Overhead Barbell Triceps Extension

How to do it

1. Set a barbell or EZ-bar in a rack at shoulder height, or clean it up to your shoulders.
2. Press the bar overhead until your arms are straight, hands about shoulder-width apart.
3. Stand tall with your feet hip-width apart and brace your stomach — this stops the lower back arching as the weight goes behind your head.
4. Keeping your upper arms vertical and close to your head, bend your elbows to lower the bar behind your head.
5. Lower until you feel a stretch along the back of your upper arms, roughly when your forearms pass parallel to the floor.
6. Extend your elbows to press the bar back overhead, keeping the upper arms still throughout.

Common mistakes

• Letting the elbows flare out to the sides. Keeping them pointing forward and close to the head is what keeps the load on the triceps rather than spreading it to the shoulders.
• Letting the upper arms drop forward as the set gets hard, which shortens the range and turns the movement into a press.
• Arching the lower back to hold the weight overhead. Brace the stomach and squeeze the glutes; if the arch persists, the weight is too heavy or the shoulders cannot yet hold that position.
• Skipping overhead work entirely. With the arm overhead the long head of the triceps is at full length at the shoulder — a range pushdowns and dips structurally cannot reach, on the largest of the three heads.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Long HeadTriceps

Secondary

• Shoulders