reckonerEZ bar skullcrusher
The lying triceps extension, loaded on a cambered bar. Both arms work against one weight that goes up in small steps, and the bends let your forearms turn slightly inward instead of holding them square on a straight bar. The grip is the only thing the bar changes. Everything else on this page is true of any lying extension.
Lower to your forehead, elbows still.
- Pattern
- Arm isolation
- Trains
- Triceps
- Kit
- Ez bar, bench
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Bar
- 10 kg
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Lie down with the bar, do not reach back for it
Sit on the end of the bench with the bar across your thighs, then lie back and let your legs bring it up with you. Feet flat, ribs down. Rolling under a loaded bar and fishing for it behind your head is how a set begins with your shoulders already in the wrong place.
Take the inner slope of each bend
Hands on the angled sections closest to the middle, thumbs wrapped, wrists straight rather than cocked back. The bar wants to sit over the base of your palms so the load runs down through the forearms instead of into the wrist joint.
Press it up and stack the arms over your shoulders
Straighten your arms with the bar over the shoulder joints rather than over your face, elbows pointing at the ceiling. That is the position you are holding still for the rest of the set, and holding it is the whole lift.
Lower to your forehead, elbows still
That is the cue Reckoner puts on your wrist. Bend at the elbow and let the bar travel back and down toward your hairline while the upper arms stay exactly where you put them. Press back to straight without letting the arms drift over your face to rest at the top.
What goes wrong
Letting the upper arms swing back and forth
The elbows drift toward your head as the bar comes down and back over your chest as it goes up, and the lift turns into a narrow press with a long arc. It feels stronger because it is stronger. It arrives with the weight rather than with the fatigue, so the answer is one step down the ladder rather than more concentration.
Working through a sore point at the back of the elbow
The three heads of the triceps converge into one tendon that attaches to the point of the elbow, and every rep of this movement is pulling on it1. Overloading that tendon shows up as ongoing pain at the back of the elbow that gets worse when you extend the arm against resistance, and what is described for it is rest and pain control rather than training through it1.
Treating this as the whole triceps job
The long head starts on the shoulder blade and crosses the shoulder joint, so how far it is stretched depends on where your upper arm is rather than on what your elbow does1. Lying with the arms vertical puts the shoulder between the two positions anybody has actually compared, overhead and by the side, and over twelve weeks of cable elbow extensions the overhead arm grew its long head by 28.5 per cent against 19.6 per cent for the arm by the side2. Reading this movement's position off that comparison is reasoning rather than a result. It is still a reason to have something overhead in your week.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 20 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 10 at 20 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 at 20 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 at 20 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 at 20 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 at 20 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 14 at 20 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Why do skull crushers hurt my elbows?
The exercise is named after where the bar goes, and the part that usually complains is at the other end of the arm. All three heads of the triceps run into a single tendon on the point of the elbow, and that tendon is what every rep is loading1. Overload it and you get ongoing pain at the back of the elbow that is worse on resisted extension, for which rest and taking the load off is what is described rather than pushing on1. Before you give the movement up, take the load down a step and check that your upper arms are genuinely still, because a set where the elbows travel is a set where the load spikes at the bottom.
How far down should the bar come?
Far enough that the triceps are stretched and your elbows have not moved. The evidence on how much range to use is thinner than the advice around it. Forty four trained men did lying elbow extensions with a bench and a barbell three times a week for eight weeks, one group working only the middle of the elbow's range and the other going from a straight arm through to deep flexion, and the middle range group gained more triceps cross-sectional area, 48.7 per cent against 28.2 per cent3. That is one study with a large effect and it has not been replicated, so it is not a licence to cut the range in order to add weight. What it does say is that a rep stopping a little short of your elbow's end range has not been wasted.
Is an EZ bar better than a straight bar for this?
Nobody has run that comparison, so anyone telling you one builds more triceps is telling you a preference. The difference between them is real and it is at the grip: a straight bar holds your forearms in one rotation for every rep, and the bends let them turn slightly inward. If the straight bar version leaves your wrists or the inside of your elbows sore, the EZ bar is worth trying, and finding out costs you one session.
What does Reckoner do when this lift stalls?
It takes the load down first and lets you build back toward the weight that stopped moving. A swap is the second answer rather than the first: only a stall after that reset gets you an offer of something else from the group below.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Tiwana, Sinkler and Bordoni, StatPearls, National Library of Medicine, 2023. Anatomy, shoulder and upper limb, triceps muscle the three heads converging into one tendon on the proximal olecranon, the long head originating on the scapula and crossing the shoulder joint, and triceps tendinitis from overload presenting as chronic posterior elbow pain that worsens with active extension and managed with rest and pain control
- Maeo and colleagues, European Journal of Sport Science, 2023. Triceps brachii hypertrophy is substantially greater after elbow extension training performed in the overhead versus neutral arm position twenty one adults training one arm overhead and one in the neutral position on a cable machine for twelve weeks, the overhead arm gaining 28.5 per cent long head volume against 19.6 per cent
- Goto and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2019. Partial range of motion exercise is effective for facilitating muscle hypertrophy and function through sustained intramuscular hypoxia in young trained men forty four resistance trained men doing lying elbow extensions with a bench and a barbell three times a week for eight weeks, the partial range group working 45 to 90 degrees of elbow flexion and gaining 48.7 per cent triceps cross-sectional area against 28.2 per cent for the full range group