How To Properly Do Tricep Pushdowns (TRY THIS!)

What's going on, everyone? It is your form expert, Coach Kyle, and today I'm going to show you how to do a straight bar pushdown. So jumping right into it, first and foremost, you want to set your cable up at the very top. You want to start with one of these attachments. I find the straight bar is fantastic on the triceps, so that's what I'm going to use today. Next up is going to be proper body positioning, because if you start out here, you're going to end up doing a straight arm lap pulldown. If you're too close, it's just going to be so awkward. So what I like to do is just take one or two steps back. Right here is absolutely perfect. To me, I'm OK with leaning forward just a little bit. You don't want to be fully upright. That's also going to be a little bit awkward. Now, from here, grabbing the side just like this, all you're going to do is place your feet at about shoulder width stance. From here, starting right here, just like this, 90 degree angle, push all the way down. And all you're moving is your forearms, OK? Just like this. Straighten your arm at the very bottom. You'll probably get a nice little shake. Control on the way up. And one of the biggest things you'll see me doing is going just a bit past 90 degrees. I'm not going all the way up here. That's going to be taking tension off the tricep. But I'm also not stopping here, as that's going to put some pain into your elbow. And I know a lot of people have elbows that bother them just from stopping at 90 degrees. So once again, forward lean a little bit. Squeeze at the bottom. Control on the way up. Just a bit past 90 degrees. And that's exactly how you do this exercise. Now, what I've done is I've actually put together a free personal trainer in your pocket. I should be charging for this, but you're watching this. You're trying to become better. So I'm going to give it to you completely free. All you have to do is message me on Instagram saying form guide. I'll send it right over. Basically, it's how to do 70 plus exercises. Start to finish with a bunch of great cues, video links directed to it and all this great information that you're going to absolutely love. So message me form guide. But now we're going to jump into some common mistakes and what a lot of people do improperly. So first and foremost, jumping into mistake number one is just improper arm positioning. So when doing this exercise, you want to make sure that your arms are nice and tight to your side, but a little bit forward. OK, so this is exactly how you're going to do it. But a lot of people have their arms too far to the back. Way too far forward or too flared out to the side, which is just completely pointless. So tuck them tight. Bring it forward just a little bit, not too much. And that's the best way to get a contraction. So common mistake number three is your ego getting in the way. A lot of people, they want to lift the entire stack. They'll do anything they can to get there. They'll use their entire body like this and just use every part muscle group or they'll just do little dinky reps. They'll be able to say, hey, I do the full stack. They'll cheat themselves at the top range. So kind of going like this or at the bottom and just kind of push it like this. I see this done a lot. And honestly, it's not worth it. This is an isolation exercise for your triceps. Don't be a hero. And that's going to bring me into mistake number three, which is just rushing through the movement. So you may have a reasonable weight chosen, but a lot of people will still basically just kind of rush through. They'll do a full range of motion, have really good intentions. But the burn on the tricep can be a little bit uncomfortable, right? And you want to embrace that. Keep everything tight. Control on the way up. Two, three, one. Stop here. Push all the way through. Three, two, one. The eccentric is a fantastic part, which is just simply a fancy way of saying on the way up where you can get an amazing contraction, blow up those triceps. And that's simply how you do this amazing exercise. Make sure to message me on Instagram form guide. I'll send you that amazing form guide right over. We'll see in the next video. Peace out.