Push exercises, as their name implies, work all the muscles you push with. And two of the major push muscles are your deltoids, or shoulders, as well as your triceps. If growing bigger arms is your goal, many people make the mistake of focusing too much on the biceps. The reality is that your triceps and shoulders make up a lot more of the muscular makeup of your arms and should be trained if you want muscle growth.
If you need some ideas of upper body push exercises to grow your arms, look no further. Here are some of the best exercises to get a serious pump with ease.
1. Triceps Dips
Dips are one of the most common movements to target the triceps because it is one of the most accessible. It doesn’t require any equipment except for your body weight and a bench to lean up against. Since your triceps make up about ⅔ of the composition of your arms, training them to look bulkier is highly important.
With dips, the key here is to make sure your glutes and back are right up against the bench or box to maximize emphasis on the triceps rather than the shoulders. To make the move more difficult, lengthen your legs in front of you. To make it less challenging, bring your feet closer to your glutes.
You also want to take this movement as slowly as possible, as placing the muscles under tension for a longer period of time tears down the muscles so that they grow back even stronger. Keep your back straight, keep the chest lifted, and try to bring your body as low to the ground as possible.
2. Overhead Press
Your delts, or shoulders, can make your arms look much bigger if you train them properly. The overhead press is one of the most common shoulder movements that train the frontal delts as well as the lateral delts at the top of the shoulders.
You can do an overhead press with dumbbells, a barbell, or on advanced equipment like Speede. Keeping a slight bend in the knees, press the weight overhead while keeping a straight back, tucking the belly button into the spine. Slowly lower the weight back to the starting position right at the top of your chest.
You can also vary overhead presses by starting with your palms facing your face and slowly rotating outward at the top of the movement. This is called an Arnold Press, and it emphasizes the front delts a little bit more.
3. Push-Ups
Push-ups are a classic exercise that emphasizes full upper-body strength, and while it targets the pecs and chest the most, it can still challenge the supporting tricep and shoulder muscles.
Keeping your elbows at a 45-degree angle will activate the chest more than the supporting muscles, but by doing something as simple as tucking your elbows into your side, you’ll notice that you feel it a lot more on your triceps. For that reason, push-ups are great for growing your arms – especially since they don’t require equipment.
Of course, you can vary push-ups by doing them up against a bench to target the upper chest or by putting your feet on a bench for a decline push-up that targets the lower chest. You can also put a resistance band or a plate on your back to add some resistance and make your push-ups a bit more challenging.
4. Triceps Pushdown
Using cable machines is a great alternative to using dumbbells for tricep exercises because they ensure that the muscle is under resistance throughout the entire range of motion. And tricep pushdowns are great for tricep growth.
On a cable machine, you’ll tuck your elbows into your sides and hinge the hips forward slightly. From here, you’ll push the bar down to hip level, squeezing the triceps at the bottom before slowly returning to the starting position.
This trains the triceps in the shortened position, which can be effective for getting a great pump at the end of your workout. This is also a great exercise because it is less aggravating on the elbow joints compared to many other tricep movements.
The issue with tricep pushdowns, and most other traditional strength training moves, is that you really only train the triceps at the bottom of the movement. As the weight gets back to the starting point, your triceps are barely being activated. This is a limitation of traditional strength training that Speede seeks to address.
The Speede Challenger and the Speede Pro both use AI technology to adjust the resistance based on your maximum muscle output. This fills in the gaps caused by the strength curve, allowing you to hit your max resistance level at every portion of a repetition.
It equates to a more effective workout in just a fraction of the time. One of the best ways to see the difference is for you to experience it for yourself. Try Speede today and kickstart your journey toward the strongest version of yourself.
5. Bench Press
A bench press is meant to grow your chest, but considering that it recruits your triceps and shoulders just as much as the chest, this is still a great movement for building up your arm muscles.
You can do a bench press on a flat bench or an incline bench, depending on which part of the chest muscles you want to target. Either way, you can target your triceps more by tucking your elbows in at your side and taking a more narrow grip.
An overhand grip with your palms facing away from you will target the upper and central pecs, while an underhand grip will target your lower pecs. Something as simple as changing your grip can completely change the muscle groups involved.
6. Tricep Extension
Tricep extensions work your triceps in a lengthened position, which is an effective method for growing the arms. You can do overhead tricep extensions with a dumbbell, or you can use a cable machine.
Either way, it’s important to keep your elbows slightly tucked in towards your forehead. Additionally, allow the weight to drop behind your head almost to the base of the neck to get the longest stretch in your tricep possible. The further down you can get the weight, the more effective the movement is going to be.
7. Dumbbell Lateral Raise
A lateral raise is one of the best exercises for isolating the lateral deltoid muscles at the tops of the shoulders. This move can really add definition to the shoulders to make you look bulkier and bigger in no time.
With a soft bend in the knees and feet shoulder-width apart, bring the weights out wide at your sides while keeping a slight bend in the elbows. Once the weights reach shoulder height, slowly lower back to the starting position. Try not to hunch your shoulder blades at the top, as this will recruit more effort from the traps rather than focusing on the delts.
8. Plank Walks
Plank walks are a cardio move that can help you grow your core while also putting some serious work into your triceps and shoulders. Starting in a high plank position, you’ll drop one elbow into a low plank, followed by the other. Then, you’ll press back up one arm at a time.
The challenge here is keeping your hips from swaying side to side. You can do this by tightening the core as if someone is about to punch you in the stomach. If you’re still swaying, just bring your feet out a little bit wider.
This exercise will have your shoulders and triceps, as well as your abs, begging for mercy. If you want to progress, you can always add weight to your back to force yourself to stay balanced while also increasing resistance.
In Conclusion
Push exercises can make your shoulders and triceps look absolutely jacked, and many compound chest movements will incorporate these muscles. Bench presses and push-ups are two examples of chest-focused moves that still require some strength from the arms.
But if you want to isolate the triceps, tricep dips, pushdowns, or extensions are great movements. For the shoulders, lateral raises and overhead presses are some of the most effective push-day workouts you can incorporate into your next session.
Either way, the exercises you do aren’t as important as the equipment you use. Speede adjusts the resistance during each rep to make sure that you’re always exerting the maximum amount of effort at every single angle of the range of motion. This means max hypertrophy in shorter periods of time.
Try it out today and see how Speede can amplify your progress.
Sources:
Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Triceps Muscle – StatPearls | NCBI Bookshelf.
The anatomy of the shoulder | Washington University Physicians
Muscles of the Pectoral Region – Major – Minor | TeachMeAnatomy