Ultimate Upper Body: Dips vs. Push-Ups

If you need a get-up-and-go routine for when you're traveling, staying over at a friend's house, or just short on equipment, bodyweight exercises, like push-ups or dips are some of the best moves to incorporate into your routine.

Among the best you can do are tricep dips and push-ups.

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These upper body-building moves will get your triceps and shoulders in shape. By performing them often, you also get comfortable supporting all or most of your body weight.

Is one of these moves an overall more effective exercise than the other?

Take a minute to get acquainted with both tricep dips and push-ups and find out more about their impact on your body. We’ll also go through a few variations you can try for stronger triceps and pecs that will help you flex like a bodybuilder and make your body look more aesthetic.

All About Dips

Tricep dips are one of the best take-anywhere exercises for your home workout toolkit.

They'll let you build a shredded upper body, increase your wrist strength, improve the range of motion for your shoulders, and train your triceps for hypertrophy.

Triceps are great because you can perform them just about anywhere. Although you do need some kind of a platform to support your body weight, this move doesn't call for traditional gym equipment.

You can use a bench or a box at the gym, but tricep dips are just as easy to perform on a park bench, the side of your bed, or off a chair planted on the floor.

This makes them one of the most versatile ways to work your muscles.

How To Do Dips

To perform perfect tricep dips:

• Set-Up: Set yourself up on a stable surface. This can include somewhere like a bench, or even a set of stairs.

• Body Position: Face your body backwards toward the apparatus that you'll be using for your dips. Plant the heels of your hands, fully extend your elbows, and keep your shoulders and core engaged.

• Plant your feet in a comfortable stance on the floor. Depending on your level of ability, you can have your legs extended from anywhere between a 90-degree bend so your thighs are parallel to the floor to full leg extension so you have straight legs and your heels are digging into the ground. If the surface you’re dipping off of is high enough, you can also lift your feet off the ground and perform dips with your full bodyweight (more on this later).

• Action: Slowly and with control, bend your elbows to dip your body downward. Your elbows should come to a 90-degree bend.

• Reverse: From the bottom of the movement, drive up and out of the palms and heels of your hands to straighten your elbows and fully extend your arms, bringing you back up to the starting position.

• Reps: Repeat for as many reps as you need.

Dips Muscles Worked

Dips are also called tricep dips, so they mainly work the triceps. However, there are several other muscles at play here.

The muscles involved are:

Triceps

These muscles on the backs of your arms extend your elbows and help raise your body once you come to the lowered position of dip.

Anterior Deltoids

The front part of your shoulder (anterior deltoid muscle) helps you move your body up and down and keep it stable.

Chest

The chest muscles, aka pecs, engage heavily during a dip, especially as you push your body upwards from the ground. Dips, unlike push-ups, mostly work your lower chest muscles.

Rhomboids

The rhomboids don’t play a main role here, but they help position your shoulder blades and keep you stable during dips.

Dip Variations

Although dips don’t have quite as many possible variations as push-ups, there’s still lots of room to switch it up, depending on how advanced you are in the gym.

Bent Knee Dips

If you're still working up to being able to perform dips with straight legs (or your legs off the ground), you can bend your knees any amount to take some of the effort out of the movement.

While performing dips on a weight bench or a box, bend your knees so your shins are perpendicular to the floor and your quads are parallel. Once you feel comfortable with this move, see if you can reduce the bend in your knees by slowly extending the legs out in front of you.

Work on this until you're able to do dips with straight legs.

Bar Dips

This variation can be performed at the gym on a set of dip bars. You can also work outside at an outdoor jungle gym using any kind of parallel bars of even height.

In the bar dip variation, you perform the move in a fully vertical position with your legs hanging beneath you and crossed at the knees. Elevating your feet off the ground makes this a more advanced variation.

Pro tip: Once you get comfortable with bar dips, try ring dips. This master move is for experts only. Since you’re suspended in the air, your core and shoulders will have to do some serious stabilizing!

And if you’re interested in learning about other calisthenics moves, you can try along with your ring dips, we’ve got you covered:

• L-Sit Progression: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Planche Progression: Elevate Your Calisthenics Technique
• From Beginner to Badass: Muscle-Up Progression Exercises

All About Push-Ups

Push-ups are an essential bodyweight move to taget multiple muscle groups in your upper body. They can help you build strength, tone your body, increase your endurance and work toward muscle hypertrophy.

Let’s break down how to do perfect push-ups:

• Set-Up: Get into a high plank position with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.

• Body Position: Keep your body in a straight line from head to heels, with fully extended arms.

• Action: Bend into your elbows and lower your body toward the ground. Keep the elbows pointing backwards as you do this. This will help you prevent shoulder injuries. Make sure your elbows point 45 degrees away from your torso. Keep a straight torso. Don’t let your hips sag below the rest of your body or stick your butt up in the air. These will throw off your form and take away from your core engagement. Lower yourself until your chest is just above the ground.

• Reverse: Make sure your elbows are bent at 90 degrees. Exhale and push through the palms of your hands to forcefully drive your body up, extending your arms to return to the starting position using your core strength.

• Reps: Repeat for as many reps as you need.

Push-Ups Muscles Worked

Chest

The chest muscles (pecs) engage to help you drive up from the bottom of your push-up.

Shoulders

The front part of your shoulder (anterior deltoid muscle) helps you move your body up and down and keep it stable.

Triceps

These muscles extend your elbows and help raise your body from the bottom of your push-up.

Back

The lats and upper back keep you stable during your push-ups.

Serratus Anterior

The serratus anterior muscles sit on the sides of your ribs and stabilize your shoulder blades (scapulae). These help you maintain your push-up form.

Abdominals

Your abs and core muscles need to be engaged so your body stays stable. Proper engagement from the abdominal muscles helps you keep a straight line from your head to your heels. These muscles link your upper and lower halves. So when you engage your core during push-ups, you get more of a full-body workout.

Legs

Though push-ups aren’t considered a low-body exercise like squats or lunges, your leg muscles (quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves) do help you keep your body hovered above the ground. Engaging your legs also helps you maintain a straight line with your body.

Push-Up Variations

Wide Grip Push-Ups

Put your hands placed wider than shoulder-width apart. This position emphasizes your chest.

Narrow Grip Push-Ups (aka Triceps Push-Ups)

Place your hands close together. This variation targets your triceps.

Diamond Push-Ups

Make a diamond shape with your hands beneath your chest. Here, you can help intensify the engagement in your triceps and inner chest. Be careful here, since you’re working with a narrower base.

Generally, a diamond variation should only be attempted once you’ve mastered traditional push-ups.

Incline or Decline Push-Ups

Try push-ups with your hands elevated or lowered to change your working angle and focus on different muscle groups.

Dips vs. Push-Ups— Which Are Better?

So now that we've got the total breakdown on dips and push-ups including what they are and which muscles they work, let's assess which one is more beneficial.

Like most exercises, it will depend on what you’re training for. Push-ups are more of a total-body move. If you're looking for abdominal engagement and even some leg action to stabilize your body, push-ups will hit most of your major muscle groups. That being said, push-ups don't provide as much of a tricep workout as dips.

Similarities

In terms of similar aspects of these moves, both dips and push-ups target your pecs and triceps.

They're also both low equipment moves. Push-ups are bodyweight only, while dips only require you to have some kind of platform or handle to support yourself that will hold your weight.

Neither requires any kind of fancy equipment, but you can add things like weight plates or vests to increase the difficulty of these moves. At high reps, both these exercises can help you get toned, build muscle, and lose body fat.

Differences

Push-ups only require to you to lift about 60 to 70% of your body weight. Dips, on the other hand, require you to lift 100% of your body weight (if you're performing a bar dip).

These moves also have a different range of motion. When you're doing a push-up, you can't move your body under the floor and extend your arms in the opposite direction.

In a dip, you can technically get lower than the apparatus you're using to perform the movement by bending even further and dropping your elbows below your shoulders.

By design, dips give you a far greater range of motion.

Dips are a vertical push exercise, while push-ups are a horizontal bush.

Because of this, dips do a better job of isolating your lower pectoral muscles (the lower part of your chest). Push-ups work more into the upper pecs and the rest of the pectoral muscle as a whole.

Dips— Pros

Since you can use makeshift equipment, dips are easy to do pretty much anywhere.

Dips— Cons

Because you're lifting your total body weight in a dip, it puts more strain on your shoulders, which support pretty much the entire movement.

Push-Ups—Pros

Push-ups offer more variation from true beginner level to very advanced. This means there's a push-up variation for everyone,

If you're just starting out with a dip, even a bent knee variation can feel like a challenge since it's more of your body weight.

Push-Ups— Cons

There's less room to make progress here than with dips if you have a very strong upper body.

Once you’ve mastered enough reps, it’s a quicker learning curve to get to advanced levels like plyometric push-ups or Superman push-ups, so there’s less room for improvement if that’s something you value.

The Full Rundown

Well, we wish there was one perfect upper bodybuilding move, but there's no catch-all dream exercise that works for everyone.

Ultimately, whether you choose push-ups, dips, or a combination of the two depends on your strength goals, your experience level, your training program, and your access to equipment.

Dips let you work with 100% of your body weight, while push-ups only work about 60 to 70%.

With push-ups, there's a little bit more room to get creative with your variations. However, you'll eventually hit diminishing returns on difficulty since once you get pretty good it can be hard to level up to very challenging variations.

If you want to stick with the basic move but get some very challenging reps in check out some more info on maxing out your push-up routine:

• Is It Safe to Do 500 Push-Ups a Day?

A dip gives you something a little bit harder to work towards if you're at an advanced fitness level.

We suggest using both dips and push-ups into your workout routine. You can use them on alternating days or work on both on the same day.

Since the dip is more of a tricep isolation move compared to the push-up, you can't necessarily swap one for the other. Practice both moves for a complete upper-body workout.

Ultimately both moves are great for maximizing upper body and upper arm strength, while putting your muscle fibers to the test. If you want to put on muscle mass using your body weight, these are two of the best types of physical activity to do.

Push yourself to your limits or dip into moves you never knew you had. Flex offers an all-in-one workout platform to help you learn new exercises, visualize your fitness journey and keep all your PRs in one place.

We’ve made it simple to work on customized fitness plans or to introduce a little friendly competition to your fitness community by sharing exercises with your friends. Try it for free through the Flex fitness app.

References:

Campos, Y. A. C., Vianna, J. M., Guimarães, M. P., Oliveira, J. L. D., Hernández-Mosqueira, C., da Silva, S. F., & Marchetti, P. H. (2020). Different Shoulder Exercises Affect the Activation of Deltoid Portions in Resistance-Trained Individuals. Journal of human kinetics, 75, 5–14. https://doi.org/10.2478/hukin-2020-0033

Elzanie A, Varacallo M. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Deltoid Muscle. [Updated 2023 May 8]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2023 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537056/

Krzysztofik, M., Wilk, M., Wojdała, G., & Gołaś, A. (2019). Maximizing Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review of Advanced Resistance Training Techniques and Methods. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(24), 4897. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16244897

Solari F, Burns B. Anatomy, Thorax, Pectoralis Major Major. [Updated 2023 Jul 24]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2023 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK525991/