Dips.
The old timers used to call these “Squats for the Upper Body.”
In my power-building programs it’s one of the few assistance exercises that I’ll often program twice per week. They’re just so damn effective for building up the chest, shoulders, and triceps in a way that is super productive for increases in both size and strength, and tend to be fairly easy to recover from in high volumes and frequencies.
In my power-building programs I generally have one day of the week that is focused on the Bench Press and one day that is focused on the Overhead Press.
On Bench Press focus days I generally follow the heavy flat bench work with assistance exercises for the chest and biceps. I’ve always liked biceps paired with “chest” or “bench” because my elbows are pretty well warmed up (PSA: elbows tend to like isolation stuff, flexion or extension, less and less as you age) but they aren’t tired. This enables us to knock out a few sets of heavy bicep training in a state where we’re warmed up but not tired (as in the case of doing biceps after back training). So a typical chest/bicep workout might look like this:
- Bench Press 3 x 5
- Incline Bench Press 3 x 8-10
- Dips 3 x 10-15
- Barbell Curls 3 x 6-8
- Incline DB Curls 3 x 10-12
However, one problem you might encounter is that when you hit the Dips after you Bench and Incline is that, well – you won’t be able to do very many dips. So what I often do in the programs I write is create some time between the end of my barbell pressing work and when I start the dips. Usually like 10-15 minutes. But I don’t have time in my day to just sit and rest for 10-15 minutes between exercises. So I fill that time up with the first bicep exercise. And then I superset the Dips and the second bicep exercise.
This strategy allows us to (1) have a better performance on our dips – i.e. train with a higher intensity and/or volume (2) decrease overall time/length of the training session.
So now the workout looks like this:
- Bench Press 3 x 5
- Incline Bench Press 3 x 8-10
- Barbell Curls 3 x 6-8
- Incline DB Curls 3 x 10-12 —Superset w/ —-Dips 3 x 10-15
Since this is the last exercise of the chest workout, this usually winds up being the lighter of the two Dip workouts of the week. So you’ll likely be using just bodyweight or a fairly light load.
Assuming this workout happens on say, Monday, then later in the week, say Thursday, we’ll do our Overhead Press focused workout where the focus of the assistance exercises are on the Delts and Triceps. Usually I program in 2 tricep exercises. One heavier compound exercise and one lighter extension type exercise.
Most of the time the heavier compound exercise is Dips. Sometimes close grip bench or close grip floor press.
So Thursday might look like this:
- Overhead Barbell Press 3 x 5
- Seated Dumbbell Press or Overhead Barbell Press Back offs 3 x 8-10
- Side Delt Raises 3 x 15
- Weighted Dips 3 x 5-8
- Lying Tricep Extension 3 x 10-15
While there is certainly some fatigue in the shoulders/triceps going into the Dips on this day, it isn’t nearly as much fatigue as on the Bench Day after flat/incline benching. So it makes sense that today is our heavier Dip day, preferably with added load.
I’m also a fan of doing the side delt raises after the pressing work, before doing the dips. This allows some more work to be added to the shoulders, while giving the triceps some time to recover before going into your dips. I always get more dips when I do the side delt work than when I skip it and go directly from presses to dips.
Dips on this second day of the week is also effective because it meets the goal of stimulating the chest musculature twice during the week. For those of you familiar with my power-building programming, you know I’m a fan of hitting each muscle basically 1.5x per week. I like to really hit the chest HARD on Monday with volume and intensity and then “touching” it later in the week with less volume with an exercise like Dips. The same happens with shoulders/triceps. They get hit fairly hard on Thursday with a direct workout and then get hit indirectly again on Monday during the chest workout with benching, inclines, and more dips. I basically set up the training split so that all muscle groups are targeted in this fashion. For instance, back will be hit really hard on say Friday with lots of pullups, rows, shrugs, etc and then touched on again say on Tuesday with Deadlifts during one of the lower body sessions.
So if you want to add more work to your Pressing arsenal, Dips is a great way to do it. And alternating a scheme of heavy and light on different days of the week will yield new gains in strength and muscle mass to the upper body in the same way squats work for the lower body.
Well, not quite. But pretty close.
