Having previously gone over the best tricep workout, it’s time to review what is arguably the best tricep exercise for mass. There are so many exercises to choose from for an effective workout that some may feel overwhelmed when looking for exercises to create their own efficient routine, whether it be calisthenics or weightlifting based.
Now keep in mind that to have an effective mass and strength building routine, it’s important to include more than one exercise, so that you may target a specific muscle from different angles, and also as to work any muscles that otherwise wouldn’t have done much work with one single exercise.
That being said, we can however narrow the immensely long list of tricep exercises down to a few of the top performers, and try to pick out which exercises will do the most in terms of size and strength gains in your triceps.
Compound vs Isolation
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In any exercise routine, compound exercises should always serve as the foundation of your workout, followed by one or two isolation exercises to complete the job. They will recruit the largest amount of motor units, stimulate a larger amount of muscle fibers, and provide a greater challenge to your central nervous system; which is why they should be done first.
To give you an example, a bodyweight pushing session could look something like this:
- Handstand pushups
- Dips
- Pushups
- Tricep extensions
This workout by the way, is in itself already a very complete upper body pushing routine which covers all the essential elements to build powerful triceps. For the sake of narrowing the article down to the least amount of exercises possible though, we will pick just one compound, and one isolation exercise, and go into further detail about why they are effective, and how you can scale them to be easier or harder.
Best Tricep Exercise For Mass – Compound
The recommended exercise in our best tricep building compound exercise section is the gymnastics rings dip. The exercise is a step up from the already highly effective parallel bar dip, and due to the extra stabilization required, will recruit more muscle fibers and require more strength to perform, thus, also developing more strength and muscle mass than a regular parallel bar dip.
This movement is a very beneficial one; working the chest, shoulders, triceps, and a bunch of stabilizers all at once. It’s very easy to augment it’s difficulty, and track your progress. You can make this exercise harder by the two following methods:
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- Adding weight through the use of a dip belt or weighted vest
- Increasing forward lean
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Watch the video above for details on how to do a dip properly, and how to target more triceps or chest by tweaking the way the movement is performed.
The gymnastics rings dip will pack solid mass onto your triceps, and can take you very far in terms of strength gains. This exercise is the bodyweight variant of the also very effective bench press (which can be made into a greater tricep exercise by doing it with a close grip).
Best Tricep Exercise For Mass – Isolation
As far as isolation exercises go, the bodyweight tricep extension is one of the best isolation exercises you could possibly do to develop tricep mass, and even as some form of prehabilitation and strengthening of the elbows.
This can be a though exercise, especially for beginners and should be progressed on slowly, to avoid any chance of developing a potential elbow injury. It will do wonders in terms of size development in your triceps, and will help to finish off you arms completely on a pushing or triceps dedicated session.
For this exercise you may also further increase the difficulty through the following methods:
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- Adding weight through the use of a weighted vest
- Increasing lean (the closer you are to being parallel to the gorund, the harder it will be)
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Another great thing about this movement is that it can be performed pretty much anywhere. If you dont have access to a gym, low pull up bar, or even just a pair of gymnastics rings, you can simply use a bench, a chair against a wall, and many other preferably heavier objects that you can lay your hands on and place your head slightly underneath like in the form demonstration in the video above.
If you prefer using weights, the skullcrusher with an ez curl bar is also effective, and mimics the function of this exercise to a very close degree.
Conclusion
So there you go; two highly effective tricep strength and size builders which alone can give you amazing results. How much a certain exercise works and affects someone varies from person to person, and also depends on other factors such as diet, sleep, recovery and more.
This is why by no means you have to stick to the same exercises for months and years on; try different things to see how your body responds, yet knowing that to successfully progress, you shouldn’t be changing your routine every single week and your workouts should have a sort of backbone or general structure.
When you are a beginner, it will be even more effective for you to pick out two exercises per muscle group and stick to that for a few months. As you get stronger and more experienced, it is important that you always work on the basics as they are the foundation of the more advanced exercises or exercises variations.
