Dips on bars with weights are an excellent basic exercise that allows you to effectively pump up the entire shoulder girdle, but the pectoral muscles and triceps to the maximum.
In addition, now it is a separate strength discipline, in which competitions are held (streetlifting).
General characteristics
- Exercise type: Basic
- Equipment: Additional weights
- Difficulty level: Medium and heavy
- Major muscle groups: Triceps and chest
Contents
Main advantages for different purposes
Advantages of Weighted Dips
The exercise covers the entire shoulder girdle, promoting the growth of strength and muscle mass. As Martin Eder, who did push-ups with a weight of 195 kg, said, "Push-ups will do almost as much for your upper body as squats do for your entire body." When you learn how to do this exercise correctly in several approaches, you need to start doing it with weights. This is almost the only exercise for the pectoral muscles that allows you to draw the lower and upper boundaries of the pectoral muscle.
The triceps can also be perfectly pumped up with the help of push-ups with weights, the differences in the technique aimed at the triceps and pectoral muscles will be discussed below. The exercise is suitable for pumping the muscles of the chest, triceps, shoulders.
Also, push-ups on the bars with weights are an excellent alternative to the bench press. Previously, athletes did less bench press, but push-ups on the bars with weights were very popular.
In terms of the mechanism of muscle coordination, power push-ups on the bars are almost identical to the bench press. As in the bench press, the main load falls on the triceps, but at the same time all the muscles of the upper body are actively involved, including the pectoral and latissimus dorsi.
If you start persistently "hammering" power push-ups with weights and consistently increase it, then the effectiveness of bench presses will immediately increase.
So many advantages in one exercise!
Here's what Arnold Schwarzenegger himself said about dips
"Push-ups have become forgotten. And in vain!
Modern fitness clubs are getting more and more trendy exercise machines, while many good exercises are fading into the background. Imagine, you won't find a bar for good old pull-ups in every club! And what can you say about the almost universal disappearance of dips? Meanwhile, I consider push-ups, along with pull-ups, to be fundamental exercises in bodybuilding.
As for push-ups, contrary to popular belief, they are not an exercise for the triceps with a high degree of isolation. This is a serious basic movement for the entire shoulder girdle with coverage of the pectoral muscles. After regular performance, you will see for yourself what amazing changes occur in your body.
The position of the head becomes straight, the tubercles of the trapezius begin to support the sides of the neck, the stoop disappears, the delts become larger, the outer edges of the chest. And of course the arms get bigger. I remember using a dumbbell weighing 80 kg.
Benefits for different muscle groups
For the chest, by the way, heavy push-ups are the only exercise in the world that can draw the lower and outer boundaries of the chest muscles.
No matter how much you do bench presses, the lower contour of the chest will remain vague and loose. Believe me, push-ups on the bars are your only way out. In six months, you are guaranteed to get a chest like in the picture. If you are lucky, you will find a machine with diverging bars in the gym. You need to grab the outer ends of the bars, where they are the widest. Your hands should be wider than your shoulders - this is the main condition of the exercise. Then you will have to hang the weight on your belt and increase it from time to time. Push-ups will do the rest for you.
For the triceps. This exercise can be turned into a powerful basic movement for the triceps, and the degree of isolation here will be even higher than with bench presses with a narrow grip!
To do this, you need to do push-ups while keeping your body vertical. You need to take a narrow grip so that your hands lightly touch your hips when you go into a push-up position on straight arms. Your elbows should not be spread apart. They need to be pointed straight back. At the bottom point, the triceps will be stretched, and this gives an additional advantage: starting from a stretched position builds muscle mass better.
Strength
Push-ups are an effective tool for developing the overall strength of the shoulder girdle. Here, you do not need to choose the angle of the body. The body itself will find a position that allows you to exert the most powerful muscular effort. Hang a weight on your belt and do 6-8 repetitions. Gradually increase the weight of the weight.
Of course, for a competent increase in strength indicators, your own training program is desirable. Check out the programs for streetlifting.
Pumping
Push-ups are good for maximum pumping of the triceps, as well as the muscles of the entire shoulder girdle. The latter, by the way, may come in handy before you step onto the competition podium.
There were no counterweight machines these days, so a partner helped me. He held my feet. In the machine, everything is simpler.
Just move the pin lower and lower until you do a total of 30-50 push-ups.
Next time you pump up your triceps or chest, be sure to use push-ups. You will immediately understand that the old school is still worth a lot..."
Below in the photo is Marvin Eder, who performed dips on the bars with a weight of 197 kg!
Technique for performing dips on the bars with a weight
With an emphasis on the chest
It is desirable that the bars are slightly wider than the shoulders, we hang the weight on ourselves, jump on the bars, make a strong forward bend and, taking a deep breath, lower ourselves down enough to feel the stretching of the chest, the elbows go to the sides when performing the exercise.
We perform approximately 4-5 approaches, you can perform with one weight in the amount of 12-8 repetitions or, for example, use the pyramid principle, that is, with each subsequent repetition the weight increases and the number of repetitions decreases.
You can generally reach 1-2 repetitions with the maximum weight for the athlete.
With an emphasis on the triceps
So that the main load falls on the triceps, during lowering, keep your arms close to your body (do not spread your elbows to the sides, when bending they should "look" back). Legs are almost straight, chin up, forward tilt is minimal. (If the distance between the bars is greater than the width of your shoulders, then part of the load will be "taken off" from the triceps and "go" to the chest.)
When your working weights begin to increase, think first of all about a special weight belt. It is a strong belt, a chain is attached to it, which is then threaded through the disks. You can make such a belt yourself. In order to make jumping easier, you can make a step or put pancakes under it.
And this is how they do push-ups at competitions:
Place in training
To correctly include push-ups on the bars with weights in your training, you need to understand the goals and order of the exercises. If you are going to do the exercise with a small weight as an additional one, put it after the bench press or after the standing press.
If your goal is to seriously increase the weight in push-ups and constantly progress, then it is better to put it number one on the day of arms or shoulders. Perhaps second after a light bench press.
Conclusions
This is an excellent but quite traumatic exercise. Therefore, always warm up very well. This is important when working with weights.
Also increase the load gradually
So be sure to include this exercise in your workout and you will not regret it. For example, Iron Arnie really loved to use bars with weights to pump up his pectoral muscles, and his chest is considered almost the most spectacular in bodybuilding.
