Triceps Kickback

What the triceps kickback actually trains

A triceps kickback is a single joint elbow extension performed hinged forward with the upper arm held parallel to the floor, straightening the arm behind you against a dumbbell.

The triceps brachii extends the elbow. The lateral and medial heads cross only the elbow. The long head also crosses the shoulder, and in the kickback position the shoulder is extended, which shortens the long head before you begin.

That is the first thing to understand about this exercise: it puts the largest part of the triceps in its shortest position and then asks it to work.

The second is the resistance curve. With a dumbbell, the load is hardest to lift when the forearm is horizontal, which happens at lockout, and almost weightless when the forearm hangs vertically at the start. So the exercise is easiest exactly where the muscle is longest and hardest exactly where it is shortest. It is the opposite of what you would design.

Kholinne and colleagues examined the role of each head of the triceps in elbow extension and found they are not interchangeable, and Maeo and colleagues found that elbow extension trained overhead produced substantially greater triceps growth than the same work with the arm in a neutral position. The kickback sits at the far end of that spectrum from overhead, so it is the least favourable arm position available.

None of this means it does nothing. Reps are reps, and a hard set of kickbacks trains the triceps. It means the exercise is a poor use of a training slot when a cable pushdown or an overhead extension is available.

Setting up and executing

Take a light dumbbell in one hand. Lighter than you think; this is not an exercise where load is the point.

Place the opposite hand and knee on a bench for support, or hinge at the hips with both feet on the floor and the free hand on your thigh.

Hinge until the torso is close to parallel with the floor. Standing upright removes almost all the resistance, so this is not optional.

Raise the working upper arm until it is level with your torso and let the forearm hang straight down.

Brace the abs, keep the shoulders square, and extend the elbow until the arm is straight behind you. Squeeze for a beat at full extension.

Lower over two to three seconds until the forearm hangs vertically again, keeping the upper arm exactly where it was.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Letting the upper arm drop is the fault that removes the exercise entirely. If the elbow sinks between reps, you are swinging a dumbbell back and forth with a bent arm and the shoulder is doing the work. The upper arm should be level with your torso and stay there for every rep of the set.

Standing too upright has the same effect through a different route. The resistance in a kickback comes from gravity acting on a horizontal forearm, and if your torso is at forty five degrees, the forearm never gets there. Hinge properly.

Going heavy is the misunderstanding at the root of all of the above. Because the leverage is worst at lockout, a heavier dumbbell does not make the exercise harder in a useful way; it just prevents you from completing the only part of the range that has any resistance.

And using it as your main triceps exercise is the programming version of the same error. Pedrosa and colleagues found training at long muscle lengths produced favourable hypertrophy outcomes compared with short length training. The kickback is short length work with the load concentrated at the shortest point of all.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

High reps, light weight, short rest. There is no version of this exercise that suits heavy loading.

For muscle gain, three sets of twelve to twenty per arm with a minute rest. For strength, three sets of twelve to fifteen with a minute, though nobody should be pursuing strength through kickbacks. In a fat loss phase, three sets of fifteen to twenty five with forty five seconds.

Slow the lowering phase and pause briefly at full extension. Squeezing the lockout is the one place the exercise offers meaningful tension, so use it.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, which is the argument for including kickbacks at all. If they are adding two or three hard sets you would not otherwise do, they contribute.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping a rep or two short of failure produces comparable growth to going to failure, which applies here as everywhere, though with a light dumbbell the last rep costs you very little.

Where it fits in your split

At the very end of a push or arm session, if at all.

On push, pull and legs it is the last movement on push day. On a bro split it is a finisher on arm day. On an upper and lower split it is rarely necessary. On a full body programme you should almost always choose a pushdown instead.

The honest recommendation is that if you have access to cables, this exercise does not need to be in your programme. A cable pushdown trains the same joint action with constant tension throughout the range, and a cable overhead extension trains the long head in the position the evidence favours. Between those two, the triceps are covered.

Where the kickback earns a place is limited equipment. One light dumbbell and a bench, in a hotel gym or a spare room, with nothing else available. In that context, doing kickbacks with good position and high effort is far better than doing nothing.

The second context is elbow discomfort. Some people find heavy pushdowns and skull crushers aggravate the elbow, and a light kickback keeps blood moving through the muscle without loading the joint.

Variations worth knowing

The cable kickback runs the same movement against a low pulley, which keeps tension present through the whole range instead of only at lockout, and is a genuine improvement.

The two arm bent over kickback does both sides at once without a bench, which halves the time but asks more from the lower back.

The bench supported kickback places the chest on an inclined bench, removing the lower back demand entirely and making the upper arm position much easier to hold.

The cable pushdown is not really a variation so much as the exercise you should probably be doing instead, with the same joint action and a far better load profile.

The overhead dumbbell extension uses the same single dumbbell in the position that loads the long head at length, and is the better use of the same equipment.

And the band kickback substitutes a band for the dumbbell, which changes little, since band tension also peaks at lockout.

What the evidence says

Kholinne and colleagues examined the different role of each head of the triceps brachii in elbow extension and found the heads contribute unequally, which is why the shoulder position of an exercise matters as much as the elbow action.

Maeo and colleagues found substantially greater triceps hypertrophy after elbow extension training performed overhead compared with the arm in a neutral position, especially in the long head. The kickback holds the shoulder extended, which is the least favourable position on that spectrum.

Pedrosa and colleagues found training at long muscle lengths produced favourable hypertrophy outcomes compared with short length training, and the kickback concentrates its resistance at the shortest length available.

Pallarés and colleagues found full range training produced superior strength and hypertrophy outcomes compared with partial range work, which supports extending fully on every rep rather than settling for the easy middle.

Vigotsky and colleagues cautioned against reading surface electromyography amplitudes as a direct measure of growth, which is worth applying to the studies often cited to claim kickbacks rank highly among triceps exercises.

Schoenfeld and colleagues on weekly volume and Refalo and colleagues on proximity to failure supply the programming, and both point to a small number of hard sets rather than a large number of half hearted ones.

Common questions

Are kickbacks a waste of time?

Not a waste, but close to the bottom of the list. The load is heaviest where the muscle is shortest and lightest where it is longest, which is backwards. If a cable station is free, a pushdown or an overhead extension is a better use of the same three sets.

Why does it feel so hard with such a light weight?

Because the leverage at lockout is terrible. A horizontal forearm holding a dumbbell at the end of a long lever is genuinely difficult, which is why five kilos feels like twenty. That difficulty is concentrated in one small part of the range rather than spread across it.

How is the cable version different?

Meaningfully better. A cable pulls along a constant line, so there is tension at the start of the rep as well as at lockout, which removes the main mechanical complaint about the dumbbell version.

Do kickbacks target the long head?

No, the opposite. Extending the shoulder shortens the long head, and Maeo and colleagues found long head growth responds best to elbow extension trained with the arm overhead. If long head development is your aim, this is the wrong exercise.

Is there any reason to keep them?

Yes, two. If your equipment is one light dumbbell, they let you train the triceps properly with what you have. And if your elbows dislike heavier extension work, they add volume without loading the joint. Otherwise, replace them.