The Body Sculpting Bible for Women (86 page)

Your arms and elbows will ride close to your body as you lower yourself and when pushing to triceps lockout.

Your abdominal muscles should be contracted slightly to hold you in position.

Your legs must be completely straight, and your feet flat as if you were standing up. Now, don’t think that because the setup is easy, the exercise will be easily executed. Yes, the set-up for the exercise is easier than most; but this easy set-up makes the triceps isolation and stimulation incredibly powerful.

TECHNIQUE AND FORM

As you lower yourself down, lean back to help hold your body in the upright position.

Lower yourself slowly while resisting your body weight all the way to the bottom position.

Keep the elbows close to your body, helping to better isolate the triceps muscles.

Keeping your legs straight and feet flat to the floor, lower yourself to the floor. You can do two things here: You can either stop lowering your body right before your feet touch, or you can lower yourself to the point where you tap your feet flat on the ground and immediately begin your return upward. We prefer the latter since we know that when we tap bottom, we have completed the full range of motion for complete muscle stimulation and should explode into the upward press. Some people will not be tall enough to touch their feet at the bottom of the training apparatus being used. Also, you would never want to lower yourself to a point where you could injure yourself just to touch your feet flat on the floor. There is such a point! In any of these cases, just lower your body until your upper arms (from your elbows to your shoulders) are parallel to the floor. Then, immediately begin your return upward.

No matter what technique you use at the bottom position, after you’ve reached that point, slowly and with a smooth transition begin to press your body upward, maintaining your upright posture.

As you begin pressing upward, make sure that all of your focus is directed to your triceps muscles. This alone will help stimulate the triceps by increased muscle control and as a reminder to maintain proper alignment.

As you near the top of the motion, your goal is not to lock the joint but instead to contract and squeeze the triceps muscles as hard as you possibly can for a one to two second count. It is important to let the triceps muscles hold you in this position rather than lock the elbow joints. Otherwise, you can injure the joint. In addition, you take all of the resistance off the triceps muscles and put it onto the joints and bones. Remember that there should be no rest at the top of the exercise after the contraction period. From that lockout position, once again slowly lower yourself back to the bottom position as you resist the weight of your body. If you get to a point where your body weight is too light for the exercise, you may use a dip belt to hook some additional weight to your body, thus increasing the resistance. Please make sure that if you do use additional weight, you do so in incremental stages.