Chef Rush puts together the ultimate tricep superset involving skull crushers and chest presses.

Chef Rush might be best known as Andre Rush the Bodybuilding White House Chef, but over the years he has used his viral presence to inform a new generation about bodybuilding and fitness. Rush is also known for his mammoth arm size specifically – sometimes called a man with the biggest arms in the world. That’s why we met up with Chef Rush to go through an in-depth ultimate arm workout guide. In our latest GI Exclusive, Chef Rush focuses on the triceps with this ultimate skull crusher superset.

Chef Rush says it himself, skull crushers are often an overlooked or cheated exercise due to its brutal nature. This is no beginners lift. While not complicated, it is more challenging than a handful of other more traditional dumbbell lifts.

That’s why Chef Rush is jumping straight into them during our instructional arm workout series. For our fourth and final part of his ultimate arm workout guide, Rush is not only teaching how to perfect the skull crusher exercise but also how to evolve it into a powerful superset.

How to perform skull crushers

Skull Crushers can be done with a barbell or dumbbells. For this particular video, Chef Rush is using dumbbells. The reason? Rush explains that using dumbbells forces you to equalize the skull crusher lift on your own rather than relying on the barbell. This takes more effort and thus provides better results.

Here’s a rundown on how to properly perform the skull crusher exercise:

  1. Lie down with your back on the bench holding a pair of dumbbells directly above your chest with your palms facing each other. Feet should be flat on the floor.
  2. Without moving your upper arms, bend your elbows and slowly lower the weights toward the sides of your head (imagine that you are bringing a barbel down directly onto your forehead – thus the term skull crusher). Avoid widening your elbows.
  3. Once you complete the full movement down, squeeze and count two seconds before returning back up to the starting position.

Chef Rush also offers a tip for making the skull crushers even more challenging and effective. Instead of bringing your arms back up to a complete straight position, you can have them kept at a slight angle towards you. This keeps the time and tension going at all times. With every rep, your full movement will always be under some sort of tension thus working out the triceps even further.

Superset: Add the Chest Press To Push Your Tricep To The Max

Chef Rush traditionally likes to turn his skull crusher sets into supersets by including a traditional dumbbell chest press between each set. After completely the full range of reps for the skull crushers, he adds a set of dumbbell chest presses. This helps push you further towards total exhaustion getting the most out of your tricep workout.

Wrap Up

This is the final part of our four part Chef Rush ultimate arm workout series. Combining all four exercise elements and tips together will create a pro level workout that can take you arms to the next level. You can check out the full workout playlist here.

You can also follow along with Chef Rush for this skull crusher superset exercise by watching our latest GI Exclusive video above!