Transcription
If you're a natural and your triceps aren't growing, it's not your genetics, it's your intensity. My entire tricep routine lasts only three to four minutes. That's right, 3 to 4 minutes. I'm not going to look like this, but I can still train them hard with no elbow pain at 51 years old. And what I'm about to show you will probably change the way you train your arms forever.
For my natural brothers and sisters in iron, if your tricep workouts are long, painful, and wreck your elbows, you're doing it wrong. And here's the problem. It's not your fault. Most of the bodybuilding information you get come from men and women who use steroids. That's just a fact. Steroids increase recovery, reduce inflammation, and also blunts pain, which means that enhanced lifters can tolerate more volume and more repeated joint stress than a natural lifter can. So, when natural athletes copy that style of training, they often end up with sore elbows, poor recovery, and triceps that still don't grow.
I know firsthand where it's like to listen to this kind of advice, as is how I started off. I did loads of sets and loads of exercise in my triceps. At 16 years old, after 2 years of training, my triceps weren't particularly impressive, but my elbows already started to hurt at 16 years old. So, I stopped following marketing based muscle magazines and started instead studying how muscles actually grow and put together a training system specifically designed for those of us who don't have a chemical safety net. It's built around the idea of unaccustomed stimulus, variety, intensity, and recovery. So, you can train harder, grow bigger arms, and still be lifting and making gains decades from now.
Triceps are called triceps for a reason. They have three distinct heads and understanding them is important if you want to maximize your result. Let's break it down as simply as possible. First, you have the long head of the triceps. The long head responds best when your arm is overhead or stretched behind you. Think about exercises like overhead tricep extensions for example. And this is the head that adds a good amount of size to the back of your arm. Secondly, you have the lateral head of the triceps. The lateral head gives that outer for shoe look and responds well to pressing and strong extension. Third is the medial head. This one sits deeper unls and works almost all the time anytime you straighten your arm.
Now, most conventional routines tell you to do two or three tricep exercises every workout. And for natural lifters, that's completely unnecessary. In fact, it often creates diminishing returns. Here's the thing. Most people only need one intense direct tricep exercise per week. Why? Because your triceps are already involved in pressing for chest and shoulders. And so you don't need endless direct work on your triceps. What you need is unaccustomed stimulus, take it to the point of overload followed by adequate recovery.
And before you say, wait a minute, there are three heads. Shouldn't I isolate each one of them every workout? Absolutely not. That's not how muscles work. as every tricep exercise that you do involves all three heads. You can't do a tricep exercise and just use one head. That's impossible. So you don't have to target every indual one every time you train them. The key is to rotate and keep on changing exercises over time. So you keep on stimating tricep muscles differently with unaccustomed civilis over the course of weeks, which means your triceps keep on growing with no plateaus and most importantly reduces the risk of overuse injuries.
Overuse injury doesn't occur from one bad rep. They come from doing too much too often for too long. If you keep repeating the same exercises with too much volume, your elbows eventually will pay the price. Rotating exercises helps not just by providing unaccustomed stimulus to the growth response, but it also protects your joints, which going to allow you to keep on training hard well into your golden years.
Now, stay with me cuz this is the part that most natural lifters never hear. Remember this. If the weights, reps, execution, exercise feel too familiar, then your body has no reason whatsoever to adapt. That's why you have to rotate tric exercises from week to week while keeping your intensity brutally high. And if your last reps look just as clean as easy as your first reps, your body's already adapted what you're doing, and you're also not training hard enough. And if you can do more than one direct tricer exercise after training your chest, there's a high likelihood you're simply not training hard enough as very few can do so and only after years of high intensity training. And remember, your trics are already working hard during your chest workout and your shoulder presses. And that's another reason why was a naturally intense high intensity training. We make sure our 3-day split allows for full recovery for those smaller muscles. And now we're going to show you what those tricep sets should look like and also what real tricep training intensity should look like.
Triceps are always trained on day three after chest and biceps. Okay, now let's show you exactly what those exercises look like. And for today, we're going to be doing overhead tricep extensions only because it's one of my absolute favorites because it starts with the long head and the entire triceps in a stretch position. And the whole idea actually intense is we always try to maximize on that stretch. So starting off nice and simple, easy form, 60 lbs up and down. 1. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Good. No rest. Going up in weight. Second set. Right into it. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15. No rest. Last set. Increase weight. Last set. 80 lbs. All out. No rest. One. Hold. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Up. Down. And hold. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Up. Down. Hold. One, two, three, four, five. Up. Five. One. One, two, three, FOUR. Last one. One, two, three, FOUR, FIVE. FAILURE. Keep going again. 60 lbs. One 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. And that's what real intensity should look like.
If you're training at that kind of intensity and you're really going to momentary muscular failure and beyond after doing a chest workout, it should be impossible to realistically do another set or another exercise with that kind of intensity. And that's the whole idea. It's one exercise all out. First warm warm up. Second one, feel it out. Last one. Use all the intensity techniques possible to really go all out with no rest between sets. So, you're maximizing the intensity, but you're also maximizing the amount of blood going to your joints. So, you're in a safer place when you're going all out. And bear in mind since every single workout's different, I will probably not do this exercise again for another several months as every single time I train, I'm going to do something different as that's one of the central ideas behind naturally intense high intensity training.
Now, that's what intensity should look like. Three sets going all out. And the fact is that entire workout last 2 minutes 37 seconds. Think about that. That's a lot less strength for your joints while also delivering the stimulus you need to make those muscles grow. Now understand this. I use a lot of weight when I'm training and you don't have to. The whole idea is don't try to copy my workout in terms of exactly what I did but to understand the principle and bear in mind as well to make sure you always have unaccustomed stimulus. Every single workout is different. So take these principles adapt to your training and also make sure you're resting and recovering just as hard as you're training. And if you want to learn more about absolutely intense or you want to train with us, links are below. Again, free set. First set's a warm-up, second set the peeler, last set going all out. That's all you need. And it's been able to help so many people over the years and also help me as well keep on training hard as I get older without joint pain because the amount of time actually spent training is so small. And very important to complete the whole arm training series, make sure you watch this video here on bicep training as I'll give you a full understanding of exactly how the naturally intense principles work to get better results in less time painfree. Thanks for tuning in. nor did I believe in you.