I’m considering making some changes to my training schedule and had a question regarding dips and the triceps. Being that dips work all three, the long head and lateral head, and also the medial head at the top of the move, would doing nothing but weighted dips for my triceps be enough to keep growing?
Over the last 15 months, I’ve Weighted Dip and Rope Press Downs 3x per week and my triceps are the largest part on my body. I credit weighted dips for the majority of the major development from when I started.
The reason I want to switch to Weighted Dips only, I feel like when I get over to the cable press downs my triceps are so pre-exhausted from the weighted dips. Then I have to go lighter, and higher reps. I also noticed on days I throw in the cable tricep press downs I’m burning out and not recovering as efficiently.
With that said is weighted dips enough for complete development and mass?
Some people can develop amazing triceps from just dips, others need to really incorporate more isolation work because dips will target their chest and front delts more than triceps… it all comes down to individual biomechanics and performance technique.
Optimal development of any muscle group usually involves working the muscle from a bunch of angles and at different strength curves, but if “triceps are the largest part on your body,” then optimizing triceps development needn’t be a priority. Dips are excellent for triceps development. From what I gather, minimalist bodybuilding works best when you have excellent mind-muscle connection.
Great responses from all and much appreciated for everyone’s input. Perhaps my gains slowed a bit because of the new labor job I started and was working 72 hours a week and tired when I hit the gym daily at 3 in the morning. We moved to a new state as my wife’s going to school up here, but I started a much better tech job today and came home not worn out at all, and feel like my recovery may start improving so we’ll see if that changes anything.
I didn’t have much time for isolation so I tried to stay away from it, but if I need to start isolating in the future I’ll have to throw some in there. For now, I’ve worked my way up from 10 body weight dips, to dipping with almost 3 plates. Perhaps I need to start incorporating some more volume as I’ve never really incorporated a lot of volume. I’ve grew a tremendous amount soley off strength training and dipping with heavy plates for few reps per set. Maybe I’ll drop to 1 or 2 plates and start doing some higher rep stuff and see how that works. If not, I’ll start isolating to change things up sense I should have more time in the gym now!