How to Do Dips to Target Your Chest | Path to Gains | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00Is the classic bodyweight dip an exercise for your chest or for your triceps?
00:04Welcome to one of bodyweight fitness's eternal questions and one of those questions that never gives you the super clear answer that you really want.
00:10And that's because the truth is the dip is actually for both.
00:14A properly done dip incorporates both chest and triceps because much like a bench press,
00:19it has us working through elbow extension, which is going to be our triceps,
00:23and it has us working through chest adduction, which is really going to be our chest.
00:27So point blank, you can't avoid using both muscle groups when you do a dip.
00:30But if you want to bias the dip towards one muscle group or the other, we can make some subtle adjustments.
00:35And that's how we arrive at the chest dip, a slightly different version of the exercise than the one you may be doing right now.
00:41Is this the best exercise for your chest?
00:43Point blank, it is not because depending on your shoulder mobility and shoulder health,
00:47you may not be able to get the greatest stretch on your chest.
00:50And we know that living in those stretch positions is really key to muscle growth and development.
00:55But the chest dip is an option, so we're going to go over how to do the chest dip right now.
01:00So the classic dip definitely focuses more on our triceps if we really have to separate it like that,
01:05especially in the safest form.
01:07You're going to set up on a bar and you're going to think about squeezing and slightly depressing your shoulder blades,
01:12and you're going to think about driving your elbows together.
01:14Then you'll lean slightly forward and you'll lower as far as you can, bending at the elbows.
01:19Your aim is to drop low enough that your upper arms are at least parallel to the ground,
01:24but not everyone will have that ability.
01:26Then you press up. On this press up, you're getting a little bit of chest,
01:30but mostly we're hitting our triceps because our triceps are completely responsible for the active elbow extension.
01:36Now, this is already a tricky move for some individuals,
01:39so if you're feeling shoulder pain while doing dips this way already,
01:42point blank, just forget about doing the chest bias version.
01:45When we do the chest version, though, we're going to follow the same basic form guidelines,
01:49except we're going to tweak two things.
01:51One, we're going to dip our head just slightly, and two, we're going to bend at the hips.
01:57Doing both of these things is going to shift your torso angle ever so slightly
02:02so that it's more parallel to the ground.
02:04It's not going to be much, it's only going to be ever so slight.
02:07But starting to replicate that position is very similar to a decline push-up or a decline bench press,
02:13and both of those moves are going to put a lot more emphasis on your chest
02:17because we're gradually moving our upper arm angle tighter to our torso
02:21while still getting that pressing action.
02:23The downside, it's also placing your shoulders in a very vulnerable position.
02:27There's a lot more chance when you're doing a chest-focused dip
02:31of your shoulders slipping into internal rotation at the shoulder joint,
02:35and this is not a great position for shoulder health.
02:38We always want to try to bias towards external rotation.
02:40Still, this is the best way to get a chest pump from your dips.
02:44It's just a subtle tweak that you may not directly feel,
02:47but trust me, the body angle is taxing your chest more,
02:50and if you're determined to do dips for your chest, this is the only way to get it done.
02:53And again, it's just one of many options to build your lower chest.
02:57If you really want to focus on your lower chest and spare your shoulders too
03:00so you can stay healthy in the long term, there are a lot of other better moves,
03:04like decline angle push-ups, decline bench presses even,
03:07and I'm not even really a fan of those, and glute bridge floor presses.
03:10Each of these will let you push more volume and more reps for your lower chest
03:15without having any of that shoulder risk.
03:17There's a little bit of shoulder risk in some of those moves,
03:19but it's not nearly as much as it is in the dips.
03:22But if you're determined to do dips with your chest workout,
03:25then think of them as a chest finisher.
03:27This is not something you do at the beginning of the workout.
03:29You're going to hit your bench presses and a couple of your other compounds first,
03:33but you'll be working at the end of your workout in, say, three sets of eight to ten reps.
03:38Focus on keeping the reps tight.
03:40Don't think about going to a failure because, again, there's a lot of shoulder risk in this,
03:43and focus on really getting a good squeeze and contraction while doing them for your chest.
03:47Then you're going to get the chest pump you wanted out of dips.
03:50Again, there are better moves, but if you're determined to do the dip for your chest,
03:54that's how you do it.