Having toned and sculpted arms is a must for anyone trying to achieve a better physique. Whether it’s training to look great in your favorite outfit or trying to improve your physique for an upcoming holiday, having a pair of toned arms can help you achieve the look you’re chasing after.
People often only focus on the biceps, the muscles in the front of your arms, however, your biceps are a smaller muscle group than the triceps. So, if you’re trying to sculpt your arms to lose fat and tone your muscles, you should start with training the triceps (the muscle group located on the back of your arms). Here are 10 of my favorite tricep workouts for women!
Bench Dips
Bench dips are a great exercise because you can perform them with just your body weight or you can make them more challenging by adding weight onto your lap. But trust me, bodyweight bench dips are plenty difficult by themselves.
Positioned off the side of a workout bench or a chair, slowly lower your body towards the ground, and then squeeze the back of your arms (the triceps) when rising back up.
Skull Crushers
Yes, the name sounds intimidating but I promise you that you’ll really enjoy this exercise as it crushes your triceps. When completing this exercise, make sure you’re standing in front of a mirror to watch your form so that you avoid, as the name suggests, crushing your skull.
Standing in a split stance with two dumbbells, raise your arms overhead and then slowly bend your elbows to lower the weights down towards your shoulders. Then press them back up towards the ceiling.
Dumbbell Chest Press
You can complete this exercise either on a flat bench or an incline bench — your choice! You’re thinking, hey, isn’t this a chest exercise? You’re correct! However, any pushing exercise also involves the triceps muscles to move the weight up in the air.
Pick weights that you can control and then get to pressing them in the air and feel your triceps burn!
Tricep Pulldowns
This might be my all-time favorite triceps exercise. I find that I’m able to get such a good triceps burn during this movement. This exercise can be completed with either the pulley machine at the gym or a set of exercise bands.
Standing in front of the pulley or the bands, grab on with both hands and then push the band or pulley handle towards the floor by straightening your elbow straight down and then bending your elbow allowing your hands to rise back up. Make sure to squeeze the triceps at the end of this movement to really feel the burn!
Push-ups
Push-ups are an all-around classic compound exercise. As with the chest press exercise mentioned above, push-ups are a pushing movement that heavily relies on your triceps to complete the movement.
You can start on your knees if needed or on your toes if you are more experienced. Whatever your starting point, jump into a set of push-ups so that you can experience all the benefits they have to offer.
Tricep Kickbacks
This is such a great exercise to blast both your triceps and your core. Take a set of dumbbells and bend at the hips. Bring both dumbbells up to your chest and then you’re going to kick them back behind you until your arms are perfectly straight. Slowly bend the elbows and allow your arms to come back to the starting position.
Make sure to engage your core throughout the entire movement so that your lower back stays nice and flat.
Thrusters
If you’ve ever tried a CrossFit workout before, you’d know that thrusters can be absolutely brutal! This exercise is the combination of a full dumbbell squat and a shoulder press to finish off the movement. Now if that isn’t hard enough, the goal is to cycle through 12 to 20-repetitions as fast as you can.
At the end of this exercise, your quads and triceps should be on fire! Not only are you strengthening and toning your arms, you’re also getting a killer cardio workout in as well.
Tricep Rollbacks
The setup for tricep rollbacks is very similar to skull crushers, however, for this exercise you are going to be lying flat on a bench.
With the weights directly overhead, slowly lower them all the way past your ears by bending your elbow.
Once you get to the lowest point possible, you want to squeeze your triceps to roll the weights back up to the ceiling.
Diamond Push-ups
If you thought regular push-ups were hard enough, we’re going to kick things up a notch by trying diamond push-ups. As the name suggests, you want to make a diamond pattern with both hands on the ground.
This means that your fingers from both hands should be touching each other. As with regular pushups, you can start on your knees or go straight to your toes when completing this exercise.
Bench Press
The last exercise I would like you to try is the bench press. You can use either a free weight bench press set up or you can use the bench press machine. Pick the equipment you’re most comfortable with.
Getting Started
As with any muscle group, if your goal is to tone and sculpt your muscles, I’d recommend training your triceps a minimum of twice per week to give you that desired look. The following ten exercises comprise my top triceps workout for women. Pick a few and try them out during your next arms day at the gym.
