How to Do Reverse Dip: Benefits, Tips, Techniques, and Variations

The reverse dip is a quick and challenging movement you can do to build your triceps and upper arms.

This exercise is done from the push-up position, which means it's highly scalable. It’s also very useful as part of bodyweight workouts and can help develop triceps that are often challenging to train even with weights.

Here’s a complete guide to the reverse dip exercise, including tips on how to do it, benefits, and variations.

How to Do Reverse Dip?

Resistance training is a great way to build lean muscle mass. However, before you get started, it's important to understand how to perform each exercise properly to maximize the results.

Here's how you do this exercise:

Get down on the floor, and walk your hands forward till they are under your lower chest.
Your arms should be stretched out in front of you, with the body straight from head to toes.
Point your fingers forward, or let them point slightly outward.
Keep your head up and in line with your torso; bend your elbows, and lower your chest toward the floor.
Don't let your elbows move out to the sides of the body.
Push back up to the starting position, and slowly lower yourself down with control.
Focus on your triceps muscles, and don't allow your chest or shoulders to take over.
It's important to maintain a mind-muscle connection during the positive or eccentric phase of the exercise to avoid relying on momentum.

Benefits of Reverse Dip

Here're a few benefits of this exercise:

1) Builds Triceps Muscles: The first and most obvious benefit of the reverse dip is that it’s a muscle-building activity. In fact, it’s essentially a push-up done on the knees. The muscles worked include triceps as well as the chest and shoulder muscles.

2) Builds Upper Body Strength: This exercise can help you improve your pushing strength, particularly in the triceps, chest, and shoulders. That also translates to other exercises that require you to push weight away from your body. If you can’t do a full push-up, this exercise is a good progression.

3) Helps Prevents Injury: To help prevent muscle imbalance and injury, if you participate in sports that use a lot of pulling action (which involves the biceps), make sure to keep your triceps strong too.

Reverse Dip: Tips and Techniques

The triceps dip is a simple exercise you can easily incorporate in your routine. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of this move and avoid injury.

Keep your shoulders down away from your ears, and strive to maintain a long neck throughout the movement.
Make sure to watch your form. If you feel any strain on your shoulders, stop going down. Come back up; ottherwise, you could injure yourself.
Avoid locking your elbows at the top of the movement. Maintain a slight bend in the elbows to keep tension on the triceps.
When you lean forward, your chest muscles are stretched. If you want to work on your triceps, maintain a straight line in your body, and don't lean forward.

Variations

The reverse dip is a great basic triceps exercise that can help boost upper body strength. The variations listed below are more challenging and can help you build even more muscle:

1) Tricep Dip Machine

You can use a dip machine to target your chest and triceps.

Here's how to do it: Adjust the seat so that you feel a stretch in your shoulders and arms. Grasp the handles, and slowly lower yourself till your elbows are bent to 90 degrees. Push yourself back up straightening your arms completely. Repeat.

2) Tricep Dip with Bent Knees

A variation of the triceps dip is to bend the knees instead of keeping them straight throughout the exercise. As the legs offer more support in this position, less stress is placed on the shoulder joints.

3) Tricep Dip with Bar/Rings

The dip is a push-up–like exercise that targets the chest, triceps, and shoulders. You can do it on bars or rings. With no help, you will be lifting the entire weight of your body with just your arms.

Bottom Line

Whatever your fitness goals are, the reverse dip can help you strengthen and challenge your chest, shoulder, and triceps.

As long as you use good form throughout all the aforementioned exercises and their variations, you're good to go. Remember to listen to your body, and give your muscles time to recuperate before doing the exercises again - and try not to overdo the poses.

The reverse dip is a great exercise that works several muscle groups. It can be performed using bodyweight or an external load and can be done to improve strength and muscle endurance or as a combat conditioning drill.

It's a versatile exercise that won't take you long to master. So give it a try, and enjoy its benefits.