Train your upper arms without weights
Swabbing chicken breasts under your arms when you wave? You want to postpone it as long as possible. Tricep dips can help tone your upper arms. Although you can perform this exercise at home on the couch, it is certainly not easy.
Unfortunately, everything just hangs a bit as you get older. For many women, the upper arms are the first to act. Certainly after the age of forty, the infamous chicken breasts or mop arms often arise there. The skin on your upper arms slackens and loses elasticity. Especially if your weight has fluctuated a lot, your skin can be stretched. The tricep dip is an exercise that tightens the back of your upper arms.
With tricep dips, you train – the name says it all – the triceps. The triceps brachii or three-headed arm extensor is a three-headed muscle at the back of the upper arm. He takes care of extending your elbow. Many people train their biceps, the muscle with which you bend your arm, but neglect the triceps. While these are just as important for strong arms.
Do the triceps dip
- Sit on an elevation, such as a (fitness) bench, a chair or a high step.
- Sit on the edge of the couch.
- Place your hands on the end of the bench, next to your buttocks. Your fingers point forward.
- Your elbows point back.
- Place your feet slightly away from the bench so that you perform the dips with your legs straight.
- Now push yourself up and forward a little bit so that your buttocks come off the bench. This is your starting position.
- Then you slowly lower down. Here you bend your elbows back (not to the side!). Lower down until your elbows are level with your shoulders.
- Then push yourself up again until you are back in the starting position: arms and buttocks almost fully extended and floating slightly in front of/above the couch.
good technique
- Don’t go down too far, because that will hurt your shoulders.
- Keep your elbows pointed back, especially if they bend. Your elbows are not supposed to point outward. Do not lock them fully extended in the starting position, but keep them slightly bent at all times.
- Try to keep your triceps tense at all times.
- Keep your upper body upright at all times, looking forward.
- Keep your back close to the bench.
- You do the lowering very slowly, you can go up a bit faster and more explosively.
Harder and easier
Do you think it’s easy? Grab another chair and put your feet on it. Also, do the exercise very slowly. The slower you descend, the more power the tricep dip takes.
If dipping takes a lot of effort, try it with your legs bent at a 90-degree angle. That’s a great triceps dip for beginners.
