How To Do Weighted Chest Dips

For Intermediate and Advanced Trainers by healthy_blogging Okay, for the past six months you've been working your butt off with push ups, peck decks and chest presses and it's all paying off. Your bench press numbers are getting better and better each week so you know that you've been performing a lot of great chest workouts. But now you want more of a challenge. The dips are becoming too easy and now you worry that your muscles are adapting since you've been doing the same routines every week. So what are you going to do about it? Jack it up a notch, that's what you're going to do. In this article, I'm going to demonstrate the weighted chest dip. If you're performing twenty or more reps per set with your unweighted chest dips and want to become even stronger, now is the time to add some weight. How to Do Weighted Chest Dips You'll need parallel bars, weight plates and a weight belt or a weighted vest for this exercise. I recommend that you do NOT use a weighted backpack because it will cause unnecessary strain on your shoulders. Wrap the weight belt around your waist. Most come with a long, heavy duty metal chain with a clamp on the end. Select a weight plate (e.g. a twenty-five pound plate is good for starting on this exercise). Thread the chain through the center of the weight plate. Take the other end of the chain and secure it to the clamp on the belt. Stand up straight. You need to make sure that the weight plate does not fall to the ground. It's also important to find out - right now - if this weight is too much for you. If it is, choose a lighter plate. Step onto the platform. Stand between the dip bars. Now, while leaning forward to an angle between 15 - 30 degrees, push your body upward but make sure that you don't lock your elbows. As with the unweighted chest dips, lower yourself down until you feel a slight pull in your chest. Use as much weight as you can do safely for at least five reps. After you've finished up a set, take a short break then start again. In this demo, I added sixty pounds to increase the difficulty of the exercise. You'll quickly realize that weighted chest dips are more difficult than the unweighted variety. This is an intermediate to advanced strength training and muscle building exercise which means you should not do them on an assisted machine. If you can't perform at least five reps of this exercise, it means that either your muscles aren't strong enough for the load (so reduce the weight you're using) or your muscles haven't had enough time to recover from other chest strengthening exercises. In this case, give your body time to rest. You've earned it.    To become stronger, we need to constantly push our bodies further and further. If we adapt then we're just doing endurance exercises. And even though endurance is a sign of fitness, if it's strength you're after, you have to keep the muscles confused. Performing a circuit of weighted chest dips, bench press, push ups, cable push downs and push press will definitely be just the shock that your system needs to help your muscles to grow. So add the weighted chest dips to your great chest workouts routine and see how well you do. You won't be disappointed. "Great Chest Workouts: How To Do Weighted Chest Dips - For Intermediate and Advanced Lifters" copyright 2010 Great Chest Workouts. All Rights Reserved.