reckonerBench dip
Hands behind you on a bench, feet out in front, lower and press. It needs nothing but a surface, which is the whole of its appeal, and it is the one movement in this group where the setup is more important than the effort.
Elbows point back, don't drop too low.
- Pattern
- Arm isolation
- Trains
- Triceps
- Kit
- Bodyweight, sturdy surface
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- Nothing to add, so the sets climb instead
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, wrist, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the hands at the edge, fingers forward
Sit on the bench, hands beside your hips gripping the front edge, knuckles forward. Slide your hips off the bench so they are just clear of it. Starting with the hips a long way out in front is how people end up hanging off the front of their shoulders.
Choose how far the feet go
Knees bent with the heels close is the easy version. Legs straight with the heels far away is the hard one. Move out a few inches at a time over weeks rather than starting with your feet on a second bench.
Lower by bending the elbows
Elbows point back, don't drop too low. That is the cue Reckoner puts on your wrist, and the first half of it is what stops the second half being necessary: if the elbows bend straight back the arms take the movement, and if the shoulders roll forward they do.
Stop early and press back up
Stop when the upper arms are somewhere around level, well before you feel a stretch across the front of the shoulder. That stretch is the position this movement is measured to reach and the one to stay out of.
What goes wrong
Going as deep as you can
Thirteen experienced lifters were measured through bench, bar and ring dips. The bench dip took the shoulder into about 88 degrees of extension, which was 101 per cent of the same lifters' own maximum tested range, and the authors named the front of the shoulder capsule as the structure carrying it1. Depth is not what this movement is for.
Assuming it hits the triceps hardest because it burns most
In that same comparison the bench dip produced the lowest peak triceps activity of the three, below both the bar dip and the ring dip, and six other muscles were more active on the bar than on the bench1. It is the version of the dip that asks the most of the shoulder and gives the least back to the arm.
Sliding the hips further from the bench for a harder set
The bench dip already compensates for its small forward trunk lean with shoulder extension1, and moving your hips away from the bench asks for more of it. If the set has become too easy, change the movement rather than the geometry: the bar dip is next.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, 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 | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 | 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 | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with 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
Is the bench dip bad for your shoulders?
The strict answer is that nobody has followed lifters over time and counted injuries, so no page can tell you it hurts people. What has been measured is that in thirteen experienced men it took the shoulder to the end of their own tested extension range, and that the paper's authors recommend a different triceps movement for anyone with shoulder instability1. Read that as a demanding position rather than as a verdict, and if the front of your shoulder has anything going on, the bar dip asks less of it.
Bench dip or bar dip?
The bar dip, if you can hold your own weight on two bars. It produced significantly more activity than the bench dip in the pectoralis major, anterior deltoid, upper trapezius, serratus anterior, latissimus dorsi and the triceps itself, at a smaller shoulder extension angle1. The bench dip's real job is being available when there is nothing to hang from.
What does Reckoner do when this lift stalls?
There is no weight to take off, so the two levers it uses on a loaded lift are both gone. When you top the rep range comfortably it adds a working set instead of load, and when the lift stalls it goes straight to offering you another movement from the group below.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. 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 measured through three dip variations, the bench dip reaching about 88 degrees of shoulder extension at 101 per cent of tested maximum range with the lowest peak triceps activity, six muscles more active on the bar, and the authors' recommendation of an alternative for those with shoulder instability