Tricep Dips: Muscles Worked, How To Do and Variations

If you are looking for the best exercise to build stronger arms, tricep dips may be the best option. They are easy to do at home.

The triceps are made up of three heads: the medial, lateral, and long head. For bigger triceps, you need to train all three heads. And fortunately, you can do just that with one exercise – the triceps dip.

Tricep dips are powerful bodyweight exercises that train your triceps muscles at home or anywhere else. You must add them to your triceps workout or bodyweight workout.

Many fitness trainers consider dips to be the king of tricep exercises, as they have many variations for beginners and advanced athletes.

You can do them with various equipment, such as parallel bars, or even simple household furniture, such as chairs or benches.

To Stay Motivated: 150+ Gym Workout Motivational Quotes To Stay Fit

Muscle Worked During Tricep Dips

The tricep dip primarily targets the triceps brachii muscles. However, tricep dips are a compound exercise, meaning they also involve other muscles to a lesser extent.

• Primary Muscles Worked: Triceps Brachii: All the 3 heads of the tricep – the long head, the lateral head, and the medial head are engaged.
• Secondary and stabilizing Muscles Worked: Pectoralis Major (Chest), Deltoids (Particularly the anterior deltoids), Rhomboids and Levator Scapulae, Core Muscles, and Latissimus Dorsi

How To Do Bench Tricep Dip

1. Sit on the edge of a bench with your hands next to your hips.
2. Your palms should be on the bench, and your fingers should face forward.
3. You should walk your feet forward until your hips are in front of the bench. Your legs can be straight.
4. Keep your shoulders and hips tight while keeping your abs tight.
5. Only your heels should be on the floor, and your legs should be straight.
6. Slowly bend your elbows and lower your hips toward the floor until your upper arms and forearms form a 90-degree angle. Pause at the bottom of the movement.
7. Contract your triceps to come back up.
8. Complete the movement by exerting a strong contraction of the triceps while maintaining a slight flexion of the elbows.

Tricep Dips Proper Form and Technique

You should follow this tip to get the most out of this triceps dips exercise and avoid injury.

• To protect your shoulders, you must lower yourself along the bench and not move your torso away from it.
• Completing partial reps instead of a full rep will not fully engage the triceps, negating some of the exercise’s benefits. Ensure you lower down until your upper arm is parallel to the ground and your elbow forms a 90-degree angle.
• Keep your elbows tucked in throughout the dip. When you let your elbows flare out, you move the tension from your triceps to your shoulders, which can cause injury.
• Keep your chest high and open and your head looking straight ahead, avoiding rounding the front of your shoulders.
• If you drop too low into the dip, you’ll put too much pressure on your shoulder. Stop when your upper arms are parallel to the floor and rise back up.
• Don’t lock your elbows at the top of the movement. Keeping them slightly soft maintains tension on the triceps.
• The number of reps you should do depends on your goals, whether to increase strength or build muscle mass and endurance. For muscle growth, it is best to do around 6–12 reps per set. For muscle endurance: do 15-20+ reps per set.

6 Best Triceps Dips Variations

It’s easy to do the dip, but you have to watch your form to stay safe and get the best results. Try tricep dips at home, on a bench, on the floor, and using a dip machine at the gym to see which method works best for you.

1. Knee Bent Bench Dip

The Knee Bent Bench Dip is an excellent modification that allows you to target your triceps effectively while providing a little extra support for those new to this exercise or looking for a safer option.

Here’s where it gets interesting. You can make the exercise easier or harder by adjusting how close your feet are to your body. Feet closer = easier, feet further away = harder. It’s like having a built-in difficulty slider.

It is a medium-intensity exercise that is fairly simple to learn and can be done almost anywhere.

How To Do

1. Place your hands on the edge of a bench and sit on its side, facing away from your body.
2. Slide your butt off the bench and move your legs forward with knees bent, so your arms are supporting your body weight.
3. Your arms should be fully extended with just your palms on the bench.
4. Bend your elbows to lower your body down until your elbows reach 90 degrees.
5. Now, extend your arms to lift your body back to the starting position.

2. Dips Between Two Benches

When you elevate your legs during a bench dip, you’re significantly increasing the intensity of the exercise.

By placing your feet on another bench, step, or other sturdy surface, you will shift more of your body weight onto your triceps and shoulders. This added resistance makes each rep more challenging.

It is a popular bodyweight exercise for building the triceps, chest, and shoulders.

With your legs up, your balance is challenged in a whole new way. This isn’t just about strength; it’s about body control and proprioception.

How To Do

1. Place your hands on the side of a flat bench so that your body is perpendicular to the bench when you place your feet out in front of you.
2. Sit on one bench and place your feet on the edge of the other bench, so that your legs are suspended between the two.
3. Your arms should be fully extended with your palms on the bench.
4. Bend your elbows to lower your body down until your elbows reach 90 degrees.
5. Contracting your triceps, return your upper body to the starting position.

3. One-Arm Bench Dip

The one-arm bench dip is a powerful variation that brings a whole new level of challenge and benefits compared to the standard two-arm version.

This exercise will quickly show you if one arm is weaker or less stable, so you can work on evening out your strength and stability. You can use one arm to find and fix strength imbalances between your arms.

It is a challenging and very effective movement that primarily targets the triceps and also trains the core, glutes, and quads.

However, this is not a beginner’s exercise or for someone with inadequate upper body strength.

How To Do

1. Place your hands (palms) on a flat bench with your back straight, knees bent, and feet flat on the floor.
2. Slide your buttocks off the bench. Raise your left arm and right leg straight out in front of you. Your right arm and left leg should support your bodyweight.
3. Inhale as you flex your elbow to lower your body until you feel a mild stretch in your shoulder.
4. Exhale as you extend your elbow to push your body back up to the starting position.
5. Repeat for the desired number of repetitions and repeat the exercise with your left arm.

4. Machine-Assisted Triceps Dip

Machine-assisted dips are a very useful exercise for many people. Many folks can’t lift their own bodyweight, so bodyweight dips aren’t always possible. The assisted dip machine is, therefore, a game changer and makes dips possible for everyone.

Some machines are designed to do both pull-ups and dips, while others only do one or the other. You can do dips with little or no assistance with time and persistence.

How To Do

1. Select a weight with enough resistance to allow you to move up and down on the machine.
2. Kneel onto the knee pad of the assisted triceps dip machine and grasp the shoulder-width bars.
3. Slowly let yourself down, so your arms are bent at about a 90-degree angle.
4. Push yourself back up slowly to the top of the movement, but don’t lock out.

5. Parallel Bar Triceps Dip

Parallel bar triceps dips are among the most effective compound movements for the upper body pushing muscles, especially the chest and triceps.

When performed on narrow parallel bars with elbows back and your torso upright, the dip becomes one of the best bodyweight exercises for building triceps mass.

How To Do

1. Stand between the parallel bars and grab the bars on either side. Make sure the bars are too wide apart, as this could strain your shoulders.
2. Keep your chest well open and well out. Make sure that the shoulder blades are retracted and down.
3. Keep your body as vertical as possible to keep the emphasis on the triceps and away from the chest.
4. Keep your elbows as close to your sides as possible as you bend them to lower your body down until your upper arms are about parallel to the floor.
5.  Press your hands forcefully into the bars to extend your arms and raise your body back up. Your elbows should stay close to your body and not point outward.
6. Once you reach full extension at the top, consider contracting your triceps.

6. Floor Tricep Dip

This is the best tricep dip exercise you can do at home on the floor. Although tricep dips on the floor are still a good workout, they require more reps to fatigue the triceps.

This is likely the least effective of the five, but can be used as a variation, or if you have no bench, no chairs, and nothing else to work with.

How To Do

1. Position your hands shoulder-width apart on the floor with your back facing down.
2. Straighten your arms and Lift your hips off the floor like a crab
3. Slowly bend at your elbows and lower your upper body toward the floor until your arms are at about a 90-degree angle.
4. Push your body up to return to the start position.

What Are The Benefits Of Tricep Dips?

Tricep dips work the muscles in the upper arm, specifically the triceps, and are one of the best exercises for toning the arms.

• Strengthen and build all three heads of the triceps muscles.
• When done correctly, weighted dips can add muscle mass to your upper body.
• Improve pushing and pressing power for the upper body.
• This exercise can also help build your strength for other exercises like bench presses.
• Activate the chest and front shoulders as secondary movers.
• It requires no equipment, but it can be done anywhere with a raised surface.
• Hit the triceps through a full range of motion for complete development.
• Allow for changes in intensity by adding weight or modifying body position.
• Develop grip strength isometrically by supporting body weight.
• Make your shoulders and core stronger and more stable.
• Easy to modify for any fitness level, from beginners to advanced lifters.
• In addition, it’s an exercise that uses plenty of stabilizing muscles, which will result in a more developed upper body. .

FAQs

Train Your Triceps Twice Per Week

Training your triceps twice weekly can provide a nice stimulus for greater growth. This muscle group recovers fairly quickly, so you only need 2-3 days between workouts.

Are Tricep Dips Effective?

Tricep Dip are a great way to hit all three heads simultaneously, as are close-grip bench presses, kickbacks, and tricep pushdowns.

Are Tricep Dips Bad for Shoulders?

If you don’t use proper form, triceps dips are a risky exercise for your shoulders. The problem with the bench dip starts with the position of your shoulders during the exercise. The two things you want to avoid is letting your shoulders migrate forward as you do them, or upwards as you go down into the rep.

Are tricep dips a compound exercise?

Yes, Tricep dips are compound exercises, which means that they involve two or more joints and help develop the muscles on the back of the arm, the tricep brachii. It is one of the most effective exercises for activating the triceps brachii muscle in the back of your upper arm.

Takeaway

The Tricep dip is a fantastic compound exercise that you can do at home. It’s the perfect option to include in your triceps workouts, and you’ll definitely see a difference in your muscular development.

Try out the different variations to see which works best for you, or include them all for variety in your training.

Thanks for reading, enjoy!

References

• McKenzie, Alec K. BClinSci; Crowley-McHattan, Zachary J. PhD; Meir, Rudi PhD, CSCS; Whitting, John W. PhD; Volschenk, Wynand BA (HMS Hons) Sports Science, CSCS. Glenohumeral Extension and the Dip: Considerations for the Strength and Conditioning Professional. Strength and Conditioning Journal 43(1):p 93-100, February 2021. | DOI: 10.1519/SSC.0000000000000579

Manish Kumar

Manish is a NASM-certified fitness and nutrition coach with over 10 years of experience in weight lifting and fat loss fitness coaching. He specializes in gym-based training and has a lot of knowledge about exercise, lifting technique, biomechanics, and more.

Through “Fit Life Regime,” he generously shares the insights he’s gained over a decade in the field. His goal is to equip others with the knowledge to start their own fitness journey.