maratoolTricep Dips using Body Weight
How to do the tricep dips using body weight
- Grasp a set of parallel bars and push yourself up to the starting position.
- Keeping your elbows close to your body, lower yourself down until your triceps are parallel to the floor.
- Slowly raise yourself back to the starting position.
- Note: Keep your abs drawn in and your body straight during this exercise.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the triceps brachii, which straightens the elbow, and through its long head helps pull the arm back at the shoulder.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range; the chest adds pushing force at the shoulder.
How this movement works
Several joints move together, so effort spreads across a chain rather than concentrating in one place. Coordination is part of the difficulty: the movement is only as good as its weakest link, and improving it often means fixing a position somewhere other than the muscle you meant to train.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.
Every exercise using:Body only
These train the triceps too, using equipment this one does not:
Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.