Variations of the Tricep Dip

If you’ve been going about your workout program and are regularly including tricep dips into the mix, you might find that you are starting to get a little bored of this activity and feel like you could definitely go for a change.

There’s no question that most people will respond best to a higher amount of variety in their workout program as this can help to keep things interesting and keep their body guessing as to what’s coming next.

By learning some of the variations that you can do with your tricep dips, you can substitute these in from time to time to liven up that session and bring about a higher rate of results.

Let’s have a quick peak at a few of the main things that you need to think about.

How To Add Variations of The Tricep Dip

First let’s look at variations of tricep dips. Some people instead of performing tricep dips will perform chest dips instead, which will still target the triceps to some extent, but will place much more overall stress on the chest muscles instead.

This is an excellent upper body strength builder so if you are looking to build up your chest and are quite strong already, it may be one that you want to consider.

Another variation standard triceps dip is performing it but placing the feet or the hands up on an exercise ball. This will help to bring about a feeling of instability as you go about the action pattern, which will then cause the tricep muscles to have to contract that much harder to keep yourself balanced.

Any time you transfer an exercise to an instable surface, you can expect a stronger muscle contraction to occur.

Finally, the last variation of tricep dips to consider is placing the feet up on a bench or chair in front of you.

This will decrease the base of support (since no part of your body would be touching the floor at this point), which will really up the overall amount of tension on the muscle tissues.

This variation is great for those really looking for maximum strength gains.

Similar Tricep Exercises

If you’d like to completely substitute out tricep dips altogether, then there are some tricep exercises to consider that offer similar results but are still different.

1) First you have rope tricep press-downs

This is an excellent tricep isolation movement and will really help to bring out the three different heads of the triceps.

2) The second exercise is overhead tricep extensions

This exercise is a good one to do with a set of dumbbells and will help to also isolation the tricep muscles.

Finally, you might also consider a close grip bench press exercise. This one is compound in nature and will also work the chest muscles but because of the hand position that you’re using, more of the focus will be placed on the tricep muscles.

So there you have the main things that you want to note about performing tricep dips and their variations. If you can make sure to get plenty of variety in your workout routine, you can help prevent a progress plateau from taking place.