One of the most common questions I get from clients/members doing one of my power-building programs is….
“My elbows are starting to hurt from these Lying Tricep Extensions. How do I fix the inflammation?”
My answer is always the same – stop doing Lying Tricep Extensions and switch your tricep exercises.
I don’t mean to stop doing LTE’s forever….but don’t do them exclusively.
I love LTE’s, but there isn’t anything magical about them. The elbow is a fairly simple joint and the triceps role in elbow extension is fairly simple and fairly easy to train. There are dozens of tricep extension exercises that can potentially work to train the triceps.
Most of the time, inflammation is simple overuse. And it’s really easy to get overuse type of inflammation on heavy single joint exercises.
You can mitigate this to some degree by feeding the triceps a variety of different movements rather than repeating the same movement over and over again.
Change the angle at which you hold the shoulder joint / arms rather frequently. And change the implement which you are using. This alters the absolute load of the exercise, the resistance curves, and the angles of the wrist and shoulder.
So if you do LTEs you can do them with an EZ curl bar using either the narrow or wider grip. You can use a straight bar. You can use dumbbells. You can do dumbbell extensions strict or “rolling.” You can do the ez bar and straight bar strict or with a bit of shoulder extension incorporated as well.
Just right there is like 8 different variations of a single movement. Hell, you can even do them with kettlebells for even more variety.
But you can also do a myriad of tricep movements with arms overhead using an ez bar, dumbbells, and cables.
You can do regular cable tricep pressdowns with straight bars, cambered bars, ropes, v-grips, etc.
What I normally have clients do is set up a rotation based on “categories” and within those categories you can implement your favorite movements.
- Week 1: Lying Extensions (use ez bar, straight bar, dumbbells, or kettlebells)
- Week 2: Overhead Extensions (use ez bar or dumbbells)
- Week 3: Pressdowns (use straight bar, cambered bar, v-grip, or rope)
I like to change the movements. every week. But others might stick with the same movement for 2-4 weeks and then switch.
Honestly it doesn’t matter. As long as you are switching movements often your triceps will respond and your elbows will stay healthy.
Another important tip: Logbook everything. This goes for all assistance work. Keep track of sets/reps/loads. Break personal records every time you train a movement. If you did LTEs for 10 x 65 last time, this time you need to aim for 11 x 65. Or 10 x 66. Always try to break a record with reps or pounds. Doesn’t matter. Just move the needle.
Don’t be a “clock puncher” on this stuff. Your arms are not going to grow just because you did 3 x 10 or whatever. They will grow when you are consistently setting personal bests – usually within a range of 8-15 reps.
You don’t need more than 2-3 sets per exercise if you are pushing to true failure on each set. Excessive volume is what will get the elbow inflammation going. Go in favor of training a limited number of sets “all out” vs doing a shit load of submax sets multiple times per week. This is an inefficient way to train anyways.
In my KSC Method for Power-Building program, we have a day for training shoulders and triceps.
The tricep training is limited to just two exercises: one compound movement and one isolation extension type movement, after shoulders. Remember that shoulder and chest training is also hammering the triceps so you don’t need to overdo the direct work.
The first tricep exercise is usually something like Dips, Close Grip Bench, Close Grip Pin Presses, or Close Grip Floor Presses. And I recommend cycling these out every 1-3 weeks just like the extension movements.
The second movement is the isolation/extension movement where we would implement the 3 week rotation from above.
That’s it.
Select a menu of maybe 6-12 total exercises (combo of isolation and compound) to rotate through and focus on getting crazy strong on those movements in the 8-15 rep range.
You’ll have bigger triceps, a bigger bench, and happier elbows.
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Here is my full power-building program: The KSC Method for Power-Building
