reckonerWeighted dip
A dip with plates hanging from a belt between your legs. It is the same movement as the dip and it exists for one reason: at some point your own bodyweight stops being a load and starts being a warm-up.
Stop when the upper arms reach level.
- Pattern
- Arm isolation
- Trains
- Triceps, chest, front delts
- Kit
- Bodyweight, dip bars, dip belt
- Loading
- Bodyweight, with weight added
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Technical, worth coaching
- Recovery cost
- High
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Earn it on your bodyweight first
Every working set at the full range, at the top of the rep range, before a single plate goes on. Adding weight to a movement you cannot yet finish cleanly is how a good dip becomes a short one.
Set the belt so nothing swings
Chain short enough that the plates hang below the knees rather than around them, belt tight on the hips rather than the waist. A long chain turns every rep into a small pendulum and you will spend the set steering it.
Get on the bars without a jump
Step up rather than hop up. The load is already hanging, so a jump start swings the plates forward and puts the first rep somewhere you did not choose. Take the top position, get still, then begin.
Same movement, same depth, shorter set
Stop when the upper arms reach level, exactly as you would without a belt. The load is meant to shorten the set, not the range: the front of the shoulder carries any extra extension you take, and now it is carrying the plates as well2.
What goes wrong
Adding load before the range is there
The plates go on, the reps get shallow, and the number in your log goes up while the amount of work you are doing goes down. If your depth changes the day you add weight, the answer is to take the belt off and finish the block on your bodyweight.
Jumping the load
The ACSM's position stand on progression recommends increasing the load by between two and ten per cent, the lower end of that for exercises with less muscle mass involved, once you can do one or two reps over the target on two consecutive sessions1. Going up a whole plate because the last set felt good is most of the way to a stall you did not need.
Letting the belt change the movement
People who never lean forward on a bodyweight dip suddenly lean forward with a belt on, because the plates want to swing back. Decide your lean before the plates go on and hold it. If you cannot, that is the weight talking.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 10 kg, 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 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 10 kg | 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
When should I start adding weight?
When you are finishing every working set at the top of the rep range with the same depth you started with. The published rule for load progression is between two and ten per cent once the current weight goes one or two reps past target on two sessions in a row1. One thing to hold in mind: that rule was written for lifts where the load on the bar is the whole resistance, and on a dip the plates are only a fraction of what you are moving, so the same percentage of the plates is a much smaller percentage of the real load. Reading it across is reasoning rather than a result.
Belt, vest, or a dumbbell between the feet?
Nobody has compared the three, so nothing here can tell you one is better. What separates them in practice is where the weight sits and how far it can swing. A belt hangs below you and settles, a vest sits on your chest and changes your balance forward, and a dumbbell between the ankles is the one people drop halfway through a set.
What does Reckoner do when this lift stalls?
It eases the added weight on the belt and lets you rebuild toward the load that stopped moving. It never asks you to dip with less than your own bodyweight, because there is no such thing. Only a second stall after that reset gets you an offer of something else from the group below.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Ratamess and colleagues, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, American College of Sports Medicine position stand, 2009. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults the recommendation of a two to ten per cent load increase, the lower percentage for smaller muscle mass exercises, once the lifter can perform the current workload for one to two repetitions over the target on two consecutive sessions
- 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 three dip variations, with the anterior shoulder capsule named as the structure carrying shoulder extension range at the bottom of a dip