Band Skull Crusher

🎯 Triceps🏋️ BandBeginnerIsolation

How to do the band skull crusher

  1. Secure a band to the base of a rack or the bench. Lay on the bench so that the band is lined up with your head.
  2. Take hold of the band, raising your elbows so that the upper arm is perpendicular to the floor. With the elbow flexed, the band should be above your head. This will be your starting position.
  3. Extend through the elbow to straighten your arm, keeping your upper arm in place. Pause at the top of the motion, and return to the starting position.

Muscles worked

The prime mover is the triceps brachii, which straightens the elbow, and through its long head helps pull the arm back at the shoulder.

Every exercise for:Triceps

How this movement works

One joint moves, and it moves the load away from the body. With nothing recruited to assist, the target muscle reaches its own limit rather than the limit of the weakest link in a chain — which makes this useful for adding volume after the heavy compound work, not for opening a session.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A band gets harder the further it stretches, so resistance peaks at the end of the range rather than the middle. It is also the easiest way to scale a movement in small steps.

Every exercise using:Band

These train the triceps too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 99 triceps exercises in this database, 44 are listed at beginner level.

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.