Fitness Update: Bodyweight Workout for Chest & Triceps – Push Up and Dips Tutorial

Push-Ups & Dips – Effective Bodyweight Workout for the Chest

Push-Ups are one of the most effective bodyqweight-exercises for chest, triceps and even shoulders. Thus they are part of many people’s workout routine. The same goes for Dips. However, as popular as these two exercises are as important it is to execute them correctly. Together with my personal trainer Philip from Vitura, I put together a little tutorial and some useful tips for the correct execution of Push-Ups and Dips.

Push-Ups – 5 Tips for a clean execution

1. First things first, with push-ups the starting position is crucial. Position your hands a little broader than your shoulder on the ground below you. Try to keep them on one line with your shoulders in a kind of triangular position to your head.
2. Prerequiste for the right exeution is a profound body tension. Try to actively contract your rear muscles by pressing together your buttocks. At the same time stretch out your chest bone and keep your neck straight facing the floor. Your hips should be slightly bent, so that your upper body is positioned parallel to the floor.
3. Once you have found the right starting position try to keep this tension throughout the whole exercise. You can now execute the push-up by bending your arms.
4. When beding the arms, keep your elbows as close to your body as possible. You’ll realize how they will wander further out to the side the more strenuous the exercise gets for you. While it is not a big problem if the elbows move to the side a bit with time, you should still focus on keeping them close to your body as long as possible.
5. Finally, bend your arms until you gently touch the floor with your chest, chin and the tip of your nose. Afterwards push yourself up by stretching out your arms again. Be careful though to keep the rest of your body under tension and in the right posture.

Dips: 5 Tips to do them the right way

1. Also for dips it is of utmost importance to keep your whole body under tension throughout the whole exercise. Try to find two parallel rods, bars or even surfaces positioned roughly in shoulder width. You can usually find training stations for dips in at any outdoor gym (in Vienna for instance at the outdoor gym at Esterhazypark next to Haus des Meeres and next to the Danube Channel at Rossauer Lände)
2. To get into the starting position hold on to the bars firmly with your body at arm’s length and your elbows locked. Keep tension throughout your body. Try to actively contract your torso by pushing together your buttocks, stretching out your chest and try to hold the bars in a tight grip to release pressure from your wrist. Bend your legs behind you.
3. Now, slowly lower yourself downwards until your upper arm and forearm form a 90 degree angle. During the whole exercise keep your body straight and upwards.
4. Other common mistakes when doing dips are to lean forward too much or cheat around the downwards movement by letting your neck sink into your shoulders. Keep your shoulders back and contracted. Actively avoid letting your neck/head sink down between your shoulders. Rather try to actively push your shoulders back- and downwards.
5. Try to keep your elbows close to your body and lock them out at the end of every repitition. Don’t go too fast with your repetitions and rather focus on the right execution. Also don’t go below the rectangular position.

That’s all for now. I hope you found my tips somewhat useful and keep them in mind next time you include push-ups and dips into your workout. I’ll introduce different variations of these two exercises in another fitness update in the upcoming weeks. Until then, let me know what you think about today’s update and how you train your chest with bodyweight exercises.