10 of the Best Triceps Exercises You Can Add to Your Workout

When it comes to strengthening and building big triceps, no single exercise will do, because no single triceps exercise hits every part of these complex muscles the same way.
“There’s a reason why each triceps muscle is referred to in the plural: It has three parts or ‘heads’ — lateral, medial, and long,” explains Trevor Thieme, C.S.C.S., Openfit’s senior manager of fitness and nutrition content. “Different exercises focus on different heads.”
That’s why you need to include a variety of exercises in your triceps workouts. Here are 10 that attack your tris from every angle.
1. EZ Bar Overhead Extension
Benefits: This move emphasizes the long head of the triceps muscle without going easy on the medial and lateral heads.
2. Chair Dip
Benefits: For this comprehensive triceps builder — which is effective for strength-training newbies and veterans alike — all you need is a chair and your own bodyweight.
Make it harder: Lift one foot off the floor or place both feet on an elevated surface.
3. Triceps Push-Up
Benefits: Your triceps muscles don’t work in isolation, but this equipment-free compound exercise zones in on them while also working your chest and core for overall upper-body strength and definition.
4. Overhead Triceps Extension
Benefits: This standing variation of the classic move optimizes muscle recruitment in the core while training each arm separately, helping to iron out muscle imbalances as it builds strength.
5. Two-Arm Triceps Kickback
Benefits: By loading each arm individually, you promote a more balanced musculature by preventing either triceps from doing more of the work.
6. Triceps Extension
Benefits: This triceps exercise maximizes muscle fiber recruitment in the long head of the muscle with a single dumbbell.
7. Skull Crusher
Benefits: Perfect for those with access to a cable station, this move forces you to keep constant tension in the cable (and, thus, your triceps) for the duration of each set. Muscle tension is a key trigger for muscle growth.
8. Side Tri Rise
Benefits: All you need is the floor to isolate one triceps at a time with this bodyweight exercise.
9. Rocket-Launcher Kickback
Benefit: This exercise works the triceps at all three heads, but you’ll feel it most in the lateral head.
10. Front-to-Back Triceps Extension
Benefits: This triceps exercise hits the long heads of the muscles from multiple angles while also firing up your core stabilizers.
Anatomy of the Triceps
The triceps makes up about two thirds of your upper-arm musculature, so if you’re looking to sculpt a more muscular look, you can’t ignore them.
All three heads of the triceps fuse together and attach to the elbow via a single tendon, but the lateral and medial heads originate at the humerus (upper arm bone) near the shoulder while the long head originates at the scapula (shoulder blade). The lateral and long heads are the most visible ones, and form the classic “horseshoe” shape of the developed muscle (long head on the inside, lateral head on the outside). The medial head lies under the other two. “It doesn’t contribute much to the shape of the muscle, but it contributes significantly to its overall mass,” says Thieme.