3 Arm Exercises I Used To do Every Workout | (BUT NOT ANYMORE)

Today I’m going to share with your 3 Arm Exercises that I used to do every single arm workout, but don’t any more. But I’m not just going to share those exercises, I’m going to explain to you why I don’t use them anymore and then I’m going to explain to you what you should be doing in order to maximize both your time and your gains while you’re in the gym training.
Exercise #1: Triceps “Pull-Down” (Reverse-Grip)
Whenever I would go to the gym as a kid I would always see people go over to the triceps pushdown machine and they would bang out a bunch of sets (overhand) doing a push-down and then as soon as they were done, they would do an equal amount of sets with an under-hand grip (aka a pull-down). I always just assumed from a very young age that you were hitting the triceps heads differently doing an over-hand grip versus an under-hand grip and a lot of you reading this are probably thinking to yourselves ‘that’s why I do it too’.
Well, the triceps is not responsible for rotation of the forearm. All the triceps are responsible for is extension of the elbow and shoulder joints. So as long as you’re extending your elbow, it doesn’t matter which way your hand is facing. However, it does start to matter as you progress with your workouts and you get stronger. The only reason I can think of as to why you might want to do a reverse-grip pull-down is because you’re having a hard time feeling this exercise in your triceps. This movement (the pull-down) kind of forces you to lock out at the bottom because you’re not fully extended until you get that lockout. In most cases, this is where you start to feel it more in your triceps which would lead you to believe it’s a great exercise because you’re ‘feeling it’ more. In reality, the only reason why you’re probably not feeling the traditional triceps push-down with an overhand grip in your triceps is because when you get to the bottom, you’re not going down all the way, you’re probably stopping a couple of inches short of a full lockout.
Those couple of inches make a big difference. You’ve got to be able to push all the way down and then fully extend at the bottom and flex those triceps. As long as you’re doing it like that, properly, you’re good to go. There are a lot more benefits when doing push-downs with an over-hand grip too, the most important one being how much weight you can lift. You will come to a point where you can’t pull-down as much weight as you can push-down. You can also get your body over the bar a little bit to help you with some forced reps or cheat reps as you get towards the end of your sets if you want to max it out. For example, if you’re doing 8 – 10 repetitions and you get to 8 and can’t quite do the rep, you can kind of cheat it to get it down and flex and then take advantage of the eccentric portion of the movement. Remember we have talked a lot about this in my Cheat & Recover type videos.
So if you’re doing this exercise and you’re using a reverse-grip, you’re doing it wrong and you need to go overhand. The only way you’re going to be able to change what part of your triceps you’re targeting, it’s not by reversing the grip, it would be by changing your arm position. If for example you wanted to hit more long head, an over-hand push-down isn’t the way to do it. The way to do it would be to pick an exercise like a skullcrusher or an overhead tricep extension, where your arm is actually elevated over your head as you perform the movement.
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