Tricep kickbacks

[JoeJustice]

Greg,

In a thread over on John's forum I mentioned an e-mail from Men's Health regarding bad exercises. Here's what it said about triceps kickbacks...


Lose it: triceps kickbacks. The angle of your arm doesn't let you overload your tricep, and puts stress on your shoulder and bicep instead. Replace it with close-grip bench presses. You'll be able to put more weight on the triceps, meaning you'll build more, faster.


It mentions putting too much load on shoulders and biceps and not enough on triceps to work. So I'm wondering do, you feel the same way about VRT tricep kickbacks? Obviously there is no load from weights, so does this ineffective weight movement become effective when done VRT style?

-Joe

[Hank_Z]

Joe,

My experience with VRT tricep kickbacks has absolutely no similarity to what was posted about using weights for these. The VRT gives me a great pump. I love the VRT tricep kickbacks...almost addicting.

One difference: I've found that I get the best tricep resistance and pump when I hang my arm at my side. I raise my forearms (without resistance) and the apply the tension to my triceps as I lower my forearm all the way down.

When you picture it, it's more of a "tricep kickdown than a "kickback."

I'll be interested to know if you and others also get the best kickback this way and how effective they are for you.

- Hank

[revwally]

When I was doing triceps kickbacks, I ended up using weights that -- yes -- ended up with the problems you said.

having said that, I found the same effect from "rope" tricep press-downs. This is a movement that is done in front of a pulldown bar -- but you use a rope. This means that your hands go through the natural rotation that I was doing when doing the kickbacks. The advantage is that you can do both arms at the same time, and you have a longer range of motion. The disadvantage was that i had to use a weight belt to keep me down when doing lower reps.

So now, this is the way that I work my tris VRT -- works great.

wally

[Hank_Z]

I've noticed that I get the best triceps kickback reps when I move my arm about 6 inches away from my body.

As I mentioned earlier, I get better workouts when I put my elbow at waist level and do "kickDOWNS," rather than kickBACKS.

- Hank