Never again will I disrespect the humble dumbbell skull crusher.
I did them for 5 sets of 5-10 reps (with a relatively light weight, mind you) Saturday night. And all day Sunday, and now Monday, my arms have been remarkably sore. The triceps haven't felt this sore – specifically the long head of the muscle – in approximately 144 thousand years.
It goes to show that if you focus on maximizing a particular piece of equipment – in this case, dumbbells – and you really focus on executing exercises in a way to get maximum tension on the targeted muscle, great results can be had.
It also may be a reminder that if your training is getting stale and certain muscle groups are beginning to plateau, it may just be time to reintroduce an exercise you haven't done for a while.
Due to my shoulder being strained, I used a different variation of skull crushers than I usually have in the past. In the past I would let the elbows rock down behind my head at the bottom of each rep thinking I would get an added stretch, and, therefore, some added stimulus.
But yesterday, I just did old fashioned, traditional, slow, controlled, strict dumbbell skull crushers dropping the dumbbells beside my ears and never moving the elbows. This strict variation with less range of motion and fewer moving parts hit the triceps much better than the rolling back variation.
Keep in mind, this is my experience and your mileage may vary. But experiment and see what works for you. It may just be the basic old boring technique that rips your arms apart and allows you to build titanic triceps.
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