Weighted Dips: Benefits, Muscles Worked & How-To Get Your First One

If you’ve mastered the challenge of bodyweight dips and are looking for an extra challenge, weighted dips are the next dip progression to start building your upper body strength and tricep definition. 

Find out the benefits of weighted dips, useful tips and tricks and how to perform this workout. 

What are Weighted Dips?

To start, let’s define the move we’ll be covering today.  

Weighted dips are a variation of the traditional tricep dip exercise where you add additional weight to increase your resistance and challenge the muscles further. 

This exercise targets your chest, triceps, and shoulders. This makes it an effective compound exercise for your upper body strength and muscle development.

How to Perform Weighted Dips

So you want to dip it low? 

Here’s a quick guide to the most basic form of weighted dip. We’ll cover a few other variations you can use for equipment or technique after we get familiar with a basic weighted dip. 

• Set-Up: Attach a weight belt around your waist with the desired weight. You can also use plates chained to your belt, dumbbells, or a weight vest. Secure your weight so it hangs down between your legs or is evenly distributed across your torso.
• Body Position: Grab the parallel bars of a dip station, keeping your palms facing in towards each other and your arms fully extended. Keep your body upright and chest proud. You can cross or bend your legs at the knees for stability.
• Action: With control, slowly lower your body by bending your elbows, keeping them tucked into your sides. Lean slightly forward to engage your chest muscles more. Continue lowering until your upper arms are parallel to the ground or you feel a stretch in your chest and shoulders.
• Reverse: Push yourself back up to the starting position by straightening your arms. Keep your core engaged and maintain a controlled movement throughout.
• Reps: Aim for 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps. 

Weighted Dips Benefits

There are many key advantages you can gain from incorporating weighted dips into your workout routine regularly. If strength gains are one of your main gym goals, you can add this workout to your weekly routine. 

Here are the benefits of weighted dips:

1. Strength

If you’re already at an intermediate to advanced fitness level and want to challenge your strength, adding weight to your dips is an excellent way to increase the difficulty. 

Adding extra weight to your dips significantly improves the resistance your muscles need to overcome. This extra resistance leads to greater strength gains, especially in the chest, triceps, and shoulders.

 As you progressively increase your weight over time, your muscles adapt by becoming stronger. This follows a principle called progressive overload. You can read about it in more detail here: The effects of load or repetition progression on muscular adaptations.

2. Muscle Hypertrophy

The added resistance in weighted dips also helps you strive toward maximizing muscle hypertrophy, which is the growth of muscle fibers. This is crucial for those aiming to increase muscle size. 

This exercise creates greater muscle tension and micro-tears, leading to more substantial muscle repair and growth during the recovery phase.

3. Core Stability

Weighted dips require a lot more core work than you think to keep you stable under the added weight. This helps you develop core strength and stability, essential for maintaining proper form and preventing injury as you dip. 

 A stronger core also translates to better performance in other exercises, athletics and regular daily activities.

4. Functional Strength

Dips mimic natural pushing movements (although you are using far more resistance than you would to push your door open!). This makes them highly functional for developing upper body strength that translates well into real-world activities. 

This functional strength is helpful for sports, physical labor, and everyday tasks where you need upper body power and stability.

5. Joint Health and Stability

Another benefit of weighted dips is that it can improve joint health and stability, mainly in the shoulders and elbows. This exercise calls for controlled movements, which help strengthen the connective tissues around your joints. 

Increasing your stability like this can help you stay injury-free and give you better overall joint function.

6. Versatility

If you’re not ready for the full event yet, dips are easy to do non-weighted or with light weight. You can easily adjust your weight, allowing for progression as your strength improves. 

Even if you’re just having an off day, you can always work on bench dips with your knees bent or straight for a beginner-friendly dip variation. 

This adaptability makes them suitable for many fitness levels and different levels of energy. Whether you’re an intermediate to advanced athlete and want to work on the hardest version, or you want to give yourself a break and practice a lighter variation, some type of dip can easily be a part of your workout on any given day. 

This helps you vary your workouts to make for continuous challenge and growth.

7. Bodyweight Control:

If you’re interested in caisthenics or other similar training programs, understanding how to master working with your own body weight is the first piece of the puzzle. 

By regularly performing weighted dips, you give yourself more ability to control and maneuver your body weight. This control is beneficial for other bodyweight moves like push-ups,  muscle up progressions and planche progression exercises. 

Any activity you can think of that requires upper body coordination and balance will benefit from practicing your dips.

How do dips stack up against another almighty upper-body move, the push-up? We’ve got the answers for you here: Dips vs. Push-Ups.  

8. Efficient Workout

Weighted dips are a compound exercise, meaning they engage multiple muscle groups simultaneously. This makes them highly efficient for building strength and muscle mass in a shorter amount of time. Incorporating this exercise into your routine allows for a more comprehensive workout without needing to perform numerous isolation exercises.

This is just a short list, so be sure to take stock of any other benefits you’re noticing as you work on your dips. 

To take stock of your sets and reps as you progress, try a fitness app like Flex Fitness to gauge how well you’re doing over time. 

Tips and Tricks for Better Weighted Dips

The following tips can help you perform this exercise smoothly and efficiently. 

1. Focus on the Negative

Are you struggling to get your first dip, weighted or not? Try a dip negative: Do the “down” portion of the dip only so you come to a bent-elbow position, then place your feet on the floor and stand up to bring your arms back to their extended starting position. 

This is one “negative rep.” Negatives can help you understand which “sticking points” or areas of challenge are preventing you from getting full reps in. 

Understanding exactly where you’re failing helps you work past these points more easily. 

2. Warm Up

Always work with warm muscles. Make sure you warm up your shoulders, chest, and triceps before performing any exercises. This will help you stop painful shoulder injuries. 

4. Start Light

“Weighted” means something different to everyone. If you're new to weighted dips, start light and get heavy as you improve. Starting too heavy will only discourage you, and you may be in for some nasty injuries too. 

5. Form Over Everything

Try not to swing, use momentum, or “kip” your bodyweight dips. Unless you’re following some kind of a program like CrossFit that calls for it, it’s a good idea to use strict techniques to build strength in your dips. This will help your alignment and save your joints in the long run. 

Weighted Dips Muscles Worked

We’ve seen a brief overview of the main muscles we work in dips, but here is an explanation of what each muscle does during your movement in a bit more detail. 

1. Pectoral Muscles (Chest)

The pectoralis major, especially the lower portion, engages heavily during the “push” phase of your dips when you’re driving your body position up over your grip handles. 

A slight lean forward as you dip increases the activation in your chest. The pectoralis minor also helps the pectoralis major to stabilize your shoulder blades during your weighted dips. 

2. Triceps Brachii

Your triceps brachii (commonly just referred to as “triceps”) extend your elbows during the pushing phase. By adding a weight vest or belt, your weighted dips give you even more exertion in the triceps. 

After all, we also often call the exercise a tricep dip, not just a dip, since your triceps are the main target muscles. This extra weight helps you to build up your strength and work toward hypertrophy.

3. Anterior Deltoids (Front Shoulders)

This is one of the best front delt workouts you can do with just your bodyweight! Your front deltoids (Aka “front delts,” the muscles at the front of your shoulders) assist in pushing the body upwards. 

They stay engaged throughout the movement, especially when you extend your elbows.

The secondary muscles that also help you out during this move include: 

• Rhomboids
• Latissimus Dorsi (Lats)
• Trapezius (Traps)

There are also some muscles that simply act as stabilizers during your weighted dips:

• Core Muscles
• Forearm Muscles
• Erector Spinae
• Serratus Anterior

Big Picture

Weighted dips’ benefits are numerous and can help you work toward a stronger chest, triceps and shoulders. Along with several stabilizer muscles like your core, this compound move is a great total body exercise you can add to your weekly workout program if you’re hoping to see strength and hypertrophy gains. 

Aim for at least twice a week, but if you’re struggling to get even one complete weighted dip, you may want to consider starting with unweighted dips and working on this move more frequently. 

That way, you make your dip strength a priority and can go into this move with fresh muscles. 

With frequent practice, the weighted dip benefits you see can increase your upper body strength, enhance the look of your shoulders and triceps and boost your confidence.