Dips are a great upper body bodyweight exercise that targets mostly the chest, triceps and shoulders. Dips are bodyweight exercises, but you will need something to raise and lower your body just like when doing pull ups, so it’s kind of impossible to do proper dips without any type of equipment or surface/ledge.
Dips may not be the most effective or best exercises for absolute beginners, because you need to be able to them properly for at least 3 sets of 6 reps with correct form for them to be effective.
But thanks to peoples creativity in bodyweight training, there are easy progression variations that you can do to start adding dips to your workouts. If you already have some strength and training background, dips will no doubt be doable very fast! So, let’s see how to do them, what muscles they target and all different variations and equipment you might want to consider.
Table of contents
How To Do Dips
What Muscles Do Dips Target
Bench Dips
Assisted Dips On A Machine
Normal Dips
Straight Bar Dips
Weighted Dips
Ring Dips
Chest Dips vs Tricep Dips
How To Do Dips At Home
Why Should You Do Dips
How To Do Dips
In the starting position you are holding your body in the air with your hands on your sides holding on separate bars and arms straight. From this position, with your core engaged and body tight, you start lowering your body by bending your elbows. Use your chest and triceps muscles so your elbows go from straight arms to about 90 degrees angle. From that down position you push your body back up till your arms are straight.
There are different variations of dips, but with all of them the basic principle is the same – lowering your body by bending your elbows and pushing yourself back up explosively and controlled.
What Muscles Do Dips Target
Dips target mostly your triceps and chest muscles with a little bit of front delts and lats. By doing dips in a different variation you can change drastically what muscles to target the most. Lean forward and dips target more chest and keep a straight-body position to target more triceps for example.
Here are more dip variations, how to do them and what muscles they target the most. If you can’t do proper dips these different variations can help your progression since some are easier to do than regular dips so you can start from the easy ones and advance from there.
For absolute beginners! Start training your push ups first. With push ups you gain strength to your chest and triceps that correlate straight to dips. Aim for 3 sets of at least 10 push ups. If you can do this comfortably it is time to start training for dips.
Bench Dips
Bench dips are probably the easiest variation. You can use a bench or any kinda level/ledge/surface that’s height is at about your knee level and wide enough to get your hand on it at shoulder width.
Go in front of the bench or level and sit on the floor. Hands behind your back place your palms on the bench and push your body up while keeping your legs straight (or at slight bend), heels on the ground and elbows facing back behind you.
The movement starts from this position with your arms straight holding your body up. Lower your body by going down and bending your elbows at about 90 degree angle and push yourself up. This is how to do bench dips. They are fairly easy exercises, but remember to focus on technique and don’t go too low if it doesn’t feel comfortable. Bench dips target mostly triceps.
Be careful when doing bench dips because the bench or whatever flat surface you are using can easily slip away behind you if it is not heavy enough or secured some way for example against a wall.
Assisted Dips On A Machine
Machine dips are great for progression, because the movement is the same as normal dips, but you can get some weight off and can train the technique and get more familiar and comfortable with the correct movement.
A machine like this is common in almost any regular gym. This particular machine is from Hammer Strength where you can do machine assisted dips and pull ups.
The way it works is that you set up a counter weight that will help you lower and lift your bodyweight – so basically remove your own weight as much as you want. Go on the pad on your knees, grab the dip handles and start dipping – easy as that!
Normal Dips
“Normal dips” are the ones you see basically every time you look up dips online or see someone doing or talking about just dips. Normal dips require a dip bar, where there are two different bars on your sides and you can go in between them, having your arms on your sides when holding on the bars.
Grab a hold on the dip bar and push yourself up so that your legs are in the air and arms straight while keeping your upper body and core muscles engaged and stable.
In normal dips your upper body will naturally lean a bit forward but the point is not to forcefully lean forward or or backward to keep your body straight up. Just keep your body in the natural and comfortable position it wants to go. Normal dips are supposed to feel in your upper chest and triceps with a bit of front delts and shoulders.
It makes it easier if the dip bar is high enough so you have to jump a bit to get to top position and you can have your legs straight. Of course, if necessary and when going down have your legs bent so they don’t touch the ground.
Remember to keep your elbows tucked and warm up your wrists to prevent injuries.
Straight Bar Dips
With straight bar dips everything is basically the same as with regular dips but you are just using a straight bar instead of dip bars, so your hands will just be in different angles and in front of you instead of on your sides.
Dipping with a straight bar requires some balancing! Straight bar dips might feel a bit awkward and uncomfortable at first because balancing will be harder and there is a lot less range of motion than in normal dips.
Even with a shorter range of motion you can get a nice pump at it’s good to hit your muscles from other angles from time to time.
First you have to get up above the bar. If you are strong enough a muscle up is the obious answer but if you cant just yet get muscle ups, you can to getting above the bar with bar pull overs or just use a higher platform to jump from. Once you get yourself above the bar with your arms straight, by bending your elbows back start lowering yourself as low as possible so your chest is touching the bar. While lowering yourself focus on keeping your legs straight and push them a bit forward. Your legs will help you with balance. From the down position push yourself with control as high as possible so your arms go straight and squeeze at the top. Focus on doing a focused, controlled movement with keeping all our muscles engaged.
Straight bar dips are a great way to start progressing toward muscle ups, because they are the second part of the whole movement with a pull up.
Knowing how to and being able to do straight bar dips will unlock more opportunities to do this exercise in different places. Maybe you want to do dips in the local small outdoors “park gym” but they only have straight bars? Then there you go, you can still do dips. Just figure out a way to get on top of that bar first. You can also be creative and do dips on top of a concrete wall, a wall next to a stairs, in the parking garage, basically anywhere you can find a flat surface that you can get on top of. If it is something you can’t get your legs under, it can be a bit tricky but still possible and easy if you just have your toes against the wall and move your ankle as you dip up and down. Once you are strong enough, you can do dips with your legs slightly back so you don’t have to worry about them touching anything, but this is very advanced and requires a lot of strength.
Weighted Dips
Okay so now you handle normal dips and those have become too easy for you. Now what? To keep progressing your muscle growth and strength you might want to look into doing weighted dips.
You can be creative with it, but the easiest is to get a dip belt and start using that. The belt goes over your hips and you attach a weight plate to the belt – easy as that. Also many people might not even think about it, but a weight vest is a no brainer, right? Just put it on like a shirt and you get extra weight. You can use a weight vest in push ups and pull ups also for example. A great investment.
If you are training at a gym they usually have dip belts that you can use but if not or you want to get your own there are many options and you can get a quality belt from Amazon for a decent price. There are many brands that make good dip belts but we do recommend you to look up a few different options, read reviews and based on those pick the one that suit your budget the best.
Ring Dips
You have probably seen people doing many different exercises on gymnastic rings before and there is a good reason for it. It is not easy because of the unbalance of the rings, but once you are able to do ring dips it will feel incredible and you can get creative with it by adding other movements like the L-sit or even the legendary iron cross.
Ring dips are also basically the same as regular dips in movement, but the hard part about it comes from balancing – the rings hang free from the ceiling so naturally when you hop on to them they start moving. Doing dips while balancing your body and focusing on that control trying not to move the rings makes the exercise incredibly hard but rewarding.
For the first time it is 100 % certain that you will shake a lot on the rings and lowering your body will feel hard, unstable and unnatural. But that’s not just because you probably don’t just yet have the strength but the technique and movement requires a lot more focus and control that comes only with experience and repetitions.
So how to progress on ring dips and become master of them? Well the simple answer is – just do ring dips. But to prevent injury you should start slowly and carefully. First you must be able to do plenty of regular dips, like 3 sets of 15-20 reps. Then you should get comfortable with the rings. Just hold yourself on them and try to find balance. After you feel comfortable holding yourself up on the rings, start slowly trying to dip. Go down slowly with control and practice this until you can do ring dips without shaking. Practice and consistency is key with this one as well as every other exercise.
Chest Dips VS Tricep Dips
The main difference is that in chest dips by leaning your torso forward you use more chest muscles to push yourself up – imagine like you are going closer to a push up position by leaning forward. Keeping your legs behind your body in chest dips help you to keep your body in balanced forward lean.
In tricep dips you want to keep your torso upright and really focus on on pushing with your triceps. Keeping your legs as straight as possible and in line with your body helps you to balance your body upright.
How To Do Dips At Home
Bench dips are probably the easiest variation of dips you can do at home. You can use regular household items like a chair, low table or anything with a hard flat surface in your home that is low enough for your legs to be at a decent angle with your heels on the ground.
If you want to do proper dips and advance with different variations like chest dips and tricep dips, buy dip bars! Dip bars will allow you to train proper dips not only at your home but you can take them with you anywhere, outdoors for example or at the gym if they don’t have dip bars.
Because of their height, dip bars are useful also in other calisthenic skills and bodyweight exercises like the front lever, so they might be a well worth investment that will get used a lot.
If you are handy you can also try to make your own dip bars from wood or metal. Also two bar stools work, but when using household items remember to be very careful and be sure that the items are secured and won’t move under you.
Why Should You Do Dips
People talk about calisthenic and bodyweight training as building functional strength. Well imagine you are in a situation where you need to push yourself up on a ledge for example in a pool or a wall. What kinda motion and what muscles do you need to have to be able to push yourself up? Chest and triceps – and dips are exactly that movement.
Dips target chest and triceps and can be considered as an alternative or an advanced progression for push ups. The benefit of dips is that they offer a lot more resistance because you are always holding your whole body in the air. With dips you can go much lower and get a very deep stretch and long range of motion. Also, once you are strong enough and want to advance and make exercise harder, dips are very easy to overload with extra weights.
The good “side effects” are also that they develop shoulder stability and you engage your core automatically a lot when doing dips and you learn to control your whole body while keeping it stabilized and reducing sway.
Reminder! Dips can easily expose you to injuries when first starting out. Start slowly and focus on correct form. If you are not strong enough yet, keep doing push ups, wide and narrow, until you feel strong enough to start dipping.
Don’t go too low on the bar, start going up when your arms and triceps are at even horizontal level and elbows at 90 degree angle. Going beyond this point is not effective and will lead to injuries unless you are strong enough and with correct form able to try them out.
