Fadi
...
Remember the first time you trained a body part, if it was legs then you more than likely ended up limping to your car; and if it was calves, then your feet shook as you pressed on that break pedal whilst driving home from the gym.
What does it; what causes our muscles to become jelly like and out of control? You’ll find your answer deep in your nervous system. Without the firing of our nerves, not only our brain messages would not get through to our muscles, but no contraction would ever take place. Remember the calves and the break pedals? Well, too much activation of the nervous system took place there and more importantly, it took place in a way that the nerves have not been accustomed to…yet!
Watch a new trainee attempt a “simple” barbell bench press. What do you observe taking place there? Personally, all I see is a wobble followed by more of the same.
Why?
Two reasons:
Now let us come to our topic at hand and see if we can shock our triceps muscle into some new growth. The formula for growth is really simple; cause a stimulus that would force an adaptation to take place, then seat back and watch the magic take place. Not withstanding the recovery package has been put into place, i.e. eating, sleeping, resting, and most importantly, having peace of mind.
To ask you do a triceps exercise that you’ve been doing all the time would simply defeat the purpose of this small article of mine. What I would need from you here is to perform something unusual, something that would make your triceps go: “WTF JACK”!!!
Enter medicine-ball push-ups. Scratching your head? No need to unless you’ve been doing it all along.
This exercise is not only dynamic in nature, but it’s also functional. In simple English it means that when you work your triceps in everyday living, you work them whilst at the same time working your core muscles. To make it even clearer, let’s say you want to pick something heavy off the floor, what you do is simply squat down then use your biggest muscles of all (the glutes and legs) to help you lift it up. Now your abs and lower back (stabilising muscles here), although they didn’t do any lifting, they made sure that your legs and butt had a solid/rigid base which ultimately enabled you to use your working muscles ( legs and glutes) to lift that object. Now compare that to (say) a leg press, where your abs and back are happy to just “seat” there whilst your working muscles are pressing the weights up.
Similarly, performing triceps on a medicine-ball (an unstable and moving object) requires tremendous involvement from your stabiliser muscles just so you don’t collapse over that ball. And since your triceps have never worked under such “loose sand” type of an environment, they would really have to adapt. Which takes me back to the formula I presented for you above, where stimulation (the actual exercise) is done in such a way as to force an adaptation to take place. Adaptation is the scientific way of saying getting huge as far as we bodybuilders are concerned for now. So give it a try and don’t be afraid to make the medicine ball your friend, one of your tools in your quest to some big ass muscles!
PS: Now I do realise that some of you are mighty strong and can handle some serious weights whilst doing triceps. However what I would suggest to you here is that you perform 3x25 and when you can comfortably do these, then (and only then) add some resistance. This resistance can come in two ways:
Fadi.
What does it; what causes our muscles to become jelly like and out of control? You’ll find your answer deep in your nervous system. Without the firing of our nerves, not only our brain messages would not get through to our muscles, but no contraction would ever take place. Remember the calves and the break pedals? Well, too much activation of the nervous system took place there and more importantly, it took place in a way that the nerves have not been accustomed to…yet!
Watch a new trainee attempt a “simple” barbell bench press. What do you observe taking place there? Personally, all I see is a wobble followed by more of the same.
Why?
Two reasons:
- The nervous system is new to the task at hand
- The stabilising muscles likewise, are also new to the task
Now let us come to our topic at hand and see if we can shock our triceps muscle into some new growth. The formula for growth is really simple; cause a stimulus that would force an adaptation to take place, then seat back and watch the magic take place. Not withstanding the recovery package has been put into place, i.e. eating, sleeping, resting, and most importantly, having peace of mind.
To ask you do a triceps exercise that you’ve been doing all the time would simply defeat the purpose of this small article of mine. What I would need from you here is to perform something unusual, something that would make your triceps go: “WTF JACK”!!!
Enter medicine-ball push-ups. Scratching your head? No need to unless you’ve been doing it all along.
This exercise is not only dynamic in nature, but it’s also functional. In simple English it means that when you work your triceps in everyday living, you work them whilst at the same time working your core muscles. To make it even clearer, let’s say you want to pick something heavy off the floor, what you do is simply squat down then use your biggest muscles of all (the glutes and legs) to help you lift it up. Now your abs and lower back (stabilising muscles here), although they didn’t do any lifting, they made sure that your legs and butt had a solid/rigid base which ultimately enabled you to use your working muscles ( legs and glutes) to lift that object. Now compare that to (say) a leg press, where your abs and back are happy to just “seat” there whilst your working muscles are pressing the weights up.
Similarly, performing triceps on a medicine-ball (an unstable and moving object) requires tremendous involvement from your stabiliser muscles just so you don’t collapse over that ball. And since your triceps have never worked under such “loose sand” type of an environment, they would really have to adapt. Which takes me back to the formula I presented for you above, where stimulation (the actual exercise) is done in such a way as to force an adaptation to take place. Adaptation is the scientific way of saying getting huge as far as we bodybuilders are concerned for now. So give it a try and don’t be afraid to make the medicine ball your friend, one of your tools in your quest to some big ass muscles!
PS: Now I do realise that some of you are mighty strong and can handle some serious weights whilst doing triceps. However what I would suggest to you here is that you perform 3x25 and when you can comfortably do these, then (and only then) add some resistance. This resistance can come in two ways:
- Have someone add a 20kg (or whatever you wish) on your back
- Get yourself a back pack (another bodybuilder’s tool) and place in it the desired amount of weight discs.
Fadi.
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