Why Dips DON’T Really Work Your Triceps (HOW TO FIX IT!)

Maximize the results you get by using the best exercises

Who would have thought we actually would have needed this stuff when we were in school. Well, today, it’s going to give you a whole new appreciation of why your workouts work. Guys, ‘IT’S PHYSICS, BITCH! ’ And it’s time to put the science back in strength. What’s up, guys?

Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. COM. ‘IT’S PHYSICS, BITCH! ’ Right, we talked about that before. A lot of guys got a laugh out of that.

And that story goes back to the time I talked about training a client. And I always say, guys, it’s physics. Everything we do is physics. And one of the guys who is always questioning wanted to know But Why, why? And the other guy says, ‘It’s physics, Bitch!

Just do it! ’ And that’s how it came about and that’s what we do. We apply science to strength because we need to. In order to have an appreciation of why a workout works, you have to have a basic understanding of physics, and that’s what I want to show you guys here today. So, don’t tune out thinking, ‘Oh, God, physics is boring!

’ Guys, I hated physics in school. I hated physics in school. But I’ve got a whole new appreciation now as a Physical Therapist because it does explain everything. And it helps us, as I’m going to show you with the Dip today, understand why exercises may not be as good as we thought for targeting muscles we thought they did. Right here we look at the skeleton.

We have to realize, guys, that this skeleton is what’s inside of us. And we basically have just a series of muscles and bones, which are basically our levers, and we have pulley systems. Even if you look at the leg here itself, this is a perfect example of a pulley. The patellar tendon crosses this joint, and it works as a pulley. We’re going to do a video later this week where we talk about how pulleys change the force that we apply when we do our exercises.

But, what we have to have a basic understanding of is this one thing. Remember this one thing to deem an exercise good or bad. At some point, that lever that the muscle that you’re targeting is controlling has to cross the point or the force, the line of force, whatever that is. So, if you’re talking about bodyweight exercises, you’re talking about the line of force which is gravity pointing straight down. At some point, you better form a T, perpendicular right to that line, with the lever itself, if you want to maximize the effect of that exercise on the muscle you’re targeting.

So, let’s take that understanding and apply it here to a Dip and show you exactly what I’m talking about. We know that for a Dip, if we’re trying to do this exercise for our triceps, which a lot of guys will do, they basically come up here and they perform the exercise like this, ok. So, you’re doing the standard Dip. Down and come up. Now.

Here’s the point. The triceps, if that’s the muscle in question here, is going to cross or control the forearm, right, because it extends the elbow. Again, the movement occurs at the joint right here, at the elbow. It extends the elbow. So the forearm is our lever.

If we’re going to have an effective exercise for the triceps, that forearm must at some point become perpendicular to the line of force here, again, which is gravity coming straight down. That means that at some point our forearm has to be positioned this way; right in line, perpendicular to that gravity. That’s not happening in a Dip. Look again. We come up here, and at the bottom, my forearm is only, i don’t know, 20 degrees from here.

Because when it’s here, at the top here, it’s parallel to gravity. The gravity’s running right through that arm. There’s no force. You could hang out here forever. This is not hard.

You can hang out here with no force on the triceps. The thing is, you have to have that arm get to a position like this. It ain’t gonna’ happen on this exercise. So, it’s not an ideal exercise. If you’re talking about a triceps Push Down, yes.

You start in this position. You’re already perpendicular to the force. Again, with a cable, it’s coming through the line of the cable, but we’ll talk about that at another time, too. But, again, at this point, it’s perpendicular. So, we do at ATHLEANX what we call a Tricep Dip.

It’s an upright Dip. And you might intuitively know, I got to change my body position to feel it a little bit more in the triceps. Well, this is why it works. If we come up here, the Tricep Dip, as we say, you gotta do it upright. So, again, we start here.

Not much going on. But as we come down, you can see that the angle is increased. And then we come up. We’re actually very upright, and then coming up to the top. Very upright, and then coming up to the top.

Look at what happens here. Look at the angle of the forearm. It’s not ideal yet. It’s not a full Maggie. But we went from being here, which is basically again, parallel to gravity, not where it has to be to when we go upright, it drops back a lot of degrees here to give us more of an opposition to gravity.

It puts the force back into the triceps. You might be saying. ‘Yeah, but Jeff, I feel the exercise in my triceps when I’m doing it. ’ Yeah, you can feel it because it’s a lot of weight for your triceps to handle. When you’re doing a bodyweight exercise like this, whatever percentage triceps you’re doing is definitely compensated by the fact that, it’s a lot of weight for it to move so you’re going to feel it in those muscles.

But it’s not an ideal exercise for the triceps unless you try to make that tweak to make it better. What’s really happening there in the Dip is your other lever that is working more that gets perpendicular is the humerus, the upper arm bone. When I’m at the bottom here, the upper arm bone is 90 degrees. This is getting the direct force of gravity. Well, what’s controlling this?

My Deltoid, my front Delt is what’s controlling that lever. So, this becomes a more effective front Delt exercise when done this way. Yes, chest is contributing as well, but front delt when you go here. And again, when we make that transition to more upright, then we switch that around. So, it’s not the only example.

There’s a lot of other examples. Everything, every exercise you do, has an example of this. A Shoulder Raise. Is it a good exercise for the Delts? Let’s think about that real quick.

The Delt is going to control the arm, right, controls, here’s our lever, right here. Forget about the forearm. This is our lever right here. At some point, does that lever get to be perpendicular to gravity? Yes it does.

Right there. But the interesting thing is, this all kind of rolls over into the discussion of strength curves because where does it get the hardest? At the very end. And we know that. That’s the hardest part of the exercise.

It’s a little easier down here. Easier, easier, easier. Harder, harder, harder. All the way up to the top, right. It gets basically varying degrees of hardness as you raise it up.

If I were to change my body position and lay down on my side on the ground down here and I have my arm against my side. What happens now? At the top, now I’m parallel to gravity. This is no longer hard. It was hard down here though because I’m actually right up against gravity here.

So, if you wanted to really work your Delts and get to be subjected to the hard range of motion in the beginning, and the hard range of motion at the end, then you would include both variations of that. So you can start to see how having an understanding of physics actually helps us to have a better appreciation of our workouts. And that’s what this is about guys. We don’t come out here just telling you what exercises to do. I feel like it’s important for you to understand why you do them.

Because whether or not you decide to pursue a career in physical therapy, as a sports trainer, that doesn’t matter. Having an understanding of what you’re doing when you’re training, allows you to get a