Are bench dips any good?

Hi, I just wanted to know what people here thought about bench dips, done with feet elevated though, not on the same level the hands are, which are easier. I use some books to elevate my feet 6 1/2 inches.

So are these good for building the triceps? Or are they a waste of time?

I've read everywhere and know then, that dips supposedly work your triceps more than bench dips, but the funny thing is that, I think I work my triceps more with bench dips, maybe because I can do more reps or I don't know.

They are essentially the same as regular dips but with much less weight and a greatly diminished ROM. In my opinion, they are useless.

Bench dips in general are lame IMO and only useful for people who cannot do real dips because of a lack of equipment or strength. I could get more ROM with two chairs in a similar position or from support. That being said, if they could do bench dips, I might focus on other strength exercises like some variant of pushups.

If you're working lots of rep and want to for hypertrophy that is fine. I just don't care about that as I prefer to lean towards strength and power training.

I don't know if my parallel bars being 22" apart have anything to do with me not feeling much on the triceps, I'm 5'7'', I'll have to make some new bars that are narrower. That's got something to do right? How wide apart the bars are? The closer the bars are the more they work your triceps? Could this be a reason?

I'll go with useless. Not bad for someone getting into fitness, but when I wasn't even working out they were a joke. Pushups are even better.

JL said:

I'll go with useless. Not bad for someone getting into fitness, but when I wasn't even working out they were a joke. Pushups are even better.

What about doing them to failure and with your feet elevated more than your hands, like I said before, and taking like 20 seconds rest between sets? Supposedly Arnold Schwarzenegger used to do 300 in a row of these, with just bodyweight, but his feet elevated like I said

Arnold isn't a gymnast.

If you want large useless muscles, go for it! (not really useless this just helps explain my point)

If you want to build maximal strength, never do a bench dip again.

There is a thread somewhere that talks all about going to failure, I never saw one post on it referring to going to failure as a good idea. It's just bad all around, keep the reps/sets low and go for maximal effort.

I won't say that they are useless, but they ARE limited. There's only so much weight that you can add to the movement and IMO the positioning of the arms is perfect to cause shoulder issues. I personally prefer regular dips of all hand spacing and elbow alignment and I like dips from the front, like the second half of a muscle up on a straight bar. My gf could not do dips, so I had her perform negatives with bodyweight and added weight for 6 months and she can now rep out bodyweight and can also perform reps with added weight for full ROM. The key is consistency and patience.

LukeLeaman said:

I won't say that they are useless, but they ARE limited. There's only so much weight that you can add to the movement and IMO the positioning of the arms is perfect to cause shoulder issues. I personally prefer regular dips of all hand spacing and elbow alignment and I like dips from the front, like the second half of a muscle up on a straight bar. My gf could not do dips, so I had her perform negatives with bodyweight and added weight for 6 months and she can now rep out bodyweight and can also perform reps with added weight for full ROM. The key is consistency and patience.

So how far apart your hands are in p-bar dips is not that important? Of course you're not going to place them too far off or ridiculously close, that's for sure, but the 22" space on my bars feels like a little too wide for me, I remember doing in some monkey bars that were 17" I think, and I think those were better.

The dips done on a horizontal bar feel uncomfortable to me, because you have to sort of duck and lean back to go deeper, I think using 2 chairs or tables or something would be better than that.

I can't tell you exact distance in inches, but if they are slightly wider than shoulder with that normally works best(you should be able to pass your shoulders through the bars with at least an inch of clearance, does this make sense?).

Being 5'9" I built some parallel bars that are 20" apart and seem fine to me. I don't think I'd want them any wider.