So far in this series we've covered how to build some of my favorites exercises, including the squat, the strict overhead press, the vertical jump, and the pull-up, and in this edition it's time to put some spotlight on the weighted dip!

So today we will be discussing exercises and techniques aimed at helping you to build a bigger, stronger chest, triceps, and shoulders, and to move more weight through the dip pattern specifically. So let's just jump right into it!

Exercise #1 is the HEAVY dip.

You guys are probably starting to notice a theme with my recommendations for building these calisthenics exercises, and that is you need to add some damn weight to them! We all understand that you get strong at the barbell lifts by trying to increase the amount of weight we can lift on them, but when it comes to progressively overloading their calisthenics counterparts, for some reason, many of us just sort of don't seem to grasp this.

You see a lot of guys just doing mostly body weight work on these movements, and that's great! It's highly valuable work, and relative strength is immensely important. But part of building relative strength is also building absolute strength and the best way to build absolute strength is to get in your hard and heavy work.

So I'm not going to sugarcoat it: the absolute best way to build a BIG DIP is to DIP BIG. You need to do high quality, hard, and heavy work, and you need to do this work consistently 

...just like with your barbell lifts!

And while it's true that you'll be able to build your weighted dip to a point even if all you really do is focus on building your barbell lifts, as opposed to your calisthenics movements. It's also true that if you don't prioritize the dip itself at some point by doing task specific heavy work then you'll never see what you're really capable of at it, and you'll never really break past your initial plateaus on it.

So if you're ready to prioritize this lift (as you should be!) and really start building it up into the stratosphere then I recommend checking out this program I published on my YouTube channel a few years ago!

This is the exact program I used to work up to a big triple with 4 plates on the dip and it basically gave me 6 months of consistent and unrelenting progress the first time I did it. It uses autoregulation so you'll be hitting a lot of heavy 3's and heavy 5's, many of your for probably the first time ever, and you'll adjust the loading based on your level of readiness that day. If you execute it correctly you should see some pretty massive and rapid increases in your dipping prowess.

Exercise #2 is the PAUSE dip!

This one is just damn sadistic stuff right here, man, but it works! I love pause dips, and pause squats, and pretty much any other pause variation of an exercise because they force you to get confident and strong supporting heavy weights in the weakest and most uncomfortable part of the range of motion of the lift.

With pause dips the chest and shoulders are put in a massively stretched position, and the core has to be ready to brace hard as hell to keep the torso from swinging all over the place (which becomes an issue of magnified importance the more and more weight you have hanging off that dipping belt). If your body gets thrown little bit out of line when the weight hanging off of you is heavy then the lift is most likely going to be lost.

It's just a really hard thing to recover from, in my experience, and again, this issue only becomes amplified the greater and greater that the external load is relative to your body weight. The external load starts to own YOU rather than the other way around if you don't make a concerted effort to stay in great control of it. The margins get progressively smaller and smaller the heavier that the weight is.

Pausing in the deepest part of the rep just builds a level of strength and confidence that is hard to obtain elsewhere. Most people are scared of the hole of the squat and they're scared of the hole of the dip, point blank.

Pausing and just hanging out down there is a good way of overcoming this fear because now instead of just dipping your toes into that zone for a half a second at a time you are forcing yourself to live there for for 3, 4, or even 5 seconds. Seconds which feel small eternities when you're under load as time actually becomes distorted and slows to a screeching halt when you are at the bottom of a heavy pause dip or heavy pause squat.

So with pause dips instead of hitting the hole, cumulatively, for 10-15 seconds over the course of your entire dip workout you will have the opportunity to spend 60, or 90, or maybe even 120 seconds in that same challenging, scary spot.

You are going to live there, and you are going to get comfortable and confident living there. And with that you are going to build massive power out of the weakest part of the movement, and that massive power through the weakest point is going to carry you through to a smooth and strong lockout at the top of the rep.

So do your pause dips! Heavy singles actually work quite well here for max effort work, but sets of 3-5 reps with moderate weights for moderate pause lengths are really going to be the bread and butter of your pause dip training.

Finally exercise #3 is the bench press!

Now I'm personally not really a fan of bench pressing myself. Never really have been!  But I did spend a few years training as a powerlifter and during that time I paid my dues on the exercise and I managed to work up to a decent 315lbs bench at about 160lbs body weight.

Before that I had included the bench press on and off in my programming for years. I have mostly stopped doing it these days in favor of more overhead work, a higher workload of loaded push-ups and other calisthenics, and a lot more incline pressing with the barbell (generally higher inclines from 60 degrees on up to about 75 or 80 degrees).

But in spite of that natural distaste I have for the gym bro's favorite lift, the flat bench press, I would never deny the fact that it's one of the best raw strength and hypetrophy movements for the upper body pressing muscles. This is why, in spite of my personal distaste, the vast majority of my clients put in a lot of work bench pressing every week even if building the flat bench press itself isn't one of their main goals.

Paying your dues on this movement and using it a means to an end to build up a respectable base of strength and hypertrophy in the pressing muscles is almost always a good idea.

The strength and muscle that you're able to build with this easy to learn, easily progress-able lift is going to transfer over very well into your calisthenics endeavors as well (weighted dips, loaded push-ups, etc.).

There's a reason why the weighted dip is one of the most favored assistance exercises for powerlifters: it's because it builds crazy pressing strength that complements and drives the bench press up. Well, that road goes both ways. Powerlifters use dips as an assistance for the bench press, but the bench press also makes as great assistance for the weighted dip. You just need to stop thinking of it as a primary movement and start programming it as you would your secondary and tertiary stuff instead. 

So basically flip the script from how most traditional strength and hypertrophy programs do things, where the bench comes first and the dip comes second. Instead, your dips should come first and your bench press work should come second.

Use the bench press as support work for your primary goal of building a bigger, badder weighted dip. Pay your dues on the movement, and in the long run your dipping prowess will be much higher than it would have been had you never bench pressed at all.

I'll close by saying this: outside of performing other dipping variations and just increasing the intensity and volume of your primary weighted  dipping work itself, the bench press (even the decline bench press) is probably going to be the best non-calisthenics movement you can do to build up your raw dipping strength. So factor that into the equation!

So there ya go guys! 3 exercises that will help you to build mammoth triceps AND help you add some SERIOUS POUNDS onto your weighted dip as well! A big dip is way cooler than a big bench press, so make sure you share this video around and lets make this movement the NEW standard for upper body pressing strength. Keep training hard and I will catch you guys next time!