Using the Triceps Dip Exercise Machine at the Gym

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is personal trainer Michael Angelo on behalf of Expert Village.com and here at Extreme Fitness in Laurel Springs, New Jersey. I am going to demonstrate how to do a tricep push down. Now a common mistake of the triceps push down that most people make that are new to the gym is that they come down and put too much weight on and they come down and they do almost like a pull over kind of a movement. These ballistic movements don’t do a lot for you except put you at risk for injury. Another common mistake is they put their elbows too far in front of them and they don’t get a complete contraction on the triceps and that is really what you want to do on this machine. Okay. So the proper way is to walk up and grab the equipment, come back, your arms tucked in, midway through the body. You come down, only squeezing the triceps, down, up, squeeze the triceps and the only muscle doing any work is the triceps muscle itself because you are properly isolating it. Okay. The elbow is the only joint moving. You don’t want the shoulder moving. If your shoulder is moving you are not doing the movement properly. As we are going through the range of motion, you can see the triceps is doing all of the work. Any time you are working in any kind of muscle group especially the smaller ones, you really want to isolate that muscle to do all of the work to get the proper results out of it. As we are going through the motions, really feeling that isolate the triceps that will probably do a triceps by step. "