Dips
Dips are an excellent compound movement that will strengthen and build the chest, shoulders, and triceps. While it’s a fairly simple exercise, it is often done incorrectly, which can cause shoulder and chest pain. Proper Dip form is key to avoiding shoulder and chest pain.
The setup
Grab the bars and jump up on the bar. Squeeze the bars as hard as you can. Pull your shoulders back and down like you should in the bench press. Lift your chest to stop your upper back from rounding, which can cause chest pain. Your torso should be leaning forward. Brace and make your whole body rigid by tensing your abs and glutes, and cross your legs or squeeze your feet together. There should be tension throughout your whole body; don’t let your legs just flop around as you do the reps. Keep your head in line with your spine in a neutral position. Don’t move your head up or down. Just before the rep, take a big breath and hold it as you lower yourself.
The Dip
Lower your body by bending your arms. Don’t let your shoulders roll forward as you go down, or shrug up as you come up, as this can hurt the shoulders. Keep your shoulders back and down, and keep your chest up throughout the movement. Keep your elbows tucked close to your torso. Go down until your shoulders are just below your elbows at the bottom. You don’t need to go any deeper than this, as it can put extra pressure on your shoulders.
Lift your body back up to the starting position by straightening your arms. Keeping your shoulders back and down, chest up, not shrugging at the topand maintaining full body tension.
Do dips hurt your shoulders?
Dips do hurt some people’s shoulders. Sometimes it’s because of shoulder problems they already have; in that case, you should just pick a different exercise, but most of the time it’s because of poor form. I rarely see anyone perform the dip correctly.
Most common mistakes are,
If you aren’t strong enough to do a full-body weight dip, you can use the assisted dip machine to build up your strength. We have one of these at Real World Fitness, and it is the easiest and best way to build up to an unassisted rep. Another option is to use resistance bands to assist you until you're able to perform a full rep.
Ways to progress
So it would look like this 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. This gives you 64 reps. You could go back up and down the ladder again, so you'll do 128 reps. As you progress, you'll be able to increase how high up the ladder you go, and so will increase the total reps you can do.
Grab the bars and jump up on the bar. Squeeze the bars as hard as you can. Pull your shoulders back and down like you should in the bench press. Lift your chest to stop your upper back from rounding, which can cause chest pain. Your torso should be leaning forward. Brace and make your whole body rigid by tensing your abs and glutes, and cross your legs or squeeze your feet together. There should be tension throughout your whole body; don’t let your legs just flop around as you do the reps. Keep your head in line with your spine in a neutral position. Don’t move your head up or down. Just before the rep, take a big breath and hold it as you lower yourself.
The Dip
Lower your body by bending your arms. Don’t let your shoulders roll forward as you go down, or shrug up as you come up, as this can hurt the shoulders. Keep your shoulders back and down, and keep your chest up throughout the movement. Keep your elbows tucked close to your torso. Go down until your shoulders are just below your elbows at the bottom. You don’t need to go any deeper than this, as it can put extra pressure on your shoulders.
Lift your body back up to the starting position by straightening your arms. Keeping your shoulders back and down, chest up, not shrugging at the topand maintaining full body tension.
Do dips hurt your shoulders?
Dips do hurt some people’s shoulders. Sometimes it’s because of shoulder problems they already have; in that case, you should just pick a different exercise, but most of the time it’s because of poor form. I rarely see anyone perform the dip correctly.
Most common mistakes are,
- Rounding the shoulders. Keep your chest up even when you're leaning forward.
- Shrugging the shoulders at the top of the movement. Keep your shoulders down and back.
- Not doing the exercise with enough control. Dropping down too fast and bouncing at the bottom puts pressure on the shoulder. Don't use momentum to get back up.
- Flaring the elbows out too much. Your arms should be at around a 45-degree angle, or closer to your body
If you aren’t strong enough to do a full-body weight dip, you can use the assisted dip machine to build up your strength. We have one of these at Real World Fitness, and it is the easiest and best way to build up to an unassisted rep. Another option is to use resistance bands to assist you until you're able to perform a full rep.
Ways to progress
- You can increase the reps you can do with your body weight. One way I liked to do this was to use the ladder method. For example, if you can do 10 reps for a single set, you could set it up like this. Start with 1 rep and increase until you get to x 8 reps, and then go back down again.
So it would look like this 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. This gives you 64 reps. You could go back up and down the ladder again, so you'll do 128 reps. As you progress, you'll be able to increase how high up the ladder you go, and so will increase the total reps you can do.
- You can also add weight to dips just like you would with any other exercise by using a dipping belt. With this, you can place weight plates on the chains that hang between your legs. The weighted dip is performed the same as the body weight dip.
Dips