Mastering the Dip: Dos, Don'ts, and Modifications

If you’re looking for a great exercise that will build some serious upper body muscle, look no further than the dip!  Dips are an ideal compound exercise and are an ideal way to work the chest, shoulders and triceps.
Bodyweight dips do require you to have a pretty good base level of strength throughout your upper body, but many fitness facilities now feature assisted dip machines that offer a great way to start and quickly progress to doing full dips with your own bodyweight.
Let’s take a look at how to do them.

Mastering the Dip: The Dos

• Make sure you can do a dip. Don’t hop up there and risk injury unless you’re fairly confident you can get through at least one full dip. not, look for an assisted dip machine to start out on.
• Grab the parallel bars, and hoist yourself up. At this point look straight ahead, and brace your stomach muscles.
• Cross your legs and bend your knees (so your feet are out behind you), for stability purposes, but keep your head up and look straight ahead.
• Keeping your elbows packed at your side, slowly lower yourself until your triceps are parallel to the floor. Don’t worry about going below parallel – this puts too much strain on your shoulders and can cause injury/discomfort.
• Once you hit parallel, push yourself back up. Be sure not to lock out the elbows at the top….try to keep tension in the upper body.
• Now do another one, and another one, etc.

Mastering the Dip: The Don’ts

• Don’t swing – If you start swinging your body as you go up and down, you take the emphasis off the muscles you’re actually trying to work.
• Don’t flair out your elbows. Having your elbows out increase your chance of injury.  Focus on keeping those elbows in tight to the body.

Mastering the Dip: Modify to You

Once you can do 3 sets of 12-15 dips no problem, you have a few options to ramp up the difficulty:

• Go slow – keep your abs tight, and lower yourself very slowly.  Your body will have to recruit every muscle in your chest, shoulders, and triceps (including all stabilizer muscles) to keep your body under control
• Add weight – Wearing a weighted vest, a weighted backpack, or a dip belt with some weight plates hanging off it are all great ways to take this exercise to the next level.