elbows down by the side, and that's gonna be our short position there. So long head is pretty much taken care of between those two moves with the long, the lengthened position and the short position there. When we get into the medial head, this is going to be the one closest to the center of the body, medial toward the center, lateral toward the outside, and medial is primarily going to be hit through pressing movements where you're just extending at the elbow. So I think a perfect example of this would be like a close grip bench press. That is maybe like the prototypical movement where you're like that is going to shred the medial head of the tricep because the arms are staying in the same position. You're really just focusing on elbow extension. And a more precise version of that would be the kind of N1 medial tricep press, which I know you're a big fan of as well, where you have the two cables coming out. They kind of run along your traps as you face away from the cable machine. and you're literally just kind of bringing your hands into your neck and then extending your hands out through pressing away from your body. The same move could be emulated with dumbbells or with a barbell if you think of doing like a JM press, but maybe even instead of coming to the nose or the mouth, you kind of just jam press into the neck and press back out, then you're kind of emulating more of that like direct target to the medial head. even more so probably than you would get with the close grip bench press because you're getting a lot more chest involvement along with that if you're doing it as a close grip bench press. Anything to jump in on medial head? No, I mean, not that it holds much water at all, but that's one of my favorite positions to train for the triceps for sure. It just feels natural. It typically doesn't bother my elbows, which is nice, you know, in this stage. And I feel like it's pretty good from a time efficiency standpoint as well. Yeah, I guess I just like, like I don't perform that movement much and I think it's because I know that my medial head is getting trained through other pressing movements. So I just personally don't spend a lot of time wasted on direct medial head tricep work. The lateral head is an interesting one because the lateral head also gets trained through pressing movements, but I don't think it gets trained. quite as effectively as the medial head does. So the lateral head, like lateral I said, is on the outside of the arm. You had mentioned on a prior episode that I think you were sort of confusing the feeling of training the lateral head with the training of the long head because you were talking about how you were feeling it just above the elbow. Is that right? Am I recollecting this? it was from an Instagram post I made and then you helped correct me where I was confusing the I was confusing the media head for the Sorry, I was confusing the length the length of the long head for the media head with pressing head. Okay, okay. Well the lateral head is on the outside of the arm and it actually is, I think, responsible, one of the most important pieces responsible for that horseshoe look. I think when a lot of people are lacking the horseshoe, it's not that they're lacking medial head and in likely case they're not lacking long head either because a lot of people do like skull crushers and over the head tricep extensions and stuff like that. To me, I always see when people lack. the horseshoe, it seems to me like it's the lateral head that's lacking. And so there are two ways to train the lateral head. My favorite way is with cables, of course, and it's to stand facing away from the cable and have the arm coming across the neck to the other side. So when you're extending out, you're extending, say, with your right arm, but from your left side, and then extending out. I have plenty of videos on this on my YouTube page, so if you were to go to... I think you do on my YouTube page is just type in like lateral head or over shoulder tricep extension or something along those lines. You'll see a video demo of that. But I'm a huge fan of that movement. And then we'll get into this with the free weight one when we get to home gym. But there are alternatives that we can use with free weights to kind of emulate that same position over there. So kind of if I'm gonna summarize. full gym. It's it's long head work through overhead positioning and elbow down by the side, you get the length, the length and position the short position, you get the medial work through pressing, like close grip pressing or jam press type stuff. The further back you go with a jam press. So like if you if you go to your neck, you're going to get less long head than if you were to bring that jam press to your eyes or your forehead, or you know, at some point, it's no longer a jam press and it becomes. a skull crusher and then I don't know what you would even call it when you're doing a skull crusher that doesn't crush your skull, but it goes like all the way back behind your head because I think at that point now you're doing a lying version of a long head tricep movement. So there are many different planes in which you can put your body, but ultimately to train the long head, the arm just has to come over the body and you know, kind of behind your head a little bit. So yeah, anything else to add to full gym? commercial gym tricep training. Is there any other exercise that you would use to train the lateral head? And the reason I ask is I kind of have a brain disconnect in performing that movement. And potentially, maybe there are some listeners that do also. I have gotten it right in the past sometimes, but I do find it something that I cannot easily replicate for the lateral. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, that exercise certainly takes practice to get it right, because one of the big things you want to do is set your arm in the A -D ducted position across. So if you think about where the short position is for your chest, so you're doing a press round and you get to that short position where your arm is across your body and it's kind of like your bicep is running into your pec. If you set yourself in that position, and then you just, you almost hold your elbow in place and then you just extend from the elbow. That is the setup for that movement. And there is a decent amount of torso rotation that has to go in there too because you want that cable running pretty smoothly along your upper trap in between your kind of neck and your trap type area. So you do want to manipulate the height of the cable, your body position in relation to the cable, whether you twist a little bit, I find that helps too. It takes a little bit of messing around with as far as other movements that would train the lateral head of the tricep I was gonna get into this when we get into the home gym, but there's a movement called the the tape press Do you know this movement? I do, I, it's, is, with the dumbbells that kind of come out, like, yeah, okay. that's a tape press where you kind of start above like you're doing a bench press, but then instead of bringing the dumbbells down to your chest through dropping your elbows, you bring your hands into center together, almost like your knuckles are facing each other, like you're giving yourself daps, and then you kind of come back out again. And so that would be a dumbbell tape press. That is a great movement for lateral head, but it can be better if it's performed unilateral. So if you were to bring that dumbbell across where it can really almost come into the other side of your neck, because you're limited in how much range of motion you can get when you have two dumbbells, because you can only come to center. But if you're using one dumbbell, you can come all the way across and get a little bit more of that length and position as well. So I think with free weights, that one works quite well. And then, like I said, the lateral head does get trained through all pressing movements too. And so... we probably don't need to spend a ton of time and energy worried about isolating the lateral head unless you're at that point in your training career where you're like, I can tell for sure that my long head is really well developed and my medial head is really well developed, but my lateral head is lacking, you know, and to get to that point, I think you already have to have pretty well developed triceps anyways. So I just don't often see too many opportunities where I'm like that person really needs to spend some time isolating their. Yeah, that's well put. Cool. So as we jump into the home gym versions here, the home gym version, you know what? Before we leave commercial gym real quick, you've used, I think, that machine where it's like a skull crusher, but it's a machine where your elbows rest on a pad, and then you kind of like press away with the machine handles. What do you think of that machine? Okay, okay. I know some people have differing opinions on it. I've seen Ishak using it a lot recently and he seems to really like it. So I was just curious on your thoughts because that's another kind of press away movement that could be effective if it fits your body well. There is, so Jim Lecco makes some really good ones similar to that, but they, it's more of like an arcing setup where the start position is like here with your fists kind of at like your chin almost on the side. And then it's, you would then extend, you know, narrow to wide. And ironically, I actually, I tried to use it today. I got one set in. But I get very spicy triceps tendon. And it's, I mean, it's really loaded in that lengthened. And it might, I mean, my triceps are just like, do not or something bad is going to happen. So I listened to. Cool, interesting. Okay, so moving on to home gym. Basically all of those movement patterns that I mentioned that we do with cables, you really just try to emulate with dumbbells as best you can. At least when we talk about the long head, which I think is a suitable starting place here, the overhead one is basically the same with dumbbells. You take a dumbbell, you put it over your head, you kind of act like you're scratching your back, and then you extend out. The cool thing with the dumbbell is that it is already inherently lengthened overloaded. So you're training the long head at a long muscle length, but it's also maximal tension in the length and position because dumbbells fight gravity. So I'm a huge fan of that movement. I actually don't think there's much lost if you were stuck with dumbbells and you were training the long head lengthened. I think dumbbells are probably just as effective as cables, maybe slightly less gentle on the elbow joint. But as far as effectiveness of hypertrophy training goes, I think you're not really losing much there. The long head shortened is something that you cannot really emulate with dumbbells. And this is the thing with tricep training at home in general, is that it's really hard to train the short position of any of the tricep movements without bands. Luckily we have bands. With bands, you can emulate pretty much any cable movement. I've actually... Effectively taken two bands of the same resistance and set one up on one top of the power rack one on the other side of the power rack And then I've done cross cable tricep pushdowns with bands So same exact idea the easier simple version of this is to just take one band Loop it over the top of your power rack or your pull-up bar or whatever and then just do press downs with the band Obviously that doesn't line things up perfectly but it does allow you to train that short position with the elbow down by the side. Kind of one of those small sacrifices you make when training at home. But ultimately remembering that training at long muscle lengths and having primary tension in the long muscle length is going to be the most effective thing anyway. So whether you do banded pushdowns or not, you're probably just talking about the margins at that point. Anything on long head at home? Yeah, one thing I will say that you see more commonly people performing the overhead lengthened like bilaterally, you know, putting the dumbbell in between their hands. You're you're you're doing a disservice to what you could do by doing it unilaterally. You free up by like Brian said, with the tape press by not meeting at midline, you free up a lot of extra kind of range of motion. And another thing I see, even when people are doing it unilaterally is they kind of stop like here, you know, where like take advantage of that. I mean, that dumbbell will stretch the shit out of that tricep if you let it and you just get that extra like three, four inches of movement into that like deep stretch there, like take advantage of that. That it's it's like. I would say many times there's some pretty significant trade -offs, you know, from going from like the commercial facility to the garage and whatever, but I would say like the long training, the long head lengthened, like you kind of just very briefly alluded to before, I don't think there's too much of a trade -off for that specific exercise. Yeah. You bring up a really good point with kind of the different ways that people do these movements. So I think that there's important to put a tier system in place here. So if we say that the one arm version where you can really, you know, scratch your back and let that dumbbell pull your tricep down is the goat. That's the best one. I think the second best one would be using two dumbbells, one in each hand, and then being able to kind of emulate that movement the same way, kind of like a bilateral. the version you mentioned where you have one dumbbell and you're kind of holding it between your hands like doing a dumbbell pullover type position or whatever. That would be the least effective because that jams your body into this really tight space and doesn't allow your elbows to travel freely. So it's really hard to line up perfectly in the scapular position or the scapular plane. You'll often see people out much more in the frontal plane with the elbows pointing out to the sides more. And then if you try to get people to force their elbows in, it ends up really uncomfortable and it causes stress on the shoulder joint, the elbow joint, a number of different joint structures. So I really do not program that single dumbbell overhead extension ever. And I would prefer the unilateral one over the bilateral because of range of motion. But if you need to do the bilateral one, that's fine as well. It's also going to be lengthened overloaded. It's going to be a solid movement there too. Also to mention that you can do this with a barbell or an easy bar. I think that that's... Kind of obvious, but something to consider. It is not. I would put that I would put that better than the single dumbbell version where you're holding it with two hands, but probably not quite as good as using two dumbbells, one in each hand. And that I struggle with that because the two dumbbells has slightly less stability than you would get with using an easy bar or a barbell. But you're getting extra range of motion. Plus, you're getting the unilateral factor, which. I don't know about you, but anytime I do barbell or EZ bar tricep extensions, I always feel like one arm is pressing harder than the other arm. And I've noticed the same with clients too, where if you film it from behind, the bar almost looks tilted as it's being extended. And so I've just found that by using dumbbells and forcing each arm to work on its own, that there's less compensation occurring there. I would agree with that. I think most of us have some degree of wonkiness with a shoulder, you know, and that kind of exacerbates that wonkiness in that exercise, yeah. yeah, for sure. And then when we get into the lateral head and the medial head, there really isn't a lot of change here. Like we just talked about in the full gym section, you can do the lateral head by doing that tape press with the single arm where you come across the body. So if you missed that in the prior section, make sure you go check that out. That would be for kind of lateral head. And then as far as medial head, there's a plethora of options, right? Any pressing movement. So you could be doing a dumbbell bench press, an inclined dumbbell bench press, an overhead press. Any of those are gonna get your medial head pretty well. And then of course you can do direct medial head work like we discussed through JM presses at different positions. So you could JM press down to your neck, you could do your chin, your mouth, your nose. It could become a skull crusher and go to your forehead and then it's a little more long head. but you can do that JM press type movement with dumbbells or with barbell or easy bar or whatever. It doesn't really matter as long as you're emulating that position of kind of bringing the weights in closer to the neck or upper chest and then extending through the elbows from there. So I don't think I have a ton to add from there. Anything I'm missing? nothing that I can think of it's kind of ironic is it's a this is like one muscle group that things kind of are pretty much the same you know as you move through in the it's the positions right like if you can emulate the positions well and get creative like you're probably going to be able to find a pretty good stimulus for what you're looking for. yeah for sure I agree. And I will say that I don't think my triceps lack anything through free weight movements, especially because as we alluded to earlier, almost all free weight tricep movements are lengthened overloaded inherently. Which when we get into biceps next week or the week after, we'll find that most bicep movements are short overloaded inherently. But it's kinda cool that triceps are lengthened because, you're getting the most bang for your buck even if you're stuck with all free weights, you're still gonna get plenty of tricep development through that. One that we probably should have mentioned and didn't, but was alluded to is like pushups and dips. So pushups and dips are straight up pressing movements, right? They're like tricep pushups or close grip pushups or something like that. You're basically doing a close grip bench press or a JM press hybrid type movement. So any sort of pushup variation. would be great for home or even for commercial gym. I'm personally a huge fan of super setting push downs or overhead extensions. So something for the long head with like a close grip pushup. So I'll do my long head tricep work close to failure, usually bilateral because I'm going into pushups and then I'll immediately super set into pushups. And so you shred the long head with the first movement and then you get the medial and lateral heads through the pressing movement. And then obviously dips would accomplish the same thing. So dips are just an inverted pressing movement, just like a pushup would be or a close grip bench press. And I know you've built a lot of your tricep mass through dips in your early years. And so I think it's important to mention the efficacy of dips in general. Yeah, I'm going to be honest, if we would have made it through this episode and published it and forgot to include dips, I and then obviously someone would have someone would have pointed it out on YouTube and I would have been pretty damn embarrassed to be completely honest. Yeah, well I mean it's tough when you get into like the nitty -gritty of movement optimality and then you start thinking about what's optimal versus what was the thing that got us here. And in many cases it's the compoundish, more popularish movements that got you there and then you're kind of refining the castle through a lot of these more directed cable type movements or you know, dumbbell movements or whatever it is based on your equipment selection. Yeah, yeah, perfectly put. good, I'm glad we got dips in there. And tricep pushups. I guess for whatever reason, I personally prefer like a narrow grip or tricep style pushup over a dip. And I think that that is mostly related to comfort on my shoulders. And so dips are fine. Like I like dips, especially with body weight. I think dips are fine. I do notice my shoulders get a little bit cranky when I start loading up dips these days. And that might just be a product of being. 27 years into training or whatever. Yeah, I find I don't have a very large runway on weighted dips. And it's hard to say it's from the weighted dips. It could just be from a hard mess cycle. And shoulders are probably one of the most commonly aggravated muscles, or sorry, joints, potentially either right before or right after knees. But yeah, body weight seems to be a little bit more forgiving, unless you're one of those, what do they call them, the? Halisthenics people. the calisthenics people who are just doing insane amounts of weighted dips for three times per week, you know, but they've they've obviously unlocked something or probably just don't train a movement pattern that is typically what aggravates people's shoulders. Yeah, yeah. There was a podcast that Makoni did where he had Alex Leonidas on it. Alpha Strength, I think is his handle. Or Alpha Destiny, rather. And they were talking about these calisthenics people and how there's legitimately people doing sets of five to 10 reps with 225 pounds around their waist. And I mean, it's insane. I've put 135 on. That was the peak I've ever done, I think, for reps was 135. and just getting the belt around three plates and then standing up and waddling up to the dip bar with 135 pounds around my waist was insanely difficult. I could not imagine adding two more 45s to that. One of the, I mean, I would say one of the cool things about living in Bali is you get some kind of, I mean, you get a lot of the bullshit influencers and like awful people. You do get a fair amount of that, but you do get some pretty cool people coming. And when I was training at a different gym about a year and a half ago, there was a couple of dudes from France who were like the calisthenics guys. And one of them was like a world champion of it or whatever. I mean, this dude was fucking jacked. and I would watch them, they would be doing dips. I should not the one time he had five 20 kilo plates hanging from the dip belt and was doing like sets of like eight, eight to 12. Yeah. I mean, it was insane. They would be doing pull ups with three plates hanging and stuff like it was. It was cool to see from from like, you know, my outsider perspective. Yeah, those guys are super jacked too, at least from the waist up. Definitely less leg training going on there and that's, it's kinda like the inverse of why bikers have really small upper bodies because biking is a leg-powered sport and they don't want any extra mass on their upper body that could inhibit them. Whereas these calisthenics guys are the opposite. They need all the mass in the upper body but having leg mass inhibits their ability to do more with their upper body. So it would be irresponsible of me to not also include that on multiple occasions, there's two of these French dudes that I remember, I saw them on multiple occasions back squatting 405 plus for reps barefoot. Yeah. fuck me then. That's wild. All right, well, as we jump into the dumbbell and bands only program, I honestly don't think this changes almost nearly at all from the home gym, CrossFit gym style programming. The only difference is you don't have access to the barbell or EZ bar. but all of those dumbbell movements we mentioned in the home gym section all apply here. So overhead gets you the length and position with the one arm or two arm dumbbell overhead extensions. You have the bands for the push downs to get the long head shortened. You have the dumbbell tape press across the body to get the lateral head. You have the JM press and all the different variations of pressing movements and pushups to get your medial head. And it's honestly totally effective. And that's the great thing about triceps, like I said earlier, is just that all of these movements are inherently gonna be lengthened overloaded because it's free weights and it's dumbbells and you're fighting gravity, et cetera. And so tricep training can be really, really effective even with limited equipment at home. Like literally with just dumbbells and bands, I think you could end up with 95, 98 % of the tricep development that you would get with. with a full gym. So I think this is one muscle group where you don't really need to feel like you're losing a lot if you're limited in equipment. Yeah. And from a kind of a practicality standpoint, I know in certain situations with clients and stuff, I've done programs where like we can do, you know, two or three sessions per week in like, you know, the, the, the normal gym, a commercial gym, and then we need to program, you know, a session or two to at home. This, this like triceps would be a wonderful addition to train at home. There are garage gym with limited equipment. Cause like Brian said, there's very little trade off in that context. Yep, 100%. It's like you could do a lot of shortened tricep work if you needed to at the gym. And then knowing that the stuff at home is gonna be primarily lengthened, you could save like one of the more damaging days for lengthened work at home there. And you know, kind of like, you could do the same thing with glutes, where you're like, you know, training RDLs and split squats and lunges and back squats and all these things are gonna get the glutes lengthened. So they're gonna get pretty sore from a lot of these movements. But maybe if you're have a day where you have access to gym equipment where you may not otherwise Then you can go in there and you can do some like machine glute bridges on a Smith machine Maybe something like that. You can do a variety of cable kickbacks for your glutes some some ab ductions where your knees go out So so I do think that there's a decent amount of glute stuff You can do that short overloaded if you're in a gym. It's kind of the inverse of what's happening here with triceps. So I So yeah, definitely just, I think triceps are an awesome muscle group. One of my favorite muscle groups to train. Certainly like training them more than biceps. And glad we mentioned dips too. Anything else to add? I don't think so. I think this one really came together as pretty awesome. And it kind of even for me, it was like becoming kind of more insightful as we went on and we're really digging into the weeds of it. I'm like, yeah, that doesn't really change anything. Like it's, I think it's pretty cool. And it was kind of eyeopening for myself as we progressed through the episode. Cool. Well, that's all we got. Hopefully we'll be back next week with either biceps or some other cool topic. that we will. So as always, guys, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week.