What muscles do dips work?

Your chest and triceps share the press on every rep, with the front of your shoulders assisting. Which one takes more depends on your torso angle: leaned forward, as described here, the chest does more of it. Upright, the triceps do.

How far down should you go on a dip?

To roughly where your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Below that you are buying shoulder extension rather than chest work, and the shoulder is already near the end of its range at that depth.

Are bench dips easier than bar dips?

They are easier to complete and they are not a smaller ask of the joint. Measured against bar and ring dips, bench dips produced the lowest activity in the triceps, chest and front deltoid while requiring the most shoulder extension. An assisted bar dip is the better step.

Why do dips hurt the front of my shoulder?

Usually depth. The dip carries the upper arm behind the body further than most other exercises do, and the arm turns inward as it travels. Stopping at parallel and holding your shoulder blades down is the first thing to change. If something hurts and keeps hurting, that is a question for a physiotherapist.

How do you make dips harder once they get easy?

Add load rather than depth. A dip belt with a plate, or a dumbbell held between your feet, keeps the range honest while raising the demand. Slowing the lowering phase is the option when there is nothing to hang.

Do dips build the lower chest?

They train the chest, and the leaned-forward position means you press from a low angle. Whether one region of a muscle can be trained separately from the rest of it is not something we can settle here, so we will not claim it.

Back to the library

Bodyweight · intermediate · chest

Dips

Also called Chest dips, Parallel bar dips, Bar dips, Triceps dips.

The short answer

A dip holds you above a set of parallel bars and lowers your body between them until your chest stretches, then presses you back up. With your torso leaned forward 30 to 45 degrees, as the steps here describe, your chest is the muscle doing the work and your triceps press alongside it. Stand upright instead and the same movement becomes a triceps exercise. The torso angle is the setting, not the grip.

How to do it

Step oneGrip the parallel bars of a dip station and lift yourself up to the starting position with arms extended.
Step twoLean your torso forward at approximately 30-45 degrees and allow your elbows to flare slightly outward.
Step threeLower yourself by bending your elbows until you feel a stretch in your chest.
Step fourPush through your palms to extend your arms and return to the starting position.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

You feel the bottom of every rep in the front of your shoulder.

WhyThe dip carries the upper arm back further than most joints comfortably travel, and the arm rotates inward as it goes. Dropping until your shoulders are level with your hands puts you at the end of that range under your whole bodyweight.

FixStop when your upper arms reach roughly parallel to the floor and press from there. Depth past that point buys shoulder range, not chest.

Your triceps are wrecked and your chest never felt anything.

WhyYour torso stayed vertical. Upright, the rep is mostly your elbows straightening; the chest only takes a large share once your body is angled over your hands.

FixSet the lean before you unlock your elbows, around 30 to 45 degrees, and hold it the whole way down and up. Letting the chest rise back to vertical mid-rep hands the work back to your arms.

You cannot do a bar dip, so you do them off a bench behind you instead.

WhyThis looks like the gentler version and measures as the opposite. Across bench, bar and ring dips, the bench version produced the lowest peak activity in the triceps, in both parts of the chest and in the front of the shoulder, while requiring the largest amount of shoulder extension of the three.

FixStay on the bars and make them easier: a band under your feet, a partner at your ankles, or just the lowering half done slowly from the top. All three train the movement you want. The bench trades stimulus for range.

Your shoulders creep up toward your ears as you descend.

WhyThe shoulder blades are not being held down, so the shoulders round forward and the base you are pressing from stops being stable.

FixBefore the first rep, push your shoulders down away from your ears while your arms are still straight. That is the position, and losing it is a better reason to end the set than a rep count.

Your legs kick forward on the way up.

WhyA swing generates the last part of a rep your chest and triceps could not, which usually starts happening two or three reps before the set was actually over.

FixCross your ankles and squeeze your legs together. If the rep only happens with a kick, the previous rep was the last real one.

Chest dips or triceps dips

These are not two exercises. They are one exercise at two torso angles, which is why nobody can tell you which bar to use.

Leaning forward puts your chest over your hands, so pressing your body back up is largely a matter of drawing your upper arms in toward your midline, which is what your chest does. Staying vertical takes that away and leaves the elbows straightening on their own.

Numbers do get quoted for exactly how much each angle shifts things. Most of them trace back to studies that measured bench presses rather than dips, so we are not repeating them. What the dip research does show is that the variations performed with more forward lean recorded higher chest activity than the upright one.

Bar dips or bench dips

The bench dip, hands behind you on a bench with your feet out in front, is sold as the beginner version. It has been measured directly against the bar and the ring dip, in thirteen experienced male lifters, and the result runs the other way.

The bench dip produced the lowest peak activity of the three in the triceps, in the upper chest and in the front of the shoulder. It also demanded the most shoulder extension, averaging around 88 degrees, with the least forward lean of the body.

So it is not a lighter dip. It is a version that asks less of the muscles and more of the joint. If bar dips are still out of reach, an assisted bar dip or a slow lowering from the top is a better use of the same effort.

What it will not do

Dips get called the upper body squat, which oversells one exercise and undersells the other. A squat has a bar on your back and a load you can add to for years. A dip has your bodyweight until you hang a plate from a belt, and its range is fixed at one end by how far your shoulders will travel.

That fixed end is the real limit. The American Council on Exercise notes the dip takes the shoulder past its normal range of extension, and that the upper arm rotates inward as it goes back, which is why deeper is not a free progression the way heavier is on a squat. Adding load while keeping the depth honest is the version of progression that works here.

It will also not build a chest by itself for the same reason no single press does. It trains one line of push. If your shoulder does not like the bottom position after you have shortened the range, that is a reason to press something else rather than something to work through.

What it is for

Dips with a forward lean are a bodyweight exercise targeting the chest. By leaning the torso forward and allowing the elbows to flare, greater emphasis is placed on the pectoral muscles rather than the triceps, making it a highly effective chest builder.

Questions people ask

What muscles do dips work?: Your chest and triceps share the press on every rep, with the front of your shoulders assisting. Which one takes more depends on your torso angle: leaned forward, as described here, the chest does more of it. Upright, the triceps do.
How far down should you go on a dip?: To roughly where your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Below that you are buying shoulder extension rather than chest work, and the shoulder is already near the end of its range at that depth.
Are bench dips easier than bar dips?: They are easier to complete and they are not a smaller ask of the joint. Measured against bar and ring dips, bench dips produced the lowest activity in the triceps, chest and front deltoid while requiring the most shoulder extension. An assisted bar dip is the better step.
Why do dips hurt the front of my shoulder?: Usually depth. The dip carries the upper arm behind the body further than most other exercises do, and the arm turns inward as it travels. Stopping at parallel and holding your shoulder blades down is the first thing to change. If something hurts and keeps hurting, that is a question for a physiotherapist.
How do you make dips harder once they get easy?: Add load rather than depth. A dip belt with a plate, or a dumbbell held between your feet, keeps the range honest while raising the demand. Slowing the lowering phase is the option when there is nothing to hang.
Do dips build the lower chest?: They train the chest, and the leaned-forward position means you press from a low angle. Whether one region of a muscle can be trained separately from the rest of it is not something we can settle here, so we will not claim it.