reckonerAssisted dip
A dip with a counterweight under your knees. The machine carries part of your bodyweight, so the number you pin is help rather than load, and getting stronger means that number coming down. It is the same movement as a bar dip, working the triceps, the chest and the front of the shoulders, at a share of your weight you can move properly for a whole set.
Knees on the pad, stop at upper arms level.
- Pattern
- Arm isolation
- Trains
- Triceps, chest, front delts
- Kit
- Machine assisted pull up
- Loading
- Assistance that comes off as you get stronger
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg less help once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Pin the help before you climb on
Set the stack to the number your plan gives you. More plates is more help and an easier set, which is the opposite of every other machine in the gym, so read it twice. Most assisted machines carry the dip handles and the pull-up handles on one frame: the dip handles are the pair at your sides. Then step up and kneel on the platform, or stand on it if your machine is built that way.
Start at the top with the arms straight
Grip the dip handles with your palms facing in, lock the elbows and pull your shoulders down away from your ears. Keep your trunk upright and still over the platform.
Lower until the upper arms are level
Stop when the upper arms reach level. That is the cue Reckoner puts on your wrist. On the bar dip, measured lifters were already at about 88 per cent of their own maximum shoulder extension at the bottom1. The machine makes the dip lighter. It does not make the bottom of it any kinder to the shoulder.
Press back up without shrugging
Drive back to straight elbows with the shoulders staying down. If they rise toward your ears at the top, the traps have finished the rep for you and the range you just did was shorter than it looked.
What goes wrong
Reading the stack the wrong way
Adding plates to make the set harder makes it easier. The number on the pin is how much of you the machine is carrying, so a stronger week is a smaller number.
Going deeper because the help makes it easy
With help under you the bottom of the rep stops feeling hard, and that is when the depth creeps. Depth on a dip is paid for at the front of the shoulder: the comparison of bench, bar and ring dips named the anterior shoulder capsule as what a bigger extension range may strain1. Level is the position, however light the set feels.
Dropping onto the platform
Lower fast and the counterweight catches you and throws you back up, so the hardest part of the rep is done by the machine. Lower under control, stop at level, then press.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 30 kg of help, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 10 at 30 kg of help | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 at 30 kg of help | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 at 30 kg of help | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 at 30 kg of help | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 at 30 kg of help | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 14 at 30 kg of help | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Why does the number go down when I get stronger?
Because it is help. A week where every set reaches the top of the range takes help off, and a week where the first set falls well short puts some back rather than making the next one harder.
Is an assisted dip the same exercise as a dip?
It is the same movement with part of your weight taken away: the same joints move through the same arc. Nobody has published a measurement of the assisted version on its own, so what this page says about the muscles and the depth comes from the bar dip it stands in for1.
What happens when I can do a real dip?
The assisted dip shares its swap group with the dip, so when the number on the pin gets small you can swap one for the other. Reckoner never puts this lift into a plan on its own. It is there when you choose it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. On this machine easing means more help, so a stack already giving all the help it has leaves nothing to add, and the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- McKenzie and colleagues, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022. Bench, bar, and ring dips: do kinematics and muscle activity differ? thirteen experienced men across bench, bar and ring dips, peak shoulder extension on the bar dip at about 88 per cent of each lifter's tested maximum, and the anterior shoulder capsule named as the structure a larger shoulder extension range may strain