reckonerRope press-down
The first triceps lift most people learn and the easiest one to quietly turn into something else. The cable only works the triceps for as long as the elbows stay where you put them, and the moment they travel the lift becomes a small standing press.
Pin the elbows, lock out at the bottom.
- Pattern
- Arm isolation
- Trains
- Triceps
- Kit
- Cable
- 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
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the pulley above your head, then pick the pin
The attachment should start at around chest height with your elbows already bent. Too low and you run out of movement at the top. Too high and the first part of every rep is your shoulders pulling the rope down to where the set actually starts.
Stand close and pin the elbows to your ribs
Feet under you, a small forward lean from the hips, upper arms flat against your sides. That is the cue Reckoner puts on your wrist, and it is the whole lift: if the elbows stay there, everything that happens next is your triceps.
Press down until the elbows are straight
Drive the hands down and slightly apart at the bottom. Finish with the arms locked out rather than stopping an inch short, because that last part of the range is where the medial head does most of its work.
Come back up to about a right angle and stop
Let the forearms rise until the elbows are bent to roughly ninety degrees, then reverse. Do not let the stack rest between reps. Taken to failure on this movement the long head shows the fastest rate of fatigue of the three heads at the heaviest load tested4, so the end of a set is where the elbows start to travel and the form goes first.
What goes wrong
Leaning over the stack and pushing with your body
Once your chest is over your hands, your bodyweight is helping and the shoulders are pressing. It feels stronger because it is stronger. Stand up a little, take the pin back a hole, and let the arms have the set.
Letting the elbows drift forward at the top
Sliding the elbows out in front buys you extra range that the triceps are not producing, and it is what people do when the weight is one pin too heavy. If the upper arms move, the set has already ended.
Doing all of your triceps work in this position
Arms by your side is the short position for the long head, and it is the only head that crosses the shoulder3. Over twelve weeks of cable elbow extensions, the arm trained overhead grew its long head by 28.5 per cent against 19.6 per cent for the arm trained by the side, and the whole triceps by 19.9 per cent against 13.9 per cent1. The press-down is worth doing. It is not the whole job.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 25 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 25 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 25 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 25 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 25 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 25 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 25 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
Rope or straight bar?
Nobody has published a trial that compares the two attachments with everything else held still, so anyone telling you one is better is telling you a preference. The closest measurement is a study of eight triceps exercises that included both a bar press-down and a rope press-down and found the significant difference inside each of them, between the long head and the lateral head, rather than a winner between the two attachments2. Pick the one your wrists and elbows are happier under.
Is the press-down enough on its own?
For the two heads that only cross the elbow, it is a straightforward job. For the long head it is the weaker of the two positions available: it starts on the scapula and crosses the shoulder3, so it is only stretched when your arm is above your head, and the arm trained overhead in a twelve week comparison grew about one and a half times as much in the long head as the arm trained by the side1. Keep the press-down and put something overhead beside it.
What does Reckoner do when this lift stalls?
It eases the load first and lets you rebuild toward the weight you were stuck at. A swap is the second answer rather than the first: only when the lift stalls again after that reset does it offer you another movement 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
- 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 by the side on a cable machine for twelve weeks, with the overhead arm gaining 28.5 per cent long head volume against 19.6 per cent and 19.9 per cent whole triceps volume against 13.9 per cent
- Boehler, under Porcari, University of Wisconsin La Crosse, master's thesis, 2011. Electromyographic analysis of the triceps brachii muscle during a variety of triceps exercises eight triceps exercises including bar and rope press-downs, with the significant difference falling between the long and lateral heads within an exercise rather than between the attachments
- Tiwana, Sinkler and Bordoni, StatPearls, National Library of Medicine, 2023. Anatomy, shoulder and upper limb, triceps muscle the long head originating on the infraglenoid tubercle of the scapula and being the only head that crosses the shoulder joint
- Hussain and colleagues, Frontiers in Physiology, 2020. Muscle fatigue in the three heads of triceps brachii during intensity and speed variations of triceps push-down exercise twenty five men taken to task failure on the push-down, with the long head showing the highest mean rate of fatigue and the differences between heads reaching significance at the heaviest of the three loads