Few words strike PAIN into the elbows of old school lifters like

Extensions

Meathead Humor:

Q: “Who Does Skullcrushers?”

A: “No One Over 30.”

Elbows Just Ain’t Built For It

Triceps extension exercises, like skullcrushers, place the triceps in a fully stretched and maximally loaded position at the same time.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing except that the triceps tendon is stretched DIRECTLY OVER THE ELBOW.

That’s the back of your arm. The white line that “connects” the Long, Lateral and Medial heads? That’s the triceps tendon. See that knob it crosses over? That’s the elbow.

And that probably wouldn’t be an issue except elbows are boney as all F, and having soft tissue slide back and forth over them might not be the best/ most comfortable, joint friendly, set up.

That’s the main reason why traditional skull crushers CRUSH so many elbows.

The fully stretched triceps with a simultaneously fully flexed elbow, driving the bone into a stretched and loaded tendon probably isn’t the best thing for most people.

But triceps extensions are not all bad.

They can make you hella strong, build some serious meat hooks on the back of your upper arms and help remove your bench from the gym welfare roles #povertylift.

What if there’s a compromise?

Dumbbell JM Press

The JM Press is WIDELY misunderstood and is often coached like straight garbage.

Here’s a video of it, from the dude that invented it, so there’s that.

Its a great triceps builder, especially as a bench press assistance exercise.

But it has some drawbacks:

Difficult for trainees to perform correctly <—it too often becomes a straight elbow extension or they go too heavy and it becomes a close grip bench press.
Is still rough on a lot of elbows.

But what happens when we use dumbbells instead of a barbell?

Magic!

With dumbbells (I’m guessing because of the neutral grip) combined with dropping the elbow angle on the decent seems to alleviate pain in the elbows and the movement usually looks a lot better/ smooth/ cleaner.

Checklist:

Upper back TIGHT to the bench
Wrist starts and stays straight through the movement
SIMULTANEOUSLY the elbow and shoulder flexes and the shoulder extends, SIMULTANEOUSLY
At the bottom the shoulders are driven down and the weights pressed back into lockout SIMULTANEOUSLY
Keep the chest up and shoulders packed through the whole movement.

Smooth counts with these.

Brotips:

Grip with the pinkies extra hard
To extend the elbow: Think about pressing the elbows forward in the joint instead of extending the hand up.
I think sets of 8+ reps are best. Much lower and you run the risk of them being a DB Bench Press.
Kettlebells work great too.

Dumbbell JM Presses are one of my favorite bench press accessory, triceps, exercises and I’ve had several fairly experienced clients tell me they’ve never felt their triceps fire like they did after these.

The key to the Dumbbell JM Press is to really keep the movement in the meat of the triceps by SIMULTENSOUSLY moving the elbow and shoulder (shoulder extension/ humerus rotation) together.

This is just a BOSS ass pic of Sergio Olivia with his triceps busting out of his shirt.