Pushup alternative to russian dips

[Connor Davies]

Just discovered this.  Try getting into an elbow plank position, with your hands together, and your arms running across the body (perpendicular to your body line)

 

Now push up from your elbows to your hands.

 

How do people think this stacks up compared to russian dips?

[Douglas Wadle]

I'm intrigued but am having trouble picturing the arms perpendicular to the body. Is there an online picture or something to help me visualize. I've been struggling with Russian dips and would love some other exercises to help build that. I tried this with arms parallel to body and it felt pretty similar to Russian dips, but the body has to slide back and forth on the feet.

[Martin Majer]

 

Something like this?

[Douglas Wadle]

That's what I was picturing, too. But his arms are parallel, not perpendicular. It seems like it might be helpful for training Russian dips, but I have no dire t knowledge of this. I might try them for a bit and see if they translate to the dips. Thanks for vid.

[Connor Davies]

 

This guy, about 25 seconds in.  By the way, don't bother watching the whole video.  It's the only decent thing in it.

[Christian Sørlie]

Not a substitute for russian dips, but probably a good progression and a nice exercise in itself:

[Connor Davies]

Well, yesterday I completed my first ever russian dip.  Admittedly it was on a couple of workbenches rather than a set of p-bars, but still not bad for someone who has only reached HBP/PE2.  Actually, I felt it a lot in my brachioradialis, so I think RC/PE1 helped more than any pushing exercises I've been doing.

 

Anyway, I think the strength gain I had that enabled me to perform the russian dip came about from learning to pack the shoulders properly, rather than building any actual strength.  I still can't perform a single one of these pushups I mentioned in my original post (not with good form anyway...)

 

This all leads me to believe that although this exercise is probably a very good exercise for building some strength, it's too different to all the other gymnastic strength exercises to be of any benefit to train it.  So, I've discovered another one arm pushup.

 

Still, the dip was pretty cool.

[Brian Li]

I used to do a similar triceps push-up to the one you mentioned. These types of triceps push-ups strengthen the triceps tendons and elbows which can help them handle the strain of a MU transition. Other than that it doesn't have any other carryover to the MU transition and Russian dips as it doesn't work that type of movement which is a pulling movement.