Triceps pushdown
Also called tricep pushdown, cable pushdown, triceps pressdown, tricep pressdown.
What is a triceps pushdown?
A triceps pushdown is a cable exercise. You stand at a high pulley with your upper arms held against your sides and straighten your elbows against the stack, then let it bend them back up. It trains the triceps brachii, which is what extends the elbow, with a minor contribution from the anconeus. All three heads of the triceps share one tendon at the elbow, so all three cross it, and the anatomy gives no basis for aiming a pushdown at one of them. Which attachment you use — rope, straight bar or angled bar — is a preference about grip and hand position, not a way of choosing a head to train.
How do you perform a triceps pushdown?
Set up
- Set the pulley at the top of the tower, so the cable runs down toward you.
- Clip on a rope. A straight or angled bar works too.
- Hold the rope near the ends, palms facing each other, stoppers against the outside of your little fingers. On a bar, take an overhand grip with your hands a little inside shoulder width.
- Stand a half step back from the stack, feet hip width or slightly staggered.
- Bring your elbows in against your ribs and leave them there.
- Set a slight forward lean now, and keep the same lean for every rep.
Execution
- Start with your elbows bent past a right angle and the attachment around chest height.
- Straighten your elbows. The forearm swings down; the upper arm does not move.
- Finish with your elbows straight and the attachment near the front of your thighs.
- Pause for a beat with your arms straight.
- Let the attachment come back up under control to the start, without letting the stack touch down between reps.
- Keep your knuckles in line with your forearm. Do not finish the last few inches by flicking the wrist.
- On a rope, let your hands split apart and turn your palms down at the bottom, so your arms finish out to the sides. Bring them back together on the way up.
Common mistakes
Letting the upper arm swing forward and back with the rep
Once the humerus starts moving at the shoulder, the lats and the chest are helping push the weight down and the movement becomes a short press. The attachment travels the same distance, so the reps still look like reps, but the triceps is doing less of the work than the number on the stack suggests.
Leaning further forward as the set gets hard
An increasing lean puts your bodyweight over the attachment and pushes it down for you. The last reps get finished by your torso dropping rather than your elbow straightening, and your log now says you did a weight you did not really do.
Standing in the wrong place
Directly under the pulley, the cable runs straight up your torso and the attachment jams into your chest before your elbows reach the bent end of the range. Too far back and the cable pulls forward instead of up, so the bent end goes light and the top half of every rep does nothing. Half a step back keeps the cable close to vertical with the whole range in front of your body.
Finishing the rep with the wrist instead of the elbow
Bending the wrist can push an attachment the last couple of inches while the elbow is still slightly bent, which turns a full rep into a three-quarter rep you will not notice you are doing. It also loads the forearms enough that they, not the triceps, become the reason you stop the set.
Comparing the stack across attachments
A straight bar and a rope are not the same load: the bar is rigid and splits the weight evenly between two hands that cannot move apart, while a rope asks each hand to control its own end as it splits apart, as well as push it down. If your log jumps the week you switched attachments, the exercise changed, not your triceps. Log them as separate entries.
Where it fits in a session
Push day, after the pressing. It is accessory work and it should not be the reason a bench set goes badly.
Two practical notes. Cable stacks move in fixed steps, and those steps are large relative to what an isolation exercise for one muscle can add, so progression on a pushdown usually shows up as reps first and as a plate much later. And because a pushdown holds the upper arm at your side, it leaves the long head at a shorter length than an overhead position would — which is the reasoning behind pairing it with an overhead extension rather than doing two versions of the same arm position. That is an argument from where the muscle attaches, not a finding from a training study.
Muscles worked
- triceps brachii
- anconeus
Straightening the elbow is almost entirely the triceps brachii's job, with the anconeus adding a small share, and the elbow is the only joint a pushdown moves. The triceps has three heads — long, lateral and medial — but they converge into one tendon at the olecranon, so all three extend the elbow on every rep and the anatomy gives no basis for ranking them within a pushdown or for aiming an attachment at one of them. The one anatomical difference that is real: the long head is the only head that starts on the scapula rather than the humerus, so it also acts at the shoulder and its length depends on where your upper arm is. With the elbow at your side, as in a pushdown, the long head sits shorter than it would with the arm overhead. Not listed as targets, because they hold position rather than move it: the latissimus dorsi and teres major work isometrically to keep the upper arm at your side against a cable that is pulling it up and forward.
What lifters actually do
Close to three in five regular RepCount users have logged a triceps pushdown at some point, and it appears in about one workout in eleven. Where it sits in the week is clear in the data: of the five exercises it most often shares a session with, three are presses — bench, incline dumbbell press and dumbbell shoulder press — one is lateral raises and one is another triceps movement. No back or biceps movement is among them. This is a push-day accessory, and lifters log it as one: around three sets, in a session of roughly seven exercises.
Most often trained alongside
Share of triceps pushdown sessions that also include each exercise.
- Bench press29.5%
- Dumbbell lateral raises28.7%
- Incline dumbbell press23.5%
- Dumbbell shoulder press21.4%
- Triceps extensions14.5%
Figures come from workouts tracked in RepCount.
Variations
- Rope pushdown — Rope attachment. The hands split apart and the palms turn down at the bottom, so the arms finish out to the sides.
- Straight bar pushdown — Fixed hand spacing and a rigid bar, so both arms are locked into the same path.
- V-bar pushdown — Angled bar. The hands sit turned slightly in rather than flat, so the bar and the forearms line up differently.
- Reverse grip pushdown — Underhand grip, on a straight bar or one arm at a time with a handle.
- Single arm cable pushdown — One side at a time with a handle, which makes it obvious when one arm is leading.
- Band pushdown — Same movement with a band anchored above head height, so resistance rises as the elbow straightens.
Frequently asked questions
What muscles do triceps pushdowns work?
The triceps brachii, with a minor contribution from the anconeus, a small muscle at the outside of the elbow. Elbow extension is what a pushdown is, and the triceps is what extends the elbow. The latissimus dorsi and teres major work too, but only to hold your upper arm at your side against a cable trying to pull it up — they hold position rather than move the weight.
Should I use a rope or a bar for pushdowns?
Either. It is mostly a preference about grip and hand position, and it does not change which muscle does the work. A straight bar fixes your hands at one spacing and one angle; an angled bar turns them in a little; a rope lets your hands split apart and turn palms down at the bottom so your arms finish out to the sides. Any picture of a pushdown has to show one attachment or another, so read whichever you see as an example rather than as the instruction. Two things do follow from the choice. The grip: a bar is taken overhand, a rope with the palms facing each other, which is what the stoppers on the ends are for. And the load: the weight is not comparable between attachments, so log them separately rather than wondering why the number dropped.
Do pushdowns work the long head of the triceps?
Yes, in the sense that all three heads share one tendon at the elbow and all three cross it, and nothing in the anatomy lets you pick one out. What is true about the long head is that it is the only head attaching to the shoulder blade rather than the upper arm bone, so its length changes with where your upper arm is. With your elbow at your side, as in a pushdown, the long head is at a shorter length than it would be with your arm overhead. That is a fact about where the muscle attaches, not a claim about which exercise builds more muscle.
What is the difference between a pushdown and a triceps extension?
Where the upper arm is. A pushdown keeps it down at your side; an overhead extension puts it up beside your head, and a lying extension puts it somewhere between. The elbow does the same thing in all of them. The difference matters only for the long head, which crosses the shoulder and is therefore stretched further in the overhead positions.
Can you do pushdowns without a cable machine?
Yes, with a band anchored above head height — a door anchor, a rack pin, anything solid. The movement is identical. The feel is not: a band gets harder as it stretches, so the hardest part is the straight-arm end, whereas a cable holds roughly the same load all the way through.
Why do my forearms get tired before my triceps on pushdowns?
Usually one of two things. Either you are finishing reps by bending the wrist instead of straightening the elbow, which hands the last inches of each rep to the forearm, or you are gripping a rope hard enough to hold the ends together all the way down that the grip fails first. Keep the knuckles in line with the forearm, and on a rope let your hands split apart and turn palms down at the bottom rather than holding the ends together.
Are triceps pushdowns worth doing?
Judging by what RepCount users actually log, they are one of the standard accessories: close to three in five regular users have logged one, and a pushdown turns up in about one workout in eleven. The company it keeps is the more interesting part — the exercises it most often shares a session with are the bench press, dumbbell lateral raises, the incline dumbbell press and the dumbbell shoulder press — four of the five, the fifth being another triceps movement. It is push-day work, and lifters treat it that way.
How many sets and reps should I do?
A pushdown is isolation work for one muscle, so it does not need to be heavy to be worth doing, and heavy is where the form goes first — the upper arm starts swinging and the torso starts leaning. The straight-arm pause is the test: it is the only point in a pushdown where the triceps is as short as this exercise takes it, and it is the first thing to disappear when the weight is too heavy. Whatever weight lets you straighten the elbow fully, hold it for a beat and keep the same lean on the last rep as on the first is the right one. For reference, RepCount users who log a pushdown average around three sets of it in a session of roughly seven exercises.
Sources
- Tiwana MS, Sinkler MA, Bordoni B. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Triceps Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536996/
- Card RK, Lowe JB, Launico MV. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Elbow Joint. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK532948/
- Mitchell B, Whited L. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Forearm Muscles. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536975/
- Jeno SH, Varacallo MA. Anatomy, Back, Latissimus Dorsi. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448120/
- Syros A, Rizzo MG. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Teres Major Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK580487/