Pythons. Guns. Canons. There are many words that people call their arms, more specifically, muscular arms. Arms are probably the most trained body part in the gym. Men and women alike want those toned, muscular arms. Yes, women too. Arm muscularity signifies strength and power. The arms are highly used every day to do a lot of different things. The main physiological functions are pushing and pulling, so an arm that has muscle and size is one that appears to be able to push a lot and pull a lot.
A huge contradiction however in arm training is the time, energy, and focus put into biceps training as opposed to triceps. A lot of people when they think “arm training” instantly think of the biceps. Grabbing some dumbbells or an EZ bar and get curling. Surely this will get one’s arms nice and big.
Not really.
Imagine that you want to build the biggest ice cream cone. You have two parts of course: the cone and ice cream that goes on it. How do you think that ice cream cone would look if you focused on the cone more so than the ice cream? You got the biggest cone possible because, it’s an ice cream cone, right? And your ice cream scoops were nothing impressive, or sadly do not even compare to the cone. The ice cream is what makes the cone, not the cone itself.
This is how your arms are designed.
The triceps are make up about 2/3 of the arm. So, you want big arms? Get big triceps! You want to fill out a shirt sleeve or even make it look like it could rip at the seam? Get big triceps! To train the triceps properly (or any muscle for that matter) you have to know the anatomical and physiological layout of them. The triceps brachii muscle (Latin for "three-headed muscle of the arm") is a large muscle on the back of the upper limb of many vertebrates. It is the muscle principally responsible for extension of the elbow joint (straightening of the arm). This group of muscles as stated take up a huge portion of the arm, so by properly training them it vital to your “gun show” attendance in the gym.
Here is a list of the some pretty effective triceps movements for size:
- Close-Grip Bench Press.
- Dip. There are two types of dips you can do: the bench and upright dip. ...
- Dumbbell Overhead Triceps Press.
- Lying Triceps Extension (Skullcrusher)
- Triceps Pushdown.
- Single Arm Dumbbell Extensions (gets a better stretch on each arm)
Much of properly training a muscle when doing any form of isolation movements is range of motion, or “stretching” the muscle during the negative part of the motion which is when the muscle is bringing the weight to the body instead of pushing it away (which is the positive part of the rep). By stretching that muscle out and getting good form, more fibers are broken down and blood flow is increased which leads to more fibers having the potential of being rebuilt when protein synthesis in engaged after your workout. Always focus on stretching out those triceps when training them and focus on a weight to do it properly.
Your shirts will hate you but you will need to put your veterinarian on speed dial because your pythons will be sick!
