Dips Exercise: How to Do Dips the Right Way

What is the dip exercise?

Dips refer to upper-body strength-training exercises whereby you are required to lift loads equivalent to your body weight. Thus, the heavier you are, the more challenging they become.

The best thing about dips is that they can be easily modified in such a way that the lifters won’t find them challenging if incorporated into their workout regimes.

Dips come with many benefits, let alone their ability to help build your strength in several layers of your body muscles at the same time. Their benefits can only be realized if they are conducted in the right way; otherwise, if done, inappropriately can lead to injuries.

Benefits of Dip Exercise

Here are some of the benefits of dip exercise that you can get from performing dips:

1. Builds Strength

How do muscle dips work? Dips help in building strength by targeting several layers of your upper-body muscle groups. Mostly, they focus on your triceps that happens to be the major muscle located at the back of your arm. This is the same muscle charged with the role of extending your elbow joint. The dips for chest exercises will also indirectly work the muscles of the triceps and shoulders as well.

The dips exercise for triceps is a great bodyweight exercise that builds arm and shoulder strength. Additionally, when you are pushing up out of the dips, your upper chest along with anterior delts (at the front of your shoulders) supports by flexing the shoulders.

A few other muscles including levator sculpae, rhomboids, and latissimus dorsi regulate your movement at your scapulas. Thus, all these muscles are worked out to make them firmer and stronger muscles.

Builds Strength with Dips Exercise.

2. Complex Exercise

Dips are complex in that they require movements in several joints. Any complex or compound exercise is beneficial in that it promotes the development of multiple muscle groups at the same time. ^[1]

As a result, you will be in a position to strengthen and tone several muscle groups by merely engaging in dips.

Additionally, compound exercises ape the regular tasks you carry out every day. This means that strength and coordination improve each time, making these tasks easier to perform regularly.

3. Easy to Modify

With dips, they can easily be modified to make them difficult or easy to perform. Should you find it hard to perform the traditional dips that involve bars, you can switch to body weight bench dips. This exercise shows how to perform tricep bench dips with weights.

Sit on the edge of a bench while extending your legs out in front of you while placing your heels on top of another bench.

Next, put your hands on the edge of the bench on both sides of your hips in the direction of your feet and then lift your hips forward away from the bench.

You can also make the traditional dip more challenging by fastening a dumbbell between your feet secured with a strap or dipping belt around your waist. Alternatively, you can use a weighted vest.

4. Reduces Injury Risks

If conducted the right way, dips reduce the risk of injury to joints while at the same time ensuring that your triceps, shoulder, and scapular muscles are effectively developed.

For you to practice dips correctly, start by standing between two dip bars. Get hold of each bar with your hands and push your body up such that your elbows are locked while your feet hang in the air.

Lower your body towards the floor by bending your elbows, putting aside your feet to avoid reaching the ground.

Continue moving until your elbows attain a 90-degree angle.

Next, extend your elbows to push your body up again. You can repeat the process a couple of times for every workout session.

To work on your triceps, use narrow dip bars and wider bars for your chest.

Reduce Injury Risks by making Dips Exercise.

5. Caution

If you experience severe pain or instability in your shoulders, try to avoid dips as they apply more stress on the anterior side of your shoulder capsule.

In reference to the American Council on Exercise, the shoulder capsule may become stretched which can trigger instability. ^[2]

Additionally, the stress can cause impingement of nerves that are located in the joints.

It is thus advisable to consult with a healthcare provider before you start dips or any other new workout program.

Final Verdict

If you would like to build the strength of your upper-body muscles, you should consider dips as one of the best workout practice.

Dips are a compound exercise that work the majority of your upper muscles without much struggle because you can adjust their difficulty level. ^[3]

This means you will burn more calories when all these groups of muscles are being worked out.

Additionally, dips ensure that there is an even development of muscles on your shoulders at both the back and on the interior side.

3 Sources

We review published medical research in respected scientific journals to arrive at our conclusions about a product or health topic. This ensures the highest standard of scientific accuracy.

[1] 5 Benefits of Compound Exercises: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/pros/expert-articles/5811/5-benefits-of-compound-exercises/
[2] A Commonsense Approach to Addressing Shoulder Instability: https://www.acefitness.org/certifiednewsarticle/2660/a-commonsense-approach-to-addressing-shoulder-instability/
[3] Dips (Chest and Triceps): Benefits, Muscles Worked, and More: https://www.inspireusafoundation.org/chest-and-tricep-dips/

Rachel Straub, MS, CSCS

Rachel Straub is the co-author of Weight Training Without Injury, a multi-award-winning book, and has been featured in publications suc Read Full Bio