Best Tricep Exercises: 6 Moves, Sets and a Sample Workout

The best tricep exercises are an overhead extension, a pushdown and one heavy press such as dips or the close-grip bench press. The overhead move matters most: in a 12-week trial, cable extensions with the arm overhead built about 1.4 times more triceps muscle than the same exercise with the arm at the side (Maeo et al., 2023). Two or three of these exercises, done for about 10 hard sets a week, cover the whole muscle.

How the triceps work

The triceps has three heads. The lateral and medial heads cross only the elbow. The long head also crosses the shoulder, so it is stretched when your arm is overhead and slack when your arm hangs by your side. Every tricep exercise straightens the elbow. What changes between them is where your upper arm points, and that decides how much the long head is stretched.

That difference showed up clearly in a study by Maeo and colleagues. Twenty-one adults trained one arm with cable extensions overhead and the other with the arm at the side, 5 sets of 10 reps twice a week for 12 weeks. The overhead arm gained 28.5% in long-head volume against 19.6% for the other arm, and 19.9% against 13.9% for the whole triceps, even though it lifted 34 to 39% less weight (Maeo et al., 2023).

The 6 best tricep exercises

1. Overhead cable extension

1. Attach a rope to a low or hip-height pulley, turn away from the machine and hold the rope behind your head with your elbows pointing forward.
2. Take a staggered stance, lean slightly forward and brace your stomach.
3. Straighten your elbows until your arms are almost locked out in front of and above your head.
4. Lower slowly until you feel a deep stretch at the back of your upper arm.

Keep your elbows roughly shoulder-width apart instead of letting them flare out. If you have no cable, hold one dumbbell with both hands overhead while seated against a backrest. Aim for 8 to 15 reps.

2. Tricep pushdown (tricep pull down)

Many people search for "tricep pull down", and it is the same exercise: you push a bar or rope from chest height down to your thighs on a high pulley.

1. Stand close to the cable, elbows pinned to your sides and slightly in front of your ribs.
2. Push down until your arms are straight. With a rope, pull the ends apart at the bottom.
3. Let the handle rise under control until your forearms pass parallel to the floor, then repeat.

If your elbows drift forward as you push, your shoulders and lats take over. Pushdowns are easy on the elbows and work well at the end of a session for 10 to 15 reps.

3. Dips

The dip exercise trains the triceps, chest and front of the shoulders together. In a study of 13 experienced men, peak triceps activity was 0.83 mV on the bench dip, 1.04 mV on parallel bars and 1.05 mV on rings. The authors describe the bar dip as a progression from the bench dip, and note that the bench dip needs more shoulder extension range (McKenzie et al., 2022).

1. Support yourself on parallel bars with straight arms and your shoulders pulled down, away from your ears.
2. Lower yourself by bending your elbows, keeping your torso fairly upright, until your upper arms are about parallel to the floor or as deep as your shoulders feel comfortable.
3. Press back up to straight arms.

Staying upright keeps more of the work on the triceps. Leaning forward shifts more onto the chest. If you can't do 5 clean reps, use an assisted dip machine or a band, and stop if you feel pain at the front of the shoulder.

4. Close-grip bench press

This is the triceps exercise with the heaviest loads, so it builds strength well.

1. Lie on a flat bench and grip the bar with your hands about shoulder-width apart. Going narrower than that mostly strains the wrists.
2. Lower the bar to your lower chest with your elbows tucked closer to your sides than in a normal bench press.
3. Press up until your arms are straight.

Work in the 6 to 10 rep range. If you know your close-grip max, the one-rep max calculator gives you a weight for each rep target, and the warm-up sets calculator plans the lighter sets before it.

5. Skull crusher (lying EZ-bar extension)

1. Lie on a bench holding an EZ bar over your shoulders, then let your upper arms tilt slightly back toward your head.
2. Bend your elbows to lower the bar toward your forehead or just behind your head.
3. Straighten your arms without letting your elbows flare.

Lowering the bar behind your head keeps your arms closer to the overhead position, which puts the long head under more stretch. Use 8 to 12 reps. If your elbows ache, swap to the cable or dumbbell version.

6. Close-grip push-up

1. Get into a push-up position with your hands under your shoulders or slightly narrower.
2. Lower your chest with your elbows moving back along your ribs.
3. Push up, keeping your body in a straight line.

Raise your feet on a bench or add a pause at the bottom when 20 reps becomes easy. This is the most useful option for home training.

Sets, reps and rest for triceps

A meta-analysis of 15 studies found that each extra weekly set was linked to slightly more muscle growth (Schoenfeld et al., 2017), and the 2026 ACSM position stand concluded that growth was enhanced at 10 or more sets per muscle per week (Currier et al., 2026). The triceps may respond to even more. A review of trained young men found that more than 20 weekly sets beat 12 to 20 for triceps growth, while the quadriceps and biceps did not grow more with the higher volume (Baz-Valle et al., 2022).

Pressing also counts. The fractional method, which had the strongest evidence in a 2026 meta-regression, counts a set as 1 for the muscle it targets and 0.5 for the muscles that help (Pelland et al., 2026). Six sets of bench press and four of overhead press already add 5 triceps sets.

The ACSM review also found that training to momentary failure did not consistently change muscle growth (Currier et al., 2026), so ending sets one or two reps before failure is a sensible default. These ranges are starting points, not rules:

Two good tricep workouts

Use one of these once or twice a week. If you train triceps twice, put at least two days between sessions.

Gym version:

Home version with a pair of dumbbells:

To progress, use double progression. For example, if you reach 12 reps on all three sets of overhead extensions with 20 kg, move to 22.5 kg next session and build back up from 10 reps. The progressive overload calculator plans these jumps for the next few weeks.

Common mistakes

• Only doing pushdowns. They leave the long head in its shortest position. Add one overhead exercise.
• Letting the elbows travel. On pushdowns and overhead extensions, moving elbows turn the exercise into a press for the shoulders and lats.
• Cutting the stretch short. The bottom of an overhead extension is where the long head is most stretched, so use that range.
• Going too heavy on skull crushers. Elbow pain is a reason to switch to cables, and pain that lasts is a reason to see a physical therapist.
• Dipping too deep with the shoulders rolling forward. Stop where your shoulders still feel stable.
• Ignoring pressing volume. If you bench and press overhead in the same week, your triceps need fewer direct sets than you think. The weekly sets guide explains how to count them.

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If your triceps lag, keep the pushdowns and add an overhead extension. For a session that trains them with the chest, see the chest and tricep workout.