1,000 Health and Fitness Tips #0017: Overhead Triceps Variations
Why Overhead Triceps Exercise Variations Might Be Superior For Muscle Growth
The triceps brachii is a bi-articular muscle group, which means it crosses over two joints: the elbow AND the shoulder.
Specifically, the triceps brachii is involved in extending the elbow (i.e. straightening the arm) and extending the shoulder (i.e. pulling your upper arm down and behind you)—the long head of the triceps brachii is specifically involved in the shoulder extension piece.
If you take the inverse of these movements, this means that you can stretch the triceps by flexing at the elbow (i.e. bending the arm) and flexing at the shoulder (i.e. bringing the upper arm over your head).
For these reasons, doing overhead versions of triceps exercises—such as overhead cable extensions and skull-crushers—will provide a deeper stretch than versions where your shoulder is more extended or neutral, like traditional triceps extensions.
And, this is valuable because some research suggests that increasing the stretch on the target muscle is useful for building muscle. (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII) In addition, in one study where researchers specifically tested overhead vs. neutral tricep extensions, they found that the former led to 1.4X more total triceps brachii muscle growth than the latter (+19.9% vs. +13.9% respectively.) (III)
Does this mean neutral triceps extensions don’t work? No, but I do think that overhead triceps extensions tend to be superior for building muscle—at least, based on the data I have seen thus far.