3 Reasons Why Your Triceps Aren't Growing

Typically, what’s the next thing you flex right after your biceps peak? That’s right, your triceps. However, it can look unsymmetrical when you have a huge bicep peak but don’t have fully developed triceps.

If you’re frustrated at the lack of growth you’ve been seeing from your triceps, you’re about to get three pieces of advice that’ll help you maximize the growth of your triceps and help you activate it.

You’re Not Training Them Heavy Enough

Did you know that your triceps are primarily fast twitch muscles? The first reason why your triceps is not growing might be because you’re not training them heavy enough. Typical bodybuilding reps would be around 8-12, or 12-15 reps with short rest periods in between.

However, what you need to do is to get comfortable with training more in a 5-8 rep range if you want to grow your triceps and get them huge and dense. One of the best ways to load the muscle is to do compound movements such as a close grip bench press.

You’re Neglecting Isolation Movement

While compound workouts are extremely important–and we do recommend having around 6/10 of your workouts be compound movements–a recent study found that combining isolation movements with compound exercises gave better results for your triceps than just compound movements!

You’re Not Training the Long Head of the Tricep

Your tricep is actually composed of different muscle groups. The long head of the tricep crosses the shoulder joint, which means that it is actually a shoulder extensor.

This means that you can train your tricep in multiple different ways and movements. Movements like straight-arm pulldowns and dumbbell pullovers actually work that extension movement for the triceps.

You can start by doing cable pressdowns until failure, then burn the long head of your triceps out by doing dumbbell pullovers, cable pullovers, or barbell pullovers. You’ll be almost guaranteed to feel a deep soreness in your tricep, which can help you hypertrophy and grow massive triceps.