Why Most Tricep Programs Fail

Before getting into the exercises, you need to understand a fundamental piece of anatomy that most lifters completely overlook. Your triceps have three heads: the long head, the lateral head, and the medial head. Most people know that the triceps cross the elbow joint, but the long head also crosses the shoulder joint. This means that if you are only training the triceps with your arms in a neutral or lowered position, you are leaving significant gains on the table by never fully stretching or loading the long head through its complete range of motion.

There is also no single exercise that fully trains all three heads simultaneously. Every tricep exercise has a bias toward one or two of the heads, which is exactly why exercise variety is not optional — it is a structural requirement for complete tricep development. Whether your goal is to increase your bench press, build athletic performance in a sport, or simply develop thick, well-rounded arms, the five exercises below will cover every angle.

Exercise 1: Close Grip Bench Press

The close grip bench press is the cornerstone of any serious tricep training program. As a compound, barbell-based movement, it allows you to move significantly more load than any isolation exercise, and load is one of the most important variables for long-term strength and size development. A 2011 study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research confirmed that tricep activation during the close grip bench press was significantly greater than during a standard bench press — making this a must-have for anyone serious about building tricep strength.

Setup and execution mirror a regular bench press. Get your upper back tight, plant your feet, and unrack the barbell with your hands positioned roughly shoulder-width apart or slightly inside. Your grip can be thumb-around or a false grip — personal preference — but prioritize safety regardless. As you lower the bar to your chest, keep your elbows tracking at approximately a 20 to 30 degree angle from your torso. Avoid flaring the elbows out wide, but also avoid crushing them directly against your sides, as that creates a mechanical disadvantage at the wrist. Touch your chest and press back up through a full range of motion.

For programming, use two to three sets of three to five repetitions if you are primarily trying to build bench press strength. If hypertrophy is your main goal, bump that up to three to four sets of five to ten repetitions to accumulate more volume. This exercise should anchor the beginning of most of your tricep-focused training sessions.

Exercise 2: JM Press

The JM press is one of the most underrated tricep exercises in existence. Popularized by JM Blakeley at Westside Barbell, this movement was a key tool in building elite-level bench press strength, and it remains criminally underutilized outside of powerlifting circles. While it may not be the first choice for pure hypertrophy, it is arguably the most effective exercise for developing the kind of tricep strength that directly translates to a bigger bench press.

Setup begins identically to the close grip bench press — same back position, same foot placement, similar grip width or slightly narrower. The key difference is what happens as you lower the bar. Instead of bringing the barbell down toward your chest, you keep your elbows elevated and drive the bar toward your chin and throat. Your elbows stay up and slightly forward throughout the movement, which maximally loads the medial head of the tricep and trains the muscle in the exact joint angles that matter most at the sticking point of the bench press. Louis Simmons long emphasized that your triceps — specifically the tissue near the elbow — are what drive heavy bench press attempts to lockout, and the JM press trains exactly that.

A few important cautions: this exercise is not beginner-friendly. Use a spotter, keep safety bars in place, and learn the movement pattern at moderate loads before adding significant weight. Even for more experienced lifters, running this exercise excessively heavy for extended periods can aggravate the elbows, so use it in training waves and cycle it strategically. Aim for two to four sets of six to ten repetitions to keep the technique clean and manage joint stress effectively.

Exercise 3: Overhead Cable Tricep Extension

If exercise one and two are the strength-focused pillars of your tricep program, the overhead tricep extension is where you shift the focus to the long head through a full, loaded stretch. Because the long head crosses the shoulder joint, positioning the arm overhead is the only way to achieve a true peak stretch on that portion of the muscle. Research consistently supports that training muscles at longer muscle lengths — what sports scientists call the lengthened position — is one of the most effective stimuli for hypertrophy.

While you can perform this movement with a dumbbell or barbell, the cable machine is the superior choice for most lifters for a few reasons. The cable provides constant tension through the entire range of motion, including that critical stretched position at the bottom of the rep. It is also easier to set up, particularly at heavier loads, and tends to be more elbow-friendly than free weight overhead variations.

Set the cable to the lowest pulley position and attach a rope. Step away from the stack, assume a staggered stance, and lean forward slightly to create room for your arms to travel overhead. From the bottom of the rep, extend upward through your elbows and hands toward the ceiling, then control the weight back down into a full, deep stretch. The rope attachment also allows you to spread the handles apart at full extension, adding a modest degree of lateral head recruitment. This is an accessory movement — place it toward the end of your session and work in the range of two to four sets of eight to fifteen repetitions.

Exercise 4: Rope Cable Tricep Push-Down

Push-downs are often dismissed as a low-value tricep exercise, and if you are doing them mindlessly with a straight bar while standing upright and bouncing through partial reps, that criticism is fair. But when done correctly with a rope attachment, cable push-downs are the most effective exercise available for targeting the lateral head of the triceps, and EMG-based research supports this claim directly.

The lateral head is often called the “lazy head” because many compound pressing movements do not maximally recruit it. If you want that fully developed horseshoe shape from every angle, you need direct lateral head work, and rope push-downs are the best tool for the job.

Set your cable to the top position and attach a quality rope handle. Step back slightly from the stack so you are not standing directly underneath the cable, and hinge very slightly at the hips. As you press down, actively try to drive through the outside edges of your hands, and at full extension, pull the rope apart to maximize the contraction in the lateral head. Control the weight back up through a full range of motion — do not short-change the stretch at the top of the rep.

Because this is an accessory movement at the end of your session, you have significant latitude with sets and reps. Most lifters will do well with two to five sets of ten to twenty repetitions, pushing close to failure on each set. This is also an excellent exercise for drop sets, rest-pause sets, or any other intensity-extending technique you want to deploy, as the cable provides a low joint-stress environment that tolerates high-rep and high-volume work very well.

Exercise 5: Board Press / Shoulder Saver Bench Press

The final exercise in this framework is the board press — or, if you train alone, a bench press performed with a shoulder saver pad like the one available from EliteFTS. The principle is the same: you are limiting the range of motion to a specific portion of the press, which does two important things. First, it allows you to overload the triceps with significantly more weight than you could handle through a full range of motion. Second, it trains the tricep at the exact joint angle where most lifters lose their bench press — typically the middle to upper third of the lift.

This is not about avoiding hard work through a full range of motion. It is about strategic overload at the specific angles that matter most for your individual pressing strength. If you are missing your bench press at a particular point, placing a board or shoulder saver slightly below that sticking point allows you to train your triceps in the exact position where you need them to be stronger.

For strength-focused goals, treat this as a main movement and work into heavy sets of one to five repetitions. For hypertrophy with an overload emphasis, two to three sets of five to eight repetitions will give you the mechanical tension needed to drive new size gains. This is not an exercise that responds particularly well to high repetitions, but the heavy loading it allows makes it one of the most effective tools for bridging the gap between tricep strength and bench press performance.

How to Program These Five Exercises

Having great exercises is only half the battle. The other half is organizing them intelligently across your training week.

On the volume side, hypertrophy research generally supports ten to twenty sets per muscle group per week. For the triceps specifically, this number needs to account for the indirect tricep work you are already getting from regular bench pressing, overhead pressing, and dumbbell pressing. If you are doing a reasonable amount of pressing work, six to ten hard, quality sets of direct tricep training per week is typically sufficient to drive ongoing progress.

On frequency, training the triceps directly twice per week is the most productive sweet spot for most athletes. A practical structure might look like this: on your first pressing day, lead with the close grip bench press followed by the overhead cable extension. On your second pressing day, add the JM press after your main bench work, follow it up with rope push-downs, and incorporate board press work if building your bench press is a specific priority.

On the progression side, treat your heavier barbell movements — the close grip bench press, JM press, and board press — like any other strength movement. Work in defined training cycles of three to six weeks, start with moderate loads and slightly higher reps, and progress toward heavier loads and lower reps over the course of the block. For your accessory movements like the overhead extension and push-down, chase progression through reps rather than load. Pick a rep range such as ten to fifteen or fifteen to twenty, start at the lower end of the range at the beginning of a training block, and work toward the top of the range by the end of the block before cycling to a new stimulus.

Finally, do not neglect exercise variety over the long haul. Your triceps have three distinct heads and respond to a range of loading patterns, joint angles, and rep ranges. Cycling in different exercises across training blocks — while keeping these five as reliable anchors — will continue to drive new adaptation and prevent the plateau that comes from doing the same movements indefinitely.

Whether you are a powerlifter trying to add plates to your bench press, a wrestler building upper body pushing strength, or a general fitness athlete who simply wants more impressive arms, this five-exercise framework gives you everything you need to train the triceps completely and progressively. Put in the work, be consistent with your progression, and the results will follow.