Understand what “advanced” really means
If you are searching for an advanced tricep workout, you are probably past the beginner stage. You know your way around pushdowns and dips, but your arms are not growing the way you want.
Before you jump into more sets and fancy techniques, it helps to define what makes a tricep workout advanced.
An advanced tricep workout usually means you:
- Train triceps at least 2 times per week
- Use a mix of heavy, moderate, and higher rep ranges
- Include both compound and isolation exercises
- Keep track of volume and recovery so you can push hard without burning out
- Use intensity techniques like drop sets and pre exhaust when progress stalls
You will see these elements woven into the routines below, all grounded in current recommendations from coaches and resources like Renaissance Periodization and Gymshark, as of 2024 and 2026.
Know your triceps anatomy and why it matters
Your triceps brachii has three heads:
- Long head: runs down the back of your arm and contributes most to overall size
- Lateral head: outer portion, gives that “horseshoe” look
- Medial head: smaller, sits underneath, important for stability and lockout strength
Triceps account for roughly two thirds to around 70 percent of your upper arm mass, as highlighted by Gymshark and Muscle & Fitness. If you want bigger arms, you cannot ignore them.
Different arm positions shift tension:
- Arms overhead tend to emphasize the long head in a lengthened position
- Elbows tucked by your sides emphasize the lateral and medial heads
- Arms down and slightly behind you can also challenge the long head through stretch
Overhead extensions and skull crushers are especially important because they load the long head in a stretched position, which research suggests is powerful for growth.
Set smart training guidelines
Before you plug in exercises, set a few rules for your advanced tricep training. These give you structure without making things complicated.
Weekly frequency and volume
From the research you shared:
- 2 to 4 tricep sessions per week is common for advanced lifters
- 12 to 28 total working sets per week for triceps is an effective range when you recover well
- Most programs do well cycling from minimum effective volume (around 6 to 8 sets per week) up toward your maximum recoverable volume (around 14 to 20 sets for triceps), then deloading
If your chest and shoulder training is heavy on presses, your triceps are already getting some indirect volume, so you may start at the lower end and build up.
Reps and loading
You benefit from training triceps across multiple rep ranges:
- Heavy: 5 to 10 reps
- Moderate: 10 to 20 reps
- Light: 20 to 30 reps
A sensible weekly split is:
- Around 50 percent of your tricep sets in the moderate range
- Around 25 percent in heavy
- Around 25 percent in lighter, high rep work
For pure hypertrophy sessions, you can spend a lot of time in the 8 to 12 rep range at roughly 60 to 80 percent of your one rep max, as advised by the 2024 Gymshark guide.
Exercise categories
To fully develop your triceps, your advanced tricep workout should regularly rotate through:
- Compound presses / dips
- Horizontal or standing extensions like skull crushers or cable extensions
- Overhead extensions to stretch the long head
Aim for 1 to 3 different tricep exercises per session and 2 to 5 total per week, as suggested by Renaissance Periodization, so you get enough variety without turning your workout into chaos.
Pick your best advanced tricep exercises
The research keeps coming back to a core group of movements. These are the heavy hitters for size and strength.
Key mass builders
These exercises show up repeatedly in advanced tricep programming from sources like Gymshark and Muscle & Fitness:
- Overhead tricep extension
- Skull crushers / lying triceps extensions
- Tricep dips
- Tricep pushdown
- Close grip bench press
- Diamond push ups
The lying triceps extension or skull crusher, especially with an EZ bar, is often described as one of the best triceps exercises for mass because:
- It allows direct progressive overload
- It places the long head in a stretched position
- It is relatively friendly on wrists and elbows when set up well
Overhead extensions and lengthened partials in the stretched position can drive especially fast long head growth, even with lighter loads.
Use perfect form and protect your elbows
As your tricep workouts get more advanced, small form errors can completely drain your results or lead to elbow irritation.
Form principles that matter
Keep these in mind across almost all tricep exercises:
- Lock your upper arms in place so only your elbows move
- Tuck your elbows slightly close to your sides unless an exercise specifically calls for a flare
- Use a full range of motion, bending and extending the elbows completely without bouncing
- Keep a soft lockout at the top, instead of aggressively snapping your elbows straight
- Choose a weight that lets you control both the lifting and lowering
Jeff Cavaliere of ATHLEAN X emphasizes that swinging the weight, overloading too early, or cutting your range of motion can all blunt tricep development and raise injury risk.
Skull crushers and elbow comfort
For lying triceps extensions:
- Angle your elbows 20 to 30 degrees back from vertical at the top
- Lower the bar behind your head rather than directly to the forehead
- Focus on a smooth arc and avoid slamming into full lockout
This keeps tension on the triceps and eases compressive stress on your elbow joints.
Follow this 2 day advanced tricep split
Here is a sample advanced tricep workout you can run 2 times per week. You can add it after chest or shoulder sessions or on its own training day.
Day 1: Heavy and moderate strength focus
Goal: Emphasize heavy to moderate work with big compound and stretch based isolation.
- Close grip bench press
- 4 sets of 5 to 8 reps
- Rest 2 to 3 minutes
- Keep your grip just inside shoulder width, tuck your elbows, and pause briefly near the chest
- EZ bar skull crushers
- 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps
- Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes
- Angle elbows slightly back, lower behind your head, and keep shoulder movement minimal
- Cable tricep pushdown
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps
- Rest 60 to 90 seconds
- Use a rope or straight bar, keep elbows pinned to your sides, and avoid leaning over the weight
- Optional finisher: Diamond push ups
- 2 sets to 1 to 2 reps shy of failure
- Control the lowering phase and keep your hands under your chest, not under your throat
This session combines heavy loads on the close grip bench press with a long head stretch from skull crushers and consistent tension from pushdowns.
Day 2: Overhead and high rep hypertrophy
Goal: Maximize the pump and stretch, use higher reps, and add intensity techniques.
- Weighted or bodyweight tricep dips
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps
- Rest 2 minutes
- Stay upright to bias triceps, keep shoulders down and away from your ears, and avoid dropping into painful shoulder ranges
- Overhead tricep extension
- 3 to 4 sets of 10 to 15 reps
- Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes
- Use a dumbbell, cable, or EZ bar, get a deep stretch overhead, then drive straight up
- Pre exhaust superset
Perform with almost no rest between A and B.
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A: Cable or band pushdowns
- 1 high rep set of 20 to 30 reps
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B: Close grip push ups or light close grip bench press
- 1 set of 15 to 20 reps with around 50 percent of your usual working weight or to near failure on push ups
Rest 2 to 3 minutes after the pair and repeat for 2 to 3 total rounds. This pre exhaustion method forces your triceps to fail before chest and shoulders, which can help break plateaus.
- Lengthened partials finisher
- Choose overhead extensions again or skull crushers
- 2 sets of 12 to 15 full reps, then 5 to 8 partial reps from the stretched bottom half of the movement
- Keep the weight lighter and focus on controlled tension
Lengthened partials in the stretch position are especially effective for the long head and can drive growth even when you cannot add more load.
Integrate bodyweight and home tricep work
If you train at home or want extra tricep work without a full gym setup, you can still follow an advanced structure.
Bodyweight and band friendly options include:
- Diamond push ups
- Bench or chair dips
- Band pushdowns
- Band overhead extensions
You can apply progressive overload by:
- Elevating your feet on push ups
- Adding a backpack with weight
- Slowing down the lowering phase
- Increasing reps or sets across weeks
- Shortening rest periods
A home based advanced tricep workout might look like:
- Diamond push ups, 4 sets of 10 to 15
- Bench dips, 3 sets of 12 to 20
- Band overhead extensions, 3 sets of 15 to 25
- Band pushdown drop set, 1 or 2 rounds where you go to near failure, then step closer to reduce tension and continue
Apply advanced intensity techniques wisely
As you become more advanced, you can get more from the same time in the gym by adding strategic intensity methods. The research you shared mentions several that can match or even beat traditional training in about half the time when used correctly.
Here are a few to work into your advanced tricep workout:
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Drop sets
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After you hit failure or close to it, reduce the weight by around 20 to 30 percent and continue repping
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Great with cable pushdowns or machine dips
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Rest pause sets
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Work to near failure, rest 15 to 30 seconds, then squeeze out a few more reps
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Perfect for skull crushers or overhead extensions with stable form
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Cluster sets
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Break one heavy set into mini clusters, such as 4 sets of 3 reps with 20 seconds rest using the same weight
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Useful for heavy presses or dips where you want high quality reps with shorter total session length
Treat these as tools, not a new default. Limit advanced intensity techniques to one or two exercises per tricep session so recovery can keep up with your ambition.
Progress your tricep training over 16 to 20 weeks
The biggest mistake in advanced training is expecting constant linear progress. A smarter approach is to think in 3 to 5 month blocks.
You can structure your tricep training roughly like this:
- Weeks 1 to 4
- Start near your minimum effective volume
- Focus on technique and moderate loads
- Track your reps and RIR (reps in reserve), staying a couple reps shy of failure on most sets
- Weeks 5 to 8
- Add 1 to 2 sets per week across your tricep exercises
- Let intensity creep up, with some sets going to 1 to 0 RIR
- Introduce one intensity technique per workout, like a single drop set finisher
- Weeks 9 to 12
- You are likely nearing your maximum recoverable volume
- Hold volume steady, maintain or slightly increase loads
- Pay close attention to elbow health and performance
- Week 13
- Take a deload week
- Cut your tricep volume in half and reduce loads
- Focus on technique, mobility, and easy movement
- Weeks 14 to 20
- Restart the cycle at a slightly higher baseline than Week 1
- Rotate some exercises if you feel stale
- Rebuild volume and intensity again
This type of planned progression is at the heart of advanced training systems like Renaissance Periodization and helps you push hard without stalling out.
Avoid common advanced tricep mistakes
At a higher level of training, progress often depends more on what you stop doing than what you add.
Watch out for:
- Using ego weight that forces you to swing or turn every tricep move into a shoulder exercise
- Half reps that never stretch the muscle or lock out under control
- Relying only on pressing movements like bench and overhead press without tricep specific work
- Constant elbow pain that you ignore instead of adjusting exercise selection, load, and volume
- Random exercise hopping every week so you never build skill or trackable progress
Coaches like Jeff Cavaliere highlight how these small errors, when combined with gaps in recovery and nutrition, can cancel out months of effort.
Put it all together
To make your advanced tricep workout productive, keep your focus on a few key principles:
- Train triceps 2 to 4 times per week, with 12 to 28 total sets depending on your experience and recovery
- Use a mix of compound presses, skull crushers or lying extensions, pushdowns, and overhead extensions
- Cover heavy, moderate, and higher rep ranges, leaning on the 8 to 12 rep sweet spot
- Emphasize the long head through overhead and stretched position work
- Add drop sets, rest pause, cluster sets, and pre exhaustion sparingly to drive new adaptation
- Protect your elbows with controlled form, full range of motion, and smart exercise choices
Pick one change to implement in your next session, such as adding an overhead extension with lengthened partials or cleaning up your skull crusher form. Then build from there. Over the next few months, you will feel the burn in every advanced tricep workout and see it show up in bigger, stronger arms.
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