The Long Head Plays Vital Role in Increasing the Size of Your Arm. Henceforth, It’s Recommended That You Prioritize Long Head in Your Triceps Exercises
If you’re someone who’s training for some time or have a good experience working out, you know how triceps plays a critical role in making your arms bigger and more defined. Yes, if you’re wondering about having a good-sized arm, the triceps play a significant role. Let’s find out some of the best exercise for triceps long head.
The triceps is made up of three heads:
- The Long Head
- The Lateral head
- The Medial head
Among these three heads, to be precise, the long head is the biggest. Henceforth, if you prioritize your triceps long head and make it stronger, you’ll likely have your arm appear bigger and stronger.
All three heads of your triceps work together whenever you extend your elbow joint or carry out any pressing exercise movement. But, if you select certain triceps exercises, it’s possible to focus on your upper arm and emphasize one head of the triceps at a time. For example, by focusing on exercise for triceps long head, you’ll more likely activate your triceps long head than the other two.
Here’s Some of the Best Exercise for Triceps Long Head
Below are the triceps long head exercises that you should prioritize to make your arm appear stronger and bigger:
- Low Cable Overhead Triceps Extension
- Overhead EZ Bar Triceps Extensions
- Close Grip Pushups
- Standing Barbell Kickbacks
- Incline DB Triceps Kickbacks
- Behind The Neck Press
- Incline DB Overhead Extensions
These are some of the triceps long head exercises that focus mainly on your long head along with the other two. By employing these triceps exercises, you’ll certainly activate the long head more than before.
1. Low Cable Overhead Triceps Extension
Overhead cable triceps extension, also called low cable overhead triceps extensions, focuses on your triceps long head when your arms are in a stretched position while increasing the muscle activation and range of motion. You’ve multiple-choice to do this exercise, such as using straight or EZ bar, but it’s recommended and even more comfortable when done using rope handle.
Steps for Performing Exercise
- Keep your feet shoulder-width apart and stand straight while keeping your back straight and core tight.
- Get into starting position by grabbing rope extensions from the end using both your hands while making your palms facing up and pull the rope above your head.
- In an arc motion, slowly lower the rope behind your head. If done correctly, you’ll feel isolation and stretch in your triceps muscles, especially the long head.
- Stay in that position for a couple of seconds, then slowly get back to the starting position by raising the rope back up.
- Repeat and complete your desired reps and set.
2. Overhead EZ Bar Triceps Extensions
You can use a straight bar if you want, but EZ – bar will be more comfortable, and it’ll even take the stress off from your elbows and wrists. Likewise, you can do it by seating as well as standing.
For making overhead EZ bar triceps extensions more effective for your triceps or, say, the long head of your triceps, it’s best to keep your arms close to your ears. Often called French press, it is a combined exercise of skull crushers and overhead extensions, which is good for the lateral head triceps.
Furthermore, the extended range of motion you get with the help of the EZ-bar helps to target and strengthening the long head of your triceps more.
Steps for Performing Exercise
- Get EZ Bar, sit on an upright bench, or if you want, slightly inclined.
- Go for a narrow grip overhand for grabbing the EZ bar. Some even use false grip by keeping their thumbs aligned with the fingers instead of wrapped around the bar. So, it’s your choice.
- Keeping your triceps engaged and elbows tucked in, and pull the bar overhead.
- Without moving your upper arms from the upright position, slowly lower the EZ bar behind the neck until you feel the stretch within your triceps.
- Once the EZ bar is lowered, hold it, and then pull back until you feel your arms extended. But, again, be careful that you don’t fully extend your elbows and maintain the tension.
Lastly, to overload this exercise movement, it’s better you focus on increasing repetitions instead of adding more weights. Because if you try to go heavier with this, you can easily trade the quality and form of exercise while increasing the chances of injury.
3. Close Grip Pushups
It’s another triceps long head exercise that you can do at home with your body weight. Although it’s easy to forget exercise, it doesn’t require the use of dumbbells, barbells, or weight machines to pack on mass. Instead, it’s a humble pushup exercise that you do by keeping your grip close—popularly known as diamond pushups. Lastly, it’s an effective bodyweight exercise which is also a good exercise for triceps long head.
Steps for Performing Close-Grip Pushups
- Get into plank position while keeping your wrists underneath your shoulders and fingertips pointing forward. Ensure your neck and back are in a neutral position and your spine is not arch or rounded. Also, ensure your core is engaged so that you can maintain proper form.
- For performing close-grip pushups, lower your hands down to the ground while keeping your elbows close to your ribcage. Ensure your spine is in a neutral position in an entire movement, and your core is engaged.
- Once your hands lower, push your hands from the ground, straighten your arms, and get back to the starting position.
- While straightening your arms move your shoulders outside, and let your elbows move as wide as possible when you lower down into a pushup position while keeping your spine and neck in a neutral position.
- Again, push your hands from the ground, straighten your arm, and get back to starting position. It’ll be considered as one rep. Continue till you don’t complete your set. For beginners, it’s recommended that you go for two sets of five to eight reps. If you’re advanced, then go according to your workout session.
4. Standing Barbell Kickbacks
Standing barbell kickbacks is an exercise that was usually popular among old-school bodybuilders. It’s a shoulder extension exercise that’s a closes thing to move and isolate the long head of the triceps. Though it’s a strange exercise and doesn’t have a big movement, but it works effectively on the long head of the triceps while keeping aside the other two heads of the triceps, the lateral head and the medial head.
Steps for Performing Standing Barbell Kickbacks
- Stand with your feet, shoulder feet apart. Now, hold the barbell at the backside with palms down or a pronated grip while keeping your core tight.
- Lift the bar away and out of your body from the backside while keeping your arms straight without locking it. Likewise, try to lift the barbell as high as possible.
- Lower the bar, complete one rep and repeat another repetition until you complete the set.
- Perform this exercise for higher repetitions using lightweight. Focus on getting the pump and burn.
5. Incline DB Triceps Kickbacks
Yes, overhead triceps exercises effectively stimulate the triceps long head. But incline dumbbell triceps kickbacks aren’t something anyone should overlook. It’s also among the best triceps long head exercises that target and entirely focus the long head.
When you perform this triceps exercise, you must maintain an incline position as gravity plays a critical role in the effectiveness of this exercise. It’s recommended that you use the bench as it’ll help to focus on the quality of movement without being worried about the stability.
Steps for Performing Incline DB Triceps Kickbacks
- Get an incline bench, adjust it at 45 – degree angle, and lay down on it with your chest. Keep your core tight and spine straight, and maintain that posture while lying down.
- Hold the dumbbells with both your hands and tuck both your elbows into the sides.
- Extend elbows and straighten your arms till it gets parallel with the body. Hold for a second and squeeze the muscles at the top and ensure you got a maximum contraction.
- Slowly lower the dumbbells and get back to the starting position while keeping your upper arms still throughout the execution of an exercise.
6. Behind the Neck Press
Yes, it’s a shoulder workout, and we’re talking about triceps long head exercises. Many might not know, but the overhead press, especially behind the neck press, is quite effective for the triceps long head. It’s an ideal go-to exercise for those who love press movements, and it’s primarily shoulder exercise. So, it’s a good exercise for the shoulder as well.
Though, there’s a myth running around that it’s not good for shoulders. But the reality is that if you have severe shoulder mobility issues or shoulder injury, pain, or a total newbie when it comes to workout, then behind the neck press isn’t good to consider. Lastly, if you want an alternative, you can go for a regular overhead barbell press instead of behind the neck, and it’ll work fine, too.
Steps for Performing Behind the Neck Press
- Hold the barbell behind your upper back in a standing or seated position.
- Keep shoulder width or slightly narrow grip for maximizing triceps stimulation. Now, bring down the barbell to the shoulders and back while keeping your core tight and chest lifted.
- Press the weight upward till you reach overhead until arm’s length. Fully extend your elbows, but avoid locking.
- Lower the weight back down to your neck carefully and repeat the movement till you complete the set.
- Avoid bringing your head forward and instead try to pull your shoulders and arms backward.
7. Incline DB Overhead Extensions
It’s an isolation workout for triceps that works great for your triceps long head. It’s one of the helpful exercises that you can use to build your triceps size and strength. An incline dumbbell overhead extension is a variation of lying dumbbell triceps extensions that you perform by keeping a slight incline position. Likewise, the incline position in incline dumbbell overhead extensions increases the range of motion while allowing you to stretch a little extra on the triceps at the bottom.
Steps for Performing Incline DB Overhead Extensions
- Get an adjustable bench and slightly incline it around 25 to 35 degrees.
- Grab the dumbbell according to your strength level.
- Lay back on the bench with the weights close to the chest. After keeping your back flat against the pad, press the dumbbell to lockout with a neutral grip.
- Now, bring down the dumbbells towards your shoulder by unlocking the elbows and maintaining a neutral grip.
- Once the forearm reaches parallel or slightly below that, get the dumbbell back to the starting position by extending your elbows and flexing the triceps.
- Repeat the movement and complete the set with your desired number of reps.
Here’s How You Can Target Triceps Long Head More Efficiently
Below are different strategies that you can apply in your training to grow your triceps long head muscles:
- Train triceps twice per week. It’ll stimulate better growth. Triceps are a smaller muscle group, which recovers faster, so hitting triceps twice in a week by keeping a two-to-three-day difference in between won’t overtrain you.
- Avoid training your triceps after chest or shoulder sessions because the triceps muscles get involved as secondary muscles when you train your shoulders and chest.
- Make a routine where on one day, you focus only on mass building exercises for triceps, and on another triceps session, you focus only on overhead movements.
- Make triceps long head exercise a priority and build an entire session surrounding it.
- Don’t stop at failure and try some force reps.
- Go for different intensity booster methods for your triceps, such as forced reps, drop-set, pause method, superset, etc.
Closing Thoughts on Exercise for Triceps Long Head
All triceps exercise works on overall triceps. But if you’re interested in building bigger arms, you should be more focused on triceps long head muscles. Yes, triceps make your arms appear bigger, but its credit goes more to triceps longer head. Henceforth, if you give little extra attention to triceps long head exercises, you’ll be able to make a significant difference in your arm size. Here we’ve mentioned the seven exercises for triceps long head. We hope it proves helpful to you. Good luck!
