Triceps is one of my favourite muscles – a triple headed muscle is not only the powerful extensor of the forearm at the elbow joint; but because the long head (as can be seen in the picture) originates at infraglenoid tubercle of scapula, it helps in stabilising the shoulder joint.

A good triceps would mean power at the elbow which is key to performance in sports like cricket, baseball, tennis, hockey, badminton, etc. etc.

Why it is difficult to build properly? My view:

Because of its attachment sites – at the shoulder and then at the elbow (olecranon of ulna bone); we need to stabilize two joints to bring max effort on this muscle unlike biceps. The tricky bit in my opinion is brachioradialis (pronator – we keep our forearm pronated in all sports) and other radialis muscles (forearm & wrist) which can get overactivated easily.

Note: did you notice that if we work on all the muscles correctly then they grow in sync. The picture displays beautifully developed anterior deltoid, triceps of course, separated out biceps, brachioradialis, extensor carpi radialis, and extensor digitorum at the elbow.

Can we call this a powerful & strong arm?

I believe so….

In sports we do not have a choice to pick and choose muscles that we like to train. We must think of the entire chain and how an over developed/over activated muscle can cause hurdle to our movements.

Example: if there is one body part that sportsmen love to train it is legs. And yet we get to hear a lot about hamstring injuries.

How can we injure the very muscle we are training so hard is beyond me?

My view: It seems likely that we are over training a few over activated muscles at the leg in lieu of strength. However as we have seen over the years, it is not necessarily increasing the speed/power in every athlete, nor it is able to keep the athletes injury free.

Umesh Chhikara

Sports Scientist

#strengthandconditioning #tricpes#forearm