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Can You Do Triceps After Biceps Day? (Solved!)

Making sure you have effective splits in your training week is important to get the most out of each and every workout.

In this article, we discuss whether you can do triceps after biceps day or not.

We look at the pros and cons of doing so as well as diving into some other useful information surrounding the subject of arm day (or days).

Can You Do Triceps After Biceps Day?

Your biceps and your triceps are opposite muscles.

This means that they have opposing functions so when one activates, the other doesn’t.

And so training triceps after biceps day is usually completely fine and shouldn’t have any detrimental impact on either one of your workouts.

Bicep-specific exercises rarely cause activation in your triceps and triceps-specific exercises rarely cause activation in your biceps.

As one is resting while the other is working, training triceps after biceps day is definitely possible as both muscle groups will still be getting the rest and recovery time they need despite training your arms on consecutive days.

Benefits of Doing Triceps After Biceps Day

Two Challenging Workouts With A Reduced Risk Of Fatigue

Your biceps and triceps are relatively small muscle groups compared to others.

This means that you can work them hard and to their full potential without having to worry too much about overall fatigue.

For example, if you train your legs, back, or chest, these are big muscle groups that usually require you to lift heavy weights and perform some big movements.

This can cause overall fatigue where you feel like you don’t have enough energy or motivation to train the day after.

Training two small muscle groups (like your biceps and your triceps) back-to-back reduces the risk of fatigue as you tend to lift lighter weights and use smaller movements when training them.

It Provides Two Effective Workouts Without Impacting Muscle Recovery

When training on consecutive days, it’s really important to keep rest and recovery time in mind.

After you’ve targeted a muscle during a workout, that muscle will need appropriate time to repair and rebuild itself before you train it again.

If you decide to train your triceps after biceps day, you’re allowing this to happen even though you’re targeting your arms on back-to-back days.

While your biceps recover, your triceps should be feeling fresh and ready to be worked to their full potential.

During a triceps workout, your biceps won’t need to activate so they can still be recovering effectively while you challenge another muscle group in your arms as you keep progressing toward your fitness goals.

Drawbacks of Doing Triceps After Biceps Day

Training Two Small Muscle Groups Back-To-Back

When you’re trying to get the most out of your training week, it can be a drawback to train two small muscle groups back-to-back.

If you train a big muscle group, your heart rate will likely be higher, you can burn a few more calories during the session and you can even burn some more calories after the session as your body works hard to repair the large muscle groups.

If you train a small muscle group two days in a row, you may find that your overall fitness gain is a bit lower than if you focused on a larger muscle group too.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it’ll ultimately depend on your fitness goals whether this is an issue for you or not.

However, if you’re trying to improve your overall fitness, training two small muscle groups on consecutive days might not be the most effective way of training for you.

Should You Do Triceps After Biceps Day?

There aren’t too many reasons why you shouldn’t do triceps after biceps day.

Your decision to do so or not will likely come down to your training goals and your personal preferences but training in this way is certainly feasible and effective.

As long as your triceps are fully recovered from any previous exercise and are free from injury, training them the day after biceps should be completely fine for most gym-goers.

Is It Safe To Do Triceps After Biceps Day?

Yes, as long as you’re mindful of overtraining and you’re training at an appropriate level to your current fitness, doing triceps after biceps day is safe to do.

Obviously, any form of training comes with some risk but the risk in this case would be considered very low.

Is It Better To Do Biceps After Triceps Day?

Although you’ll probably see more people doing biceps before triceps, it could actually make more sense to do your triceps first.

Your triceps are bigger than your biceps and, as a general rule, it’s usually a good idea to focus on the larger muscle groups first.

Your triceps exercises are also more likely to bring more muscle groups into play which can help prepare more of your body to work harder throughout that workout and also the rest of your training week.

Other Muscle Groups To Train After Biceps Day

Legs

You may want to give your upper body a complete rest after biceps day.

If this is the case, then doing legs the next day can be a great way of moving the focus of your workout down to your lower body.

During your leg workout, you won’t need your biceps to work so they can take the time to rest and recover while you’re still working hard in the gym.

Chest

As your biceps are pulling muscles, training a large pushing muscle (like your chest) the next day can be an effective way of training.

Your biceps don’t play too much of a role in most chest exercises so they should still have plenty of time to rest and recover while you work on building your chest.

That’s all for this article, but can you do cardio after chest workout?

Hope this helped!