How To Do Tricep Dips

By: Chris Freytag, CPT


how to do tricep dips

The tricep dip is one of the most basic but also most effective bodyweight exercises that targets the tricep muscle. It can strengthen your arms and, along with cardio and clean eating, can help eliminate the fat on the back of your arms. A simple raising and lowering of your bodyweight engages your triceps and deltoids, also known as shoulder muscles, to strengthen and tighten your arms! If you learn how to do tricep dips you will learn how to love your arms!

The back of the arm is a common area of complaint for many people. It tends to lose strength as we age and lose some of our muscle mass. It also tends to be an area that is difficult to strengthen. Often the weights we grab are too light to make a difference. There are lots of machines at the gym that you can use to work and strengthen your triceps, but they can be difficult to find or use even if you do have a gym membership, which many people don’t. That is why tricep dips are so great. They use your own bodyweight to give you a great challenge. When you do a bodyweight exercise, you don’t need any extra equipment, and most importantly you don’t even need to be in a gym! You can incorporate this exercise into your arm routine and do it anywhere you are, which makes it great for staying active on the go.

There are a lot of moves out there—push-ups for example—that work multiple upper body muscles at once. we love a good push-up, but these tricep dips are perfect because they really target your triceps specifically, but your shoulders still get a little burn too! This exercise can easily be made more challenging by increasing the incline of your body: add a bench for your hands and/or feet or make this exercise easier by moving your heels closer in towards your butt. If the tricep dips become a little too intense for your shoulders, try our tricep push up for an equally fun way to work those triceps.

Use the links below to quickly navigate this guide:

WANT TO SAVE THIS ARTICLE?

Enter your email & get this article sent to your inbox.

    We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time.


    How To Do Tricep Dips

    1. Start seated with knees bent and feet on the floor. Place hands behind you, directly under the shoulders, with finger facing your hips. Lift hips to a hover.
    2. Bend elbow straight back and use your triceps to press back up.

    [adthrive-in-post-video-player video-id=”WxpQNCWs” upload-date=”2019-05-14T13:07:30.000Z” name=”How to do a Perfect Tricep Dip with Proper Form” description=”In this short clip, Chris Freytag demonstrates how to do a proper tricep dip! Tricep dips are a great bodyweight workout (all you need is a chair!) to tone the backs of your arms, a notoriously difficult area to target as we get older. This movie is a classic, but SO many people use improper form! This video will show you HOW to do a tricep dip that will leave you injury-free and with wonderful results!”]

    What Muscles Do Tricep Dips Work?

    A tricep dip is an amazing exercise that uses bodyweight to strengthen the triceps, biceps and shoulder muscles of your upper arms.

    Benefits of Tricep Dips

    There are many reasons you should incorporate tricep dip into your workouts. Here are just a few:

    Strengthens Triceps

    Tricep dip targets the tricep muscles directly to help tone and shape the back of your arms. No more saggy, wavy arms. Tricep dips firm and strengthen that entire area.

    Strengthens Biceps

    Tricep dip focuses mainly on your triceps, but it also incorporates strengthening in the biceps. The arms work as a whole and lifting your bodyweight up and down is great for shaping your arms.

    Improves Core Strength and Stability

    The dipping and lifting motion of the tricep dip is done primarily with your arms, but in order to have proper form you have to have your core muscles pulled in and tight.

    How Many Calories Does a Tricep Dip Burn?

    People often ask how many calories they are burning in their workouts. Most exercises will generally burn about 100 calories for every 10 minutes you are working at higher intensity. Bottom line: the harder you work, the more calories you burn.

    Tricep dip builds muscle in your arm and while it won’t create a big calorie burn, it will develop more muscle on your body to help you burn more calories.

    Other Exercises Similar to Tricep Dips

    If you like the tricep dip and the results you get from it, here are a few more exercises you might want to try.

    How To Do Shoulder Overhead Press

    How To Do Chest Press

    How To Do Tricep Overhead Extensions

    Incorporating Tricep Dips Into Your Workouts

    A tricep dip is a great exercise to practice any time on its own. However, you could also incorporate it into other workouts to mix them up. Here are some ideas to make that happen.

    Use Tricep Dip In An Upper Body Challenge

    Concentrating an entire workout to your upper body is an effective way to make change. Working all your upper body muscles can make for one intense training session. Use this workout as your arm day challenge. You’ll sculpt and shape your upper body. Keep working at it consistently and you’ll see change in the shape of your upper body!

    Arm Toning Workout: Try each exercise below for the number of repetitions listed with just a few seconds in between to rest.

    Repeat one more time

    Use Tricep Dips In Your Full Body Strength Workout

    Full body workouts take one session and tackle all the muscles. Not only do you make the most of your time, but you get your heart rate up as well. Take one workout and get it all done! This next workout gets it all done and includes tricep dip as well as a bunch of other basic strength moves you’ll love. Grab a set of dumbbells and follow along.

    Full Body Strength Workout: Warm up for about 2-3 minutes then, do between 10-15 of each of the following moves:

    Use Tricep Dip In An AMRAP Workout

    AMRAP = “As Many Rounds As Possible.” Take 3 exercises, set a timer for 3 minutes and see how many rounds of those 3 exercises you can finish in your 3 minutes!

    10 Minute Bodyweight AMRAP Workout: The groups below have 3 exercises listed. Go through the list of 3 as many times as possible for 3 minutes. Take a 30-second break then move to the next group until you’ve done them all.

    Group 1

    Group 2

    Group 3

    Here are 3 more workouts that incorporate tricep dips:

    Targets: triceps



    WANT TO SAVE THIS ARTICLE?

    Enter your email & get this article sent to your inbox.

      We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time.
      (This will help us personalize your experience so that you can get the best advice possible from us!)
      Skip to content