Dorian Yates Style Triceps Workout

Sometimes we all have lagging bodyparts, and usually we will complain about legs, chest, biceps etc. Yet many people never seem to complain about lagging triceps, but every time I visit the gym I see underdeveloped triceps galore!

The Triceps muscle is seemingly and unglamorous muscle, most non-competetive bodybuilders never give it a second look, yet well developed arms should consist of roughly two thirds triceps, and if you take a look at anyone with truly impressive arms you will see they are not lacking in this area.

Now you may have a horseshoe and thus you think you have decent triceps but a horseshoe does not make a big arm, you triceps need to look incredibly thick especially when viewed from the back. This workout gives it to you hardcore, there are no soppy kickbacks and none of those pushdowns where you lean into the stack and push as much weight as possible, nope this workout goes down the Yates route, it's failure and beyond, Just three exercises and only 4 work sets but this will get you fired up like nothing else.

We start with the classic Close grip bench press, an exercise that seems to have fallen out of favour recently, if you don't have a spotter then use a smith machine or power rack. Your hand placement is simple, put you hands together on the middle of the bar then move you hands so that your thumbs are roughly where the outside of your hands were, you can go a little wider or closer if this is not comfortable, but roughly 2 hand widths apart is where you should be. You need to warm up and pyramid the weight over 3 sets before moving onto a weight you can use to failure at about 8 reps. The first working set you only go to failure, your target is 8 but if you have more in you keep going. Take a breather, rest for 60-90 seconds then press out till failure again, 6-8 reps will probably be it, then if you have a partner do 2 or 3 forced reps then another 2 or 3 negatives, if you don't have a partner then re-rack the bar take 10 breaths and press out again till failure.

Second exercise is a little secret of mine, incline bench triceps presses, you need to lay back on a bench that is around a 45 degree incline. Do a couple more warm ups here. then it's one hard set till failure (again 6-8 reps) before taking 10 deep breaths and hitting out till failure again. There is a youtube video below which shows he form pretty well

 

Finally we finish with rope pushdowns, one warm up should suffice then it to failure again, this time at around 12-15 reps then 5 drop sets going down on pin at a time on the stack, each one till you fail.

There you go, 3 exercises, 4 sets and a killer triceps workout.