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Adding dip (I don’t mean the type of dips you get with your chips or pizza, even though they are fantastic) in your workout is a great way to improve your fitness level. And, if you learn to do them the proper way, you can reap their tremendous benefits; You might ask, what are the benefits of doing dips every day? Well, I am glad you asked.
Dips workouts are perfect for working different parts of your body; they are easy to perform and very effective. And you can do them anytime and everywhere while traveling, in your office, or even in the comfort of your home.
Let’s explore all the excellent benefits of doing dips every day and everything you need to know about dip exercises. But first, what are dips workouts?
See also: Do Chin-Ups Workout Increase Height? Here’s the truth!
Table of Contents
What Are Dips Workouts?
Dips workouts are an upper-body pressing exercise that essentially builds bigger and stronger triceps, but they also target your shoulders, chest, and back. In addition, this movement develops muscle and strength in the core and upper body while improving your overall conditioning.
With dips exercises, you use your body weight to work your shoulders, triceps, chest, and arm muscles.
If you have any injuries, you should talk to your doctor before performing new types of exercises.
How to Do Dip Exercise the Proper Way?
Dips workouts are strength training exercise that requires you to lift your body weight with your pecs, triceps, deltoids, and rhomboid muscles. Here is how to properly do dip exercise:
- Roll your shoulders back
- Hands aligned with shoulders
- Don’t sink into your shoulders
- Action comes from elbows
Benefits of Doing Dips Every day
Below are the benefits of doing dips every day:
1- Dip exercise is An Excellent Compound Exercise
One of the most common reasons people give for not exercise is lack of time. However, you can efficiently use your time with dip exercises. Performing dips exercises will require you to use multiple joints simultaneously while also forcing your body to stabilize. As a compound exercise, dip workouts, you use more than one muscle group.
In addition, dip workouts stimulate more muscle growth, improve your strength, and potentially increase your performance in other lifts. You can also perform them anywhere by just lifting all of your body weight with just the use of your arms. They are perfect for busy people because they will help you work more muscles and build more strength.
Other benefits of doing compound exercises include the following:
- Torching more calories
- Developing flexibility
- Developing more muscle mass
- Gaining strength
2- Help You Build More Muscle
Another benefit of doing dips every day is working opposing muscle groups simultaneously because chest dips are a closed kinetic chain exercise.
With kinetic chain exercises, you press your hands or feet against an immovable surface — in the case of doing a dip, you can use parallel bars.
Dip workouts are beneficial because they target many opposing muscle groups at the same time.
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3- Dip Exercises Are More Effective Than Push-Ups
Dips and push-ups are different exercises and separate target muscles; therefore, it isn’t easy to compare them directly. However, the American Council on Exercise (ACE) conducted fitness research in 2012 found a higher level of muscle activation for dips than for push-ups when compared against a range of exercises.
A separate ACE study issued in 2011 also found that dips are very effective triceps exercises, although the advanced triangle push-up variation surpassed them.
So, which exercise should you choose? It all depends on your fitness goals, but the higher muscle activation will develop bigger chest and arm musculature over time with dip exercise.
See also: How Many Push-Ups Per Day for Beginners To See Excellent Results
4- Dips are Great Functional Exercise
Functional exercise refers to exercise that helps you with everyday activities, such as carrying groceries, putting something up on a shelf, or climbing stairs. They train your muscles to help you perform your everyday activities safely and efficiently.
Strengthening the body muscles in the same way you would need to use them for specific tasks will reduce your risk of injury and improves your quality of life.
The main benefit of adding functional exercises to your workout is improving your ability to complete your everyday activities and your quality of life.
5- Dips Can Help You Save Money On Gym Memberships
With dips workouts, you can certainly save yourself money on expensive gym memberships by doing dips at home or at your office during your breaks. As dip workouts don’t require any special equipment, all you need to do a basic dip workout is a chair.
And, whether you are traveling or busy with your everyday life, you perform dip workouts in the comfort of your hotel, home, or office.
6- Dip Workouts Improve Your Pressing
Dips workouts help you improve your pushing strength, increase your strength, and contribute to improving your overall fitness level.
And, as you improve your dip performance, you will improve your bench press, push-up, and pull-up performances.
The dip workout develops strength useful for your grip, lifting weights, and functioning from a more static position.
Drawbacks of Dips Exercises
While dips workouts have numerous benefits, there are also a few downsides.
7- You need to be Sufficiently Strong to Lift Your Body Weight Using Just Your Arms to Perform Dip Exercises.
One drawback of dip workouts is that you need to be strong enough to lift your body weight using only your arms to perform dip workouts.
If you are new to working out or a bit out of shape, dip workouts may be too demanding for you right now, meaning you can’t work your upper body with dips.
8- Target Only a Small Number of Muscle Groups
In general, the dip exercises mainly focus on working a small number of muscle groups.
Dips exercises alone are limited in application because they will not help your lower body or contribute to athletic activities that require fast-twitch muscle fibers for bursts of energy.
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9- Put Too Much Pressure and Strain on Your Joints
Another downside to the dip is that it places too much pressure and strain on your joints. However, most shoulder joints are not necessarily designed to support large loads of weight.
The strain is mitigated for people who are strong and have enough supporting muscles to control the movement. However, those with weak shoulders trying to perform dips exercise under a heavy load may experience increased tear and wear on the joints.
For triceps presses and extensions, resistance bands are a great option to add to your fitness routine. They are very low impact and work well if your joints hurt.
10- Negative Dips Benefits
Negative dips are your best friend if you are trying to get better at exercising. If you are a beginner, combine dip workouts into your fitness routine and start with lower resistance options like the machine or bench. And after you become more comfortable with doing reps, add resistance until you can manage the full-body exercise.
Don’t forget to do some standard warm-ups and stretches, and continue using the dip as a form of strength training a few times per week.
Also, if you have strong, flexible shoulders and elbows and do not feel pain from body-weight dips, the exercise remains an excellent method of building strength.
Studies have shown that the eccentric portion, the lowering or lengthening phase, has the most significant impact on strength and mass gains due to the high stretch at the bottom of the movement.
If you have pain in your joints, consider a lower-impact exercise such as dumbbell extensions, as recommended by the American Council on Exercise. You can use a bench for dips for support because your legs pull some weight off the shoulders and elbows.
How Many Dips Should You do?
Start small and work your way up to about three sets of 12-15. You can go as high as 30 repetitions or more while training bodyweight dips. If you are a beginner, begin with bodyweight dips and aim to achieve a few repetitions without feeling like you are dying about to die. If you can’t do a dip on your own just yet, you can use an assisted dip machine found at most gyms or on Amazon.
Doing several standard set reps and gradually increasing their number over time is beneficial, found the American College of Sports Medicine.
Dips put significant pressure on the shoulders and elbows. It is recommended to perform them one to three times per week and allow your joints a few days to recover as a general exercise.
First, allow your body time to adapt rather than focus on recovering. The higher repetition range contributes more to a muscular endurance goal. After you have mastered the proper form of doing dip exercises, you can add some external resistance and lower your reps for more strength and mass-building rep range or 6-12 repetitions.
When you feel your form begins to break down, then it is time to stop. You can repeat this 1-3 times, depending on your fitness level.
See also: Is Cycling or Walking Better For Toning Thighs?
Wrapping Up
Regardless of your fitness goals, you can reap the benefits of doing dips every day, and dips workouts can be an excellent addition to your exercise program.
Even if you are a beginner, you can start practicing with parallel bars to gain experience and progressively overload weight.
And if you are more advanced and want to take your dips to the next level, then the CrossFit rings are for you! It’s a version of the dips that require more balance, stability, coordination, and strength.
And When adding dip exercises to your workout routine, always assess the potential risks versus benefits and consider whether or not there is a better exercise alternative. Though effective for some, it may not be the best choice for all of us.