How to do dips: chest or triceps, bench or bars, and the first full one

A dip is a press done with your own body: hands on two bars, arms straight, and you lower yourself until your upper arms are about level with the floor, then press back up. It works the chest and the triceps, the same muscles as a push-up or a bench press, with your whole body weight on your hands.

This page covers the rep on parallel bars, the chest and triceps versions, bench and chair dips for home, a progression to your first full dip, and where dips fit a week. The rest of a pressing session is the chest workout; the triceps' other exercises are on the arm workout.

How to do a dip on parallel bars

1. Grip the bars about shoulder-width apart, step or jump up, and lock your arms straight. Shoulders down, away from your ears.
2. Bend your knees and cross your ankles, or keep your legs straight below you, whichever stops you swinging.
3. Lower under control, elbows travelling back rather than out to the sides, until your upper arms are about level with the floor.
4. Press back up until your arms are straight again, without shrugging. That's one rep.

Depth is the judgement call. Upper arms level with the floor is the usual mark. Go only as low as you can control, and stop before your shoulders roll forward or up toward your ears.

Dips for chest vs dips for triceps

The bar dip works both. In 15 healthy men doing bar dips to exhaustion, chest and triceps activity both rose as the set went on while the deepest joint angles of each rep stayed the same, and the authors conclude it appears to target both muscles effectively.¹ Coaches shift the share with lean, elbows and grip:

Those are standard coaching cues, not a measured result: no study of how lean or elbow position changes the work in a dip turned up in a PubMed search for this page. Whether thinking about the chest or the triceps shifts the work is a separate question; the mind-muscle connection covers it.

For the triceps, pair dips with an overhead extension. In a 12-week trial, 21 adults trained one arm with overhead cable triceps extensions and the other with the arm down at the side; the overhead arm's whole triceps grew more, 19.9% against 13.9%, even though that arm lifted lighter weights.² This page's reasoning: a dip works the triceps with your arms down by your sides, so the overhead exercise covers the position it leaves out.

Bench and chair dips vs parallel-bar dips

A bench dip is the same press with your hands on a bench or a chair behind you and your feet on the floor, so your legs take part of your weight. In 13 men who regularly did dips, the bench dip mainly worked the triceps, with lower peak triceps activity than the bar or the ring dip, and it took the shoulders further back with less forward lean of the upper body. The authors call the bar dip an appropriate progression from the bench dip because of its higher peak muscle activity.³

So bench dips are the place to start at home, with two rules:

• Stop when your upper arms are about level with the floor. Don't sink lower to add range.
• Use something that can't move. A weight bench, a sturdy chair pushed back against a wall, or the edge of a low step. No folding chairs, nothing on wheels.

Without a dip bar: the corner of a kitchen counter, one hand on each side, works as a pair of bars if both surfaces are solid and level, and many playgrounds have parallel bars at the right height. Test anything you plan to put your whole weight on before the first rep.

From bench dips to your first bar dip

1. Bench dip, knees bent, feet close to the bench: the easiest version.
2. Bench dip, legs straight, heels on the floor.
3. Bench dip, feet up on a second bench or chair.
4. Assisted bar dips. A band looped across the bars under your knees, an assisted dip machine, or low bars with your feet touching the floor; take a little less help as you get stronger. The authors of the 13-man study suggest the same three as ways to scale back the bar dip: standing, machine-assisted and banded bar dips.³
5. Negatives. Step or jump to the top, lower yourself over three to five seconds, and step down. A 2009 meta-analysis of 20 randomized trials (not tested on dips) found that lowering-only training at higher intensities raised strength more than lifting-only training, though the gains were more specific to the kind of movement trained.⁴ Use them beside the assisted reps, not instead of them.
6. Full bar dips, then more reps, then added weight from a belt or a dumbbell held between your feet.

A rule for moving on: when you can do about 12 good reps of one step with reps to spare, move to the next and drop back toward 6 to 8.

Sets, reps and where dips fit

• Two to four sets of 6 to 12, stopping with a rep or two in reserve (how to judge reps left). The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand advises at least two sets per exercise.⁵
• After the main press on a push or upper-body day, or as the main press at home. Count each hard set as a chest set, the way the chest workout counts presses.
• Mind the triceps' week. Dips on top of presses and extensions add up; the arm workout shows how to count them.
• Pair them with pulling. Rows or pull-ups balance the pushing.

Common mistakes

• Shrugging. Keep your shoulders down, away from your ears, at the top and the bottom.
• Sinking too deep. Lower to about level upper arms, under control, with no bounce out of the bottom.
• Elbows flaring wide on the triceps version. Keep them pointing back.
• Half reps at the top. Straighten your arms fully, then lower again.
• Swinging the legs to get up. Cross your ankles and keep your body still.
• A chair that moves. Brace it against a wall, or use a bench.
• Pressing through something that hurts. Sore muscles the next day are normal; anything sharp or lasting isn't. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Finding your step on the progression is easy; fitting dips into a week that already holds presses and triceps work is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: find the hardest bench dip you can do for eight good reps, and start there.