Decline Close-Grip Bench To Skull Crusher

How to do it

1. Set a decline bench and hook your legs under the pads before lying back.
2. Take an EZ bar with a close overhand grip and press it up over your chest.
3. Lower the bar to your chest with the elbows tucked — a close-grip press.
4. Press it back up to straight arms.
5. From the top, bend the elbows to lower the bar past your forehead, keeping the upper arms still.
6. Straighten the arms back to the start. Press and extension together are one repetition.

Common mistakes

• Blurring the two halves together. The press is elbows-and-shoulders and the extension is elbows only; running them into one movement means neither is done properly.
• Loading it from a close-grip press. The extension half is far weaker than the press half, and the extension sets the weight.
• Letting the upper arms drift during the extension. Once they travel the movement becomes a pullover, which on a decline puts the bar somewhere unhelpful.
• Skipping the leg hooks. Head below hips with a bar above your face is the position the hooks exist for.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Triceps

Secondary

• Pecs
• Shoulders