I had a hammer curl bar that was stadium shaped and it was great for skull crushers and didn’t hurt my elbows at all. But I left it over my buddies house for a couple years and it disappeared when I went to retrieve it.
Anyways, hammer grip was real good, easy on the elbows.
There. Shaped like that.
Anybody ever use a slingshot to control the drifting or spreading of the elbows?
This is interesting. I admittedly don’t feel much tricep when doing skull crushers but always thought it’s impossible for them not to be working so I just went with it. I’ll have to do some experimenting.
How you’re performing the exercise is everything when we’re talking about targeting a muscle. The triceps are the agonist for extending the arm, but there are synergists contributing as well, and how much they contribute/how little the triceps contribute is dependent on how the exercise is executed.
I enjoy doing them, but I find dips something I respond better to in terms of gains and all that.
Not to mention this about the only exercise that gives me a decent amount of anxiety purely from the name and the fact that if you slip up…well…that’s your ass.
I watched a video about skulls from some long-time-ago BB, his included skulls with a mind-muscle connection. The best way to do that was to not push the weight up, but to flex the weight up.
Flex up, one second hold, flex down slow.
Intense
Yes. This +1.
I get elbow issues with skull crushers. I have done a similar exercise with dumbells that I thought got the triceps really burning. I do them on an incline bench. With elbows flared out, I lower the dumbell to the chest, then extend the arm. I do these for 10-15 reps and the back of the arm will usually be on fire.
Realized there is a name for this exercise. The Tate press (after Dave Tate).
Gonna second @FlatsFarmer. I love PJR pullovers with an EZ bar. Easy on my wrists, elbow friendly, huge triceps pump.
Here’s world’s greatest bench coach Josh Bryant talking to 9 consecutive time world champion powerlifter Larry Pacifico. Pacifico was well known for working triceps, specifically with skull crushers. Now that he’s an old man with annihilated elbows he says he wished he never did them.
This and what Punisher said. I find people generally use too much quick eccentric and rapid rebound out of the bottom. In addition to not being consciously focused on flexing the triceps to lift, this is the quickest way to elbow troubles ever. Think about it, it’s like you’re trying to do a depth jump but for your elbows… No bueno. Add in not finding your optimal elbow angle and it’s trouble. I think some people make the same execution mistake with overhead presses as well, which is why sometimes that heats up elbows.
The other thing I see is that people jump up in weight much too quickly because they want to move bigger pounds and/or show off. Doing an exercise that kind of inherently puts tons of tension on tendons does not respond well to quick load increases…whether it’s volume or weight. It’s no different than other tendon training exercises like plyometrics - people get joint issues and tendon issues with plyometrics because they jump to the advanced stuff way too fast.
You have to condition your tendons gradually to the load and volume both. Tendons adapt but they don’t adapt as fast as muscle due to minimal blood flow among other things.
So basically it’s a triple whammy - not being intensely focused on flexing the triceps versus moving the hands, executing the exercise with a rapid eccentric and/or rapid reversal out of the bottom, and increasing volume/load too rapidly. 3 strikes you’re out. Add in not doing them when pumped and it’s 4 strikes.
That said, I prefer JM presses rather than regular skull crushers. I find them more effective IF properly done. Yesterday I finished 4 sets of JM presses with 135 and no elbow issues after benching.
I do find varying the stimulus helpful - if 2 days benching, 1 day skulls and 1 day bands.
Tate presses are awesome.
EDIT–to say there’s nothing wrong with dropping the exercise for a week if you start to feel elbows complaining. I mean powerlifters cycle bench press lifts and intensity, there’s no reason why you couldn’t do them for 2-3 weeks, take 1 week off and replace them with bands, and then put them back in the program. Sometimes people get married to exercises and are scared to rotate them out for a bit.
I like skullcrushers, but I always pissed of my elbows if I started my workout with them. I can do them now, but they require lots of warm up sets. I find they work better when done on the floor using an EZ bar with a brief pause between reps (dead stop).
I lower slowly, then without bounce try to explode up in my presses. I think it builds more strength. Many power lifters do this. Not the same as what you mentioned, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
I think having a few core movements is good. I don’t recommend doing stuff that doesn’t work for your body though. Really starting to like the barbell row. Have also gotten into chin ups. Liking the lift I think is big too.
Sure, absolutely. And actually that’s my point - the guys who do it most successfully do it with a slow negative… Whereas the majority of rec lifters who don’t like skull crushers due to bad elbows seem to perform a much faster version. Often because they’re not actually strong enough to do the weights they want to do correctly.
Definitely agree with having a few core lifts as a concept. I think being married to a lift is different than having a core lift though… it’s a psychological need to keep the lift in (not related to competition). But as a PL it’s always good to cycle things. Most of the time it fixes joint issues of you don’t wait too long.
You definitely have to like the lift for sure, otherwise it’s like pulling teeth. But then… If you want to be good sometimes that’s what it takes to get better.
Reading this thread makes me glad that I always hated skull crushers. They never felt right and so I just never did them. My elbows are certainly happier as a result.
John Meadows does them with kettlebells and I’ve found this the only way to not make my elbows feel like they’re going to explode. With that being said, I rarely do them. I’ve found overhead tricep extensions using a low pulley rope to be superior to skull crushers.
A friend of mine showed me what he called “Swede Crushers” where you intentionally stretch your elbows behind your head on the concentric part. So when you go to lock out your skulls you’re also tracking your elbows back up towards the sky. Not only does it burn your tris like a motherfucker, it takes a lot of pressure of the joint. At least for me.
Yes. Keep the back of your wrist FLAT like a straightedge is on it from your elbow to your knuckles. At 90 degrees to that viewpoint, keep your wrist STRAIGHT ref left to right medial to lateral - your middle finger base bone should be along the centerline of your arm. A quality EZ curl bar is needed, one whose centerline axis intersects the knurled grip surface halfway along its length. Cheap EZ curl bars ruin wrists.
If you “must” use a straight bar, angle its path along your bone aligned grip described above.
It can cut about a forty five degree angle if you grip it from the very base of your index finger, to almost the heel of your hand at the pinky side.
Boyer Coe and Bill Pearl did an article decades ago describing how “fulcrum movements done to failure will ultimately result in chronic tendonitis.” Don Ross accurately found how with fulcrum movements (wherein the weight moves in an arc) You can avoid tendonitis by NEVER allowing your reps below 15. Ergo, set your rep goal at 15-20. This completely alleviated knee tendonitis when I went from 12-15 (bad) to 15-20 under his guidance.
If you find yourself in a cable machine, you can reverse the arc of movement so to speak and in doing so kind of do a reverse fulcrum path. This will also rid/minimize the tendonitis tendency.
Hope this helps you.
Gonna be a dingus here: Swede Crushers are a shorter ROM version of a PJR pullover or pullover press. Pullover presses have been done for decades.
Again, goes to show that there really aren’t many “new” exercises, just rebranding old ones.
Skipped the majority of the thread so forgive me if I’m repeating anything. I understand the wrist concern, and I’ve known it to be fairly common amongst the gym goers. Some thing I stumbled upon that always works for me and that I recommend from my clients, is to use two dumbbells with neutral grips instead.
S
Lying on the bench facing ceiling, “Floor to ceiling to chest to floor” helps in that the fully stretched concentric fulcrum is followed by an eccentric but compound portion, followed by an eccentric but short radius arc fulcrum.
This plays the relative cautions with eccentric and fulcrum rather well IMO.
