How to do the Seated Bent-Over One-Arm Dumbbell Triceps Extension

Steps

1. Sit down at the end of a flat bench with a dumbbell in one arm using a neutral grip (palms of the hand facing you).
2. Bend your knees slightly and bring your torso forward, by bending at the waist, while keeping the back straight until it is almost parallel to the floor. Make sure that you keep the head up.
3. The upper arm with the dumbbell should be close to the torso and aligned with it (lifted up until it is parallel to the floor while the forearms are pointing towards the floor as the hands hold the weights). Tip: There should be a 90-degree angle between the forearms and the upper arm. This is your starting position.
4. Keeping the upper arm stationary, use the triceps to lift the weight as you exhale until the forearm is parallel to the floor and the whole arm is extended. Like many other arm exercises, only the forearm moves.
5. After a second contraction at the top, slowly lower the dumbbell back to the starting position as you inhale.
6. Repeat the movement for the prescribed amount of repetitions.
7. Switch arms and repeat the exercise.

Tracking it in OneRep

Add the seated bent-over one-arm dumbbell triceps extension to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.

Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.

Where the instructions come from

The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.