This is the perfect At-Home Tricep Workout you can do without equipment. Find out exactly what to do to get bigger triceps at home fast. These are the best tricep-building exercises you can do anywhere with just a few household items.
If you want bigger arms, you absolutely must develop your triceps. And even if you can't get to the gym, you can still get a great tricep workout without using any gym equipment like dumbbells, barbells, and machines. All you need is your body weight and then maybe a few household items like a bookbag to incorporate a larger variety of exercises you can do at home.
1. Weighted Close-Grip Pushup
And one of the most basic yet extremely effective home tricep exercises you can do is the weighted close-grip pushup. To add weight to this exercise, you can either put a flat object on your upper back or you can just pack a bookbag full of heavy objects and then wear it while doing pushups. Now you're going to do these pushups a little differently to better target the triceps. To begin, you'll place your hands directly under your shoulders so that they're exactly shoulder-width apart. Then extend your legs, come up on your toes, and get into a starting pushup position. From there lower your chest down towards the ground by bending your elbows while tracking them close to your body. Usually, when we perform pushups we want our elbows to be at about 45-degree angles in relation to our bodies. But for weighted tricep pushups, you want your elbows tight to your body. After slowly lowering yourself down, press back up while still keeping those elbows close together. Then repeat for reps.
2. Dips
Another excellent tricep exercise you can do at home is dips, and there are a few ways you can perform dips. Many people will perform dips at home by positioning themselves at the edge of a platform or chair with their hands behind their backs. And then, they perform reps by bending their elbows, lowering their hips to the floor, and pressing themselves back up to the starting position. Even though this exercise has been around for a long time and has been recommended by countless trainers as a great tricep exercise for home, it's not that great. Lifting weight with your arms behind your back puts your shoulders into an internally rotated position, which can lead to shoulder pain and injuries like impingement over time.
Instead, I recommend you use two sturdy objects, like two chairs, to perform regular dips with your hands at your sides. Ensure that each of these chairs or platforms can hold your body weight and doesn't tip over. Regular folding steel chairs are great for this, and if you want to be extra safe, you can put something heavy on each chair to ensure that it won't tip over. To Begin, you'll stand between the chairs facing each other and place your hands on the chairs with your arms extended. Then raise your feet off the ground and slowly lower yourself by bending your elbows. To help Target the triceps more than the chest, you want to keep your chest pointed forward as best as you can. Lower yourself until your shoulders are about even with your elbows or a little lower, and then press back up to the original starting position with your elbows locked out. Then repeat for reps.
3. Overhead Tricep Extensions
Let's move on to the next one, which is overhead tricep extensions. Normally this is done with a dumbbell, but a bookbag can actually work as a great replacement if you don't have a dumbbell. You would just pack the bookbag full of heavy objects like gallons of water. Then you would grab the opposite strap in each hand and swing the bookbag behind your head. From there, you want to position your upper arms directly above your head so that your elbows are basically pointing to the ceiling. Then extend your arms and lift the weight all the way up until your arms are almost fully locked out. As you're doing this, remember to try to keep your elbows close together rather than letting them flair apart. After that, just slowly lower the weight back down behind your head until your forearms are a little lower than parallel to the ground. From there, you'll just once extend your arms back above your head and repeat for reps.
4. One-Arm Overhead Tricep Extension
Now for some of you that are more advanced, you're not going to be able to put enough weight in a bookbag to effectively challenge your tricep strength with two hands at the same time. So another excellent variation is the one-arm overhead tricep extension, which we can once again do with a book bag. To do this one, you'll grab both straps in one hand and once again swing the book bag behind your head, except now, instead of the book bag hanging directly behind you, it's going to be angled towards your opposite shoulder. From there, just like before, you're going to extend your elbow until your arm is almost locked out over your head and then lower the book bag back down behind your head in the direction of your opposite shoulder until your forearm is a little lower than parallel and then repeat for reps. as you're doing this remember to concentrate on keeping your upper arm fixed in that one position with your elbow towards the ceiling, of course, your upper arm will move a little as you're doing your reps but make sure that you're not swinging your arm to gather momentum.
5. Kickbacks
Moving on we have Kickbacks to do Kickbacks at home it would be ideal to have a dumbbell but we can also get it done with some gallons of water a cargo belt a leash or a hand towel so to do Kickbacks without a dumbbell you're going to take the cargo belt or the towel and loop it through the handle of a gallon of water if you need multiple gallons of water for it to be challenging enough you can just run the towel or the bell in between multiple handles then tie the ends together so that you have a circular Loop holding the gowns together from there you would grab the loop and bend down while placing your opposite hand on another object for support then raise your elbow up to your ribs almost like you're doing a row that's your starting position after that you'll extend your arm and straighten your elbow behind you until it's almost fully locked out then lower the weight back to the starting position and repeat for reps keep in mind you want your shoulder either even or a little lower than your elbow for this exercise to be more effective a lot of people perform Kickbacks with their shoulder higher than their elbow and this really reduces the effective range of motion so make sure that you get your upper body low enough for these to be effective.
6. TRX Straps
Now, if you're willing to get TRX straps, you'll be able to do many effective tricep exercises at home with them. The TRX would just be placed behind a closed doorway, and then you can use those straps to perform close grip TRX chest presses to do this grab a strap in each hand with a specific grip you want the straps to be under your arms rather than over them because for close grip movements the TRX straps will rub on your upper arms if they're not under your arms so after grabbing the straps walk forward to eliminate most of that slack and then lean your body weight forward against those straps while keeping your hands at your chest then take a step back and continue leaning forward while keeping your upper body in a straight line from heel to hips to your upper back this is your starting position so now you're just going to press your body weight while keeping your hands in a neutral position then slowly lower yourself down back to the starting position and repeat for reps. Remember that the further you walk your feet back, the more challenging the exercise becomes, and vice versa. The closer you walk your feet toward the straps, the easier the exercise becomes
7. TRX tricep extensions
Let's move on to another TRX exercise, TRX tricep extensions. Once again, you're going to get into a similar starting position, except this time the strap should be over your arms, and your hands should be at the sides of your head with your elbows bent and pointing in front of you it's going to look like you're doing a skull crusher except standing with the TRX straps so once you walk forward and get rid of that slack walk your feet back and lean against the straps keep your body in a straight line as you extend your elbows and drive your hands forward in front of your face until your arms are almost fully locked out. Do your best to keep your upper arms locked in one position as your forearms and hands move forward, then slowly lower yourself back down towards the straps until they're back around your head, then repeat for reps.
8. Diamond Push-Up
Next is the diamond push-up. Diamond push-ups look similar to the close grip push-ups, but they're much more challenging, so most likely, you'll just need your body weight to do these. To begin, you're going to get into a plank position with your hands close together, directly under your chest. You'll want your thumbs and pointer fingers touching so that your hands form a triangle or a diamond shape from there while keeping your body in a straight line. Bend your elbows and begin lowering yourself to the ground; while doing this, you want to make sure that you're keeping your elbows tight to your rib cage. You want to concentrate on tracking your elbows back rather than out to your sides, lower yourself all the way down, and just before your chest hits the floor, press your body back up to the starting position and then repeat for reps.
9. Plank Up Down
Another great bodyweight tricep exercise is the plank up down. To begin, you'll get down into a starting push-up position, then lift one hand off the floor, bend your arm and lower yourself down onto that forearm. From there, repeat the same process on the other side so that you're now down on both elbows in a traditional plank position. Once you're down, alternate sides once again by extending the elbow that you originally lowered to the ground pressing yourself up, and planting your hand in place of your forearm, then repeat the same thing on the other side and repeat back and forth for reps. Now each time that you perform the next rep, you'll want to alternate the side that you lower yourself down on the first keep that in mind.
10. Pike Push-Up
Finally, one last tricep exercise that will also work your shoulders is the pike push-up. You can perform these on the ground, but as I've mentioned in numerous other blogs, you won't get as great of a range of motion as you would by elevating your hands off the floor and then performing pipe push-ups from there to do that you'll need to raise your hands and feet up onto something like a couch and two sturdy chairs that don't tip over, then Place one hand on each chair and your feet up on the couch or platform behind you from there raise your hips up and get into a downward dog position then bend your elbows and lower yourself down slowly until you feel a nice stretch in your chest and shoulders and complete the rep by pressing yourself back up until you're back to the starting position then repeat for reps.
So those are 10 great tricep exercises that you can do at home with minimal equipment. For most of these exercises, you'll want to aim for about 10 to 20 reps depending on how much weight you can add to each of the exercises. Obviously, if you can't add much weight, you will have to go for a higher rep count the one exercise that you should time instead of counting reps is the plank up down, so with that one, you'll have time for a minute while you're alternating sides. Perform each exercise for two to three sets before moving on to the next one to make this workout more effective, and remember to focus on either doing more reps or lifting a heavier weight each workout that's about it.