Dips and Push-Ups

Bodyweight Training and More for Upper Body Size and Strength

     You don’t need much equipment to build a good physique.  A lot of trainees spend all their time at the gym doing endless bench press exercises with barbells and dumbbells along with an assorted array of machine movements for their chest, shoulders, and triceps.  Most gym-goers could get equally good results, and perhaps even better gains, with little other than dips and push-ups, however.  Push-ups seem so “basic” that many think there isn’t much use for them once one gets past the beginner stage or has access to “better” exercises.  But they still work as well as about anything.  And old-school bodybuilders and lifters from yesteryear often called dips the “upper body squat” for a reason.  Dips can produce big-time upper body gains.

     Dips and push-ups have been around for a long time.  Well over a thousand years ago, Roman and Greek gladiators, soldiers, and other warriors did them as part of their training.  Martial artists in Asia have been doing them for at least 1,200 years, maybe even longer.  Bodhidharma established physical training—what would later become Shaolin kung-fu—at the Shaolin Temple in the 5th or 6th century A.D.  Once the Shaolin martial arts developed as a legitimate kung-fu style within a few centuries, dip and push-up variations became a regular component of their training.  Fast-forward to the mid 20th century, and they were a reliable training method for both bodybuilders and martial artists.  Mas Oyama, the founder of Kyokushin Karate, did up to 300 knuckle push-ups and 100 dips a day.  The “silver era” bodybuilders Jack LaLanne and Marvin Eder loved dips and push-ups better than just about any other exercises.  Gene Mozee wrote in an Ironman article that he witnessed LaLanne do 1,000 push-ups almost non-stop.  Armand Tanny swore that he saw the man do 1,000 consecutive parallel bar dips.  Eder once did 3 dips with 415 pounds hanging from his waist and regularly performed up to 500 dips in a single workout session.  “Golden era” legend Sergio Oliva often performed endless sets of dips in a single session and was fond of supersetting 15 sets of bench presses with 15 sets of dips.

     Before I was even 13 years old, I had already established a base of physical training by doing 50 to 100 push-ups almost daily in the Karate dojo where I trained.  As I transitioned into lifting as a teenager, I continued to do push-ups routinely and incorporated dips into my training routine.  To this very day, when injuries make it hard for me to do other movements, I revert to push-ups and dips.

     You can do a wide-range of dips and push-ups.  You can also add weight to them by either using a weight belt for dips or placing a weight on your back for push-ups.  When I was all-in with bodybuilding in the ‘90s, my workout partner Dusty and I loved to do both exercises as part of our chest, triceps, or just upper body workout days.  We would often use a dip belt and start our chest workout with heavy dips by using an 80 to 100-pound dumbbell or up to two 45-pound plates.  As the sets got harder, we’d then strap on “only” the 45-pound plate and then a 35-pounder, a 25-pounder, and so on as fatigue set in.  We also liked to do push-ups between benches for a deep stretch.  We’d place our feet on one bench and then do the push-ups between two others that ran parallel to one another and vertical to the bench that we had our feet on.  We’d place a 45-pound plate on our backs.  When that got hard, we’d often just push on one another’s back for added resistance, especially on the negative portion of the reps.  When we were finished with all of that, we’d then do dips, and then the push-ups, with nothing but our bodyweight.  Sometimes, we’d do this as a workout unto itself and at other times it would be in addition to various other upper body barbell, dumbbell, or machine movements.

     You can also use a wide variety of different dips and push-ups.  Parallel bar dips with a wide grip for more chest work, close-grip parallel bar dips for more triceps emphasis, dips using just a bench or a chair for even more direct triceps work, Gironda dips for a real emphasis on the chest—those are just a few examples of different dipping movements that work great.  For push-ups, you can do them with a wide, medium, or close hand placement, and you can do them with your hands in an assorted array of different placements to really work your muscles from a lot of angles.  You can also do them on your knuckles, which is good not only for fighters but for a different form of tension on the muscles involved.  In the Karate dojo, we did knuckle push-ups on shingles to toughen our fists, callous our knuckles, and create a really hard punch.  We’d use different kinds of shingles, too, starting out with smoother ones and then working our way up, eventually, to much more rocky and gnarled shingles.  You couldn’t start out with those more abrasive shingles or you’d end up cutting your knuckles.  Often, once I was finished with a shingle workout, I had pieces of the shingles embedded into my knuckles.  After a few years of that kind of training, you had knuckles so calloused that it was as if you had the head of a ball-pin hammer connected to your fist.  Even a light punch could hurt your opponent from just making a very hard fist.  Combine that sort of fist with a powerful punch and you have hands that are weapons.

     If you train at home, you can get a great workout using dips, push-ups, and little else.  I often advise lifters who want to train at home to just purchase a dip/chin station—you can find one online or at your local sports and outdoors shop relatively cheap—along with an Olympic barbell set or even just a few pairs of dumbbells or kettlebells to work your legs, back, and arms.  Do that and you really don’t need much else.  You also don’t need a whole lot of space.  I have a home gym that takes up my entire garage, but you don’t need that.  You can not only “get by” but make great gains with only the space in a quarter of your garage or part of one of your rooms inside of your home.

     You can do dips and push-ups along with other movements.  You can do the dips and push-ups together in a session and nothing else.  Or you can even divide the workouts, where you do dips at one session and push-ups at another.  Dips and push-ups can build a complete upper body physique, whether you do them together in one workout or separate them into two sessions, because of the way that they stress the muscles in a different manner.  For your upper body, if you do dips, push-ups, chins, an overhead press, and a curl of some sort, you really don’t need anything else.  That’s plenty.

     What follows are some different workouts that place dips and push-ups front and center in your training.

Full-Body Workout #1: Kettlebells Added

     This first workout assumes you only have a dip/chin station along with a few (or just a couple) pairs of kettlebells and a weight belt.  This is a great workout for anyone who doesn’t want to spend too much on a home gym but still get a complete workout.

• Weighted dips: 5x5.  After warming-up, do 5 straight sets of 5 reps.  Select a weight where you know you can get about 3 sets of 5 reps before you might struggle on the 4th or 5th set.  If you don’t manage to get 5 reps on all sets, stick with that weight at the next session.  Once you manage 5x5 with the same weight, add weight at the next session.

• Weighted chins: 5x5.  Same method as the dips.

• Double-kettlebell front squats: 50 reps total.  Get these however you want, depending on your kettlebell weights.  You might do 5 sets of 10 with heavier ‘bells or 2 sets of 20 and 1 set of 10 with lighter ones.  You also might just do a hard set, see how many reps you can get, then continue with successive sets until you get 50 reps.  So, a workout might look like this: 1x18, 1x15, 1x10, 1x7.

• Double-kettlebell cleans: 50 reps total.  Same method as the front squats.

• Push-ups: 50 reps total.  Use the same method as the kettlebell movements.  As you advance in your workouts, you can increase the total number of reps at each session.

     You can also add in some ab work or some farmer walks with the kettlebells at the end of the session for a complete workout.  Train 3 days per week, such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Full-Body Workout #2: Barbells Added

     Our 2nd workout assumes you have a dip/chin station along with nothing but an Olympic barbell set.  You can purchase the dip/chin station along with a 300-pound barbell set and be out of pocket nothing more than around $500.  That’s a pretty good investment for something that can last for a lifetime of training.

• Weighted dips: 5x5.  Same method as the first workout.

• Weighted chins: 5x5.  Same as workout #1.

• Power cleans: 5x5.  Do 5 progressively heavier sets, working up to one hard, but not quite all-out sets.

• Barbell hack squats: 5x5.  Once again, do 5 progressively heavier sets.  These are a great quad builder for anyone who doesn’t have access to a power rack.  As you get stronger on them, and don’t want to buy more weights, you can always switch over to 5 straight sets of 5 reps.

• Barbell curls: 5x5.  Do these as either 5 progressively heavier sets or 5 straight sets.  The choice is yours.

• Push-ups: 50 reps total.  Do these the same as workout #1.

     Once again, feel free to add in some extra abdominal work and some sort of loaded carry.  With the barbell, you can do a suitcase carry—it’s a tough but great movement.  Carrying a heavy barbell on just one side of your body will really build your core strength.

     For some alternatives to 5x5 or some different variations, then check out a couple of my past articles.  The 1st is my recent article 5x5 Alternatives and the 2nd is my article from a couple years ago entitled 5x5 Training Variations.  Both of them will give you plenty of variations so that you can keep following the above workouts for as long as you want to do so.  (Also, for more on training with nothing but a barbell, then check out my appropriately titled article Nothing but the Barbell.)

     Now, let’s look at some additional programs.  Since I’ve already covered a couple of 3-days-per-week, full-body workouts, we will look at some HFT full-body workouts and various split programs from here on out.  You can also adapt either of the programs above to the gym by substituting the kettlebell or barbell movements with other same but different exercises.  For more on what “same but different” entails, click on the link.

Easy Muscle - The High-Frequency Training Way

     Here’s a routine that will build up your strength endurance on dips and push-ups (along with other movements) along with building a lot of muscle.  I call it “easy muscle” because there is nothing about it that is particularly “hard.”  It builds muscle and high-rep strength by training almost daily.  The frequency of the workouts really adds up and you end up getting stronger and bigger while doing workouts that just seem too “easy.”  It’s the opposite of what most of the training population does—infrequent but “tough” workouts—but also produces the opposite results of the average training population.  While most of your typical gym-goers out there in your typical gyms struggle to make gains, this one without-a-doubt does produce gains.  If you’ve never attempted HFT plus you want to be able to do endless reps of dips and push-ups, give it a try and discover the power of HFT easy muscle-building for yourself.  Do the following workout 5 to 6 days per week, no less than 5.  I like a 3-on, 1-off, 2-on, 1-off for the 5 days of training, so you might train Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday with Thursdays and Sundays off.  For the 6 days of training, you can just train Monday through Saturday with Sundays off.

• Dips: ladders.  Do a single rep.  Rest around 1 minute, maybe a little less, and do 2 reps.  Rest, do 3 reps.  Rest, do 4 reps.  Continue in this manner until you reach a point where a rep gets “hard.”  Stop at that point.  Do NOT continue until you miss a rep.  You want to be somewhat “fresh” when the workout is over.  At first, your total number of reps might “wax and wane.”  You might go up to 15 the first workout, then the next day, you stop at 13—it could be more or less depending on your strength to start with.  Maybe you can only get up to 5.  Whatever it is, just stick with it.  As the workouts add up, you’ll start being capable of getting more and more.  Also, make sure that your rest time stays the same between each set and from workout-to-workout.  This ensures that you’re actually making progress and not just resting more between sets.

• Push-ups: ladders.  Follow the exact same method with the push-ups as you did with the dips.  The only difference, depending on your strength, is that you might start with more than 1 rep to begin with.  So, you might start with 5 or 10 or whatever.  Whatever reps you start with, just add 1 rep to each successive set.

• Chins: ladders.  Follow the same method as the dips and push-ups.

     After those 3 movements, you can add in 1 to 3 additional exercises.  Do some sort of squatting movement, a lower body pull—power cleans or power snatches are great choices; you can also deadlift but don’t do it daily; that’s too much training for the movement—and a curl of some kind if you wish.  Finish off with some ab work and a loaded carry for a total workout.  For these additional exercises, you have several choices.  If you want to just train at home and don’t have any equipment outside of a dipping station and chin-up bar, then you can always just do bodyweight squats or lunges and sit-ups.  For the squats and lunges, just do a certain rep total as I recommended in the kettlebell-centric workout above.  If you have additional equipment, or are doing this at the gym, you can always follow the “easy strength” route for these movements.  For more on easy strength, read THIS article.  You can also just do something such as 2 sets of 10 reps on each exercise.  Select a weight where you can get 20 to 25 reps for 1 hard, all-out set.  Remember, you’re training almost daily, so you want to do just enough that you are capable of repeating the workout on a day-to-day basis.

Other Workout Ideas

     You can also do a 2-way split, where one day you train your lower body and the 2nd day you train dips and/or push-ups (along with chins if you want).  Do whatever you want for your lower body and use one of the workout suggestions here for your upper body.  This is also a good plan if you want to train 6 days a week but only go to the gym for 3 days.  You can go to the gym on, say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and do squats and heavy pulls and then do one of the following workouts on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  3 days of training might be too much for some of these ideas.  So you could also just train 4 days weekly—2 lower body days and 2 upper body ones.  Whatever you decide to do, here are the workouts:

The Power and the Pump

• Weighted dips: ramps of 5,3,2, followed by high-rep back-off sets.  Start your session with weighted dips.  Begin, however, with a set of 5 reps with just your bodyweight.  After that set, get out the weight belt, add weight, and do another set of 5 reps.  Do progressively heavier sets of 5 reps until you reach a hard set of 5 reps.  Once you know you can’t add weight and get 5 reps again, start doing progressively heavier sets of triples.  Once those get hard, start doing progressively heavier doubles.  Once you reach your max double, reduce weight or just stop using the weight belt at all and finish off with 2 to 4 sets of higher reps with your bodyweight.  Do 2 to 4 sets of 6, 8, or 10 reps.

• Push-ups: 50 reps total.  Once you are finished with the dips, you should be quite pumped already.  Since you don’t want to do too much, shoot for a total of 50 reps on your push-ups.  Stop each set once your reps begin to slow down.  Do however many sets you need to do until you get 50 reps.

One-Exercise-Per-Workout Routines

     Both dips and push-ups work well for one lift a day workouts where you only do dips or push-ups.  Let’s look at 3 workouts using this method.

8x8

     Dips are good for 8x8 training.  If you can get around 15 reps for one all-out set with your bodyweight, then this is a good set/rep combo for just your bodyweight.  If you’re not very strong on either dips or push-ups, then this is also a good push-up workout if you can only do around 15 push-ups.  But it works best with dips.  If you’re significantly stronger than that, then you can also add weight to your dips.  Do all 8 sets of 8 reps with the same weight and take the exact same rest between each set so that you know you’re making progress.  You may not get 8 reps on all 8 sets to begin with.  Just stick with the same weight at each session until you do get 8 reps on all sets and then add weight at the next session.

10x10

     10x10 training works well on push-ups.  100 reps is a good total repetition range to aim for daily, anyway.  The problem with a lot of 10x10 training with other “big,” compound lifts is that, for many lifters, it results in both overtraining and undertraining.  100 heavy reps on the bench press, for instance, is too much work for many lifters.  It results in too much soreness and then, because of the workload, the lifter has to wait too long before training again.  That’s what I mean by both overtraining and undertraining.  With push-ups, however, you don’t have that problem.  10x10 is a good push-up workout for 3 days per week of training.

2-3-5-10

     This is a great one for dips.  Select a weight for the weighted dips where 10 reps is really tough for one all-out set.  Do a set of 2 reps.  Rest briefly.  Do a set of 3 reps.  Rest.  Do a set of 5 reps.  Rest briefly again.  Then do your hard set of 10 reps.  Repeat 3 to 4 more times.  5 cycles is 100 reps.  The great thing about this technique is that the 2 reps are so easy, you’re ready almost immediately to do the set of 3 reps.  3 reps seem easy, so you do your set of 5 soon after.  Once again, 5 reps are pretty easy, too, so you’re ready to crank out 10 reps.  The 10 reps are hard, but since 2 reps is so easy, you’re ready almost immediately to start the cycle all over again.  Many lifters find that 3 cycles, 60 reps, is plenty.  If you have a good pump after 3 cycles, go ahead and call it quits.  If not, continue with however many cycles it takes to get fully “pumped.”  Once again, if you’re weak to start with, you can also use this for push-ups.

Supersets

     You can superset dips with push-ups for a heck of a chest and upper body pump.  Begin with the dips.  As soon as you finish a set of dips, move immediately to the push-ups.  It works well since you’re stronger on the dips than the push-ups.  Do at least the same number of reps on the push-ups, or slightly more, than what you do on dips.  5 supersets of 10 reps is a good plan, as it’s 100 reps again.  You can also do weighted dips first, then move on to the push-ups.  5-rep sets of weighted dips supersetted with 10 reps or more for push-ups works great.

Final Thoughts

     I suppose I could have added a number of additional workouts.  As with other exercises, the workouts that you can do with dips and push-ups is almost endless.  Since this article has stretched to 3,500 words already, however, we’ll just call it quits.

     As with all muscle and strength-building programs, rest and nutrition are both important.  Make sure that you’re getting at least 8 hours of good, quality sleep on a daily basis and are resting enough throughout the week to promote muscle growth.  Get plenty of mass-gaining calories and protein each and every day to ensure that growth occurs.

     Use some of my workout tips and ideas here to build a strong, muscular, and big upper body.  Dips and push-ups might be old-fashioned and even ancient but, heck, they’re still just as good as any exercises out there.  Discover their strength and size-building power for yourself.