Making Dips Harder

Dips are performed using a parallel bar apparatus and are a bodyweight exercise that targets your chest, shoulders and triceps. As with all bodyweight exercises, the amount of resistance available is limited to how much you currently weigh. This means that you will have to perform an ever-increasing number of repetitions if you want to continue getting benefit from this exercise. However, if you don't want to increase exercise volume, you can adopt an alternative method for making this exercise more challenging.

  1. Use Exercise Bands

    • Light and portable, exercise bands can be used to provide additional resistance when performing dips. Bands the top portion of the exercise, as you lock out your arms, harder. Use a thin band to add a small amount of difficulty or a thick band to make dips much tougher. Loop a band over your neck and then attach it to a point near the bottom of your dipping station. Keep your head up and neck slightly extended to minimize stress on your neck. Do not allow the band to pull you quickly into the bottom position of the exercise as doing so may lead to injury. Descend slowly and deliberately before driving up against the combined resistance of gravity and the band.

    Add Weight

    • Make dips more demanding by temporarily increasing your body weight. This can be achieved in a number of ways. You can wear a weighted vest or backpack, strap a dumbbell around your waist using a dipping belt or rope, hold a dumbbell between your crossed ankles or between your knees or drape a metal chain over your neck and upper back. Only add a relatively small amount of weight at first, for example, five to 10 pounds, and gradually increase the weight as you become accustomed to the extra load.

    Increase Time Under Tension

    • Time under tension, TUT for short, is the term used to describe how long your muscles are working for any given exercise. If you take two seconds to lower yourself and then two seconds to lift yourself when performing dips, each repetition takes four seconds. In this case, a set of 10 repetitions would result in a TUT of 40 seconds. Instead of performing more repetitions, you can make dips more challenging by slowing down. The term used to describe the speed of movement is called tempo. By using a tempo of three seconds down and three seconds up, for example, the TUT for the same set of 10 reps increases to 60 seconds. The slower you move, the more challenging the exercise becomes.

    Pre-exhaust the Agonists

    • In exercise, the agonists are the muscles responsible for doing the majority of the work. In dips, the agonist is the chest muscles, or pectoralis major. Performing eight to 12 repetitions of a chest isolation exercise immediately before you start your set of dips will make the dips considerably harder. Suitable chest isolation exercises include dumbbell flies, cable crossovers and machine pec-deck flies. To get the most from working agonists, called pre-exhaust, you should move as quickly as possible from the isolation exercise to the dips. If you take too long, your muscles will begin to recover and reduce the effectiveness of this training system.