NOTES:  Difficulty Rating: 82%

Begin lowering yourself down and keep going until your Upper Arms are parallel to the floor.  There’s no point in lowering it further because it increases the risk of injury, but I do see some people adjusting their stance.

The return journey back up again is a little more complicated than the downwards move, and so you should be breathing out on the way up and in on the way down.  Your whole body should be suspended in the air by your hands at all times, and your feet must not touch the ground.  If they do, then you can try bending your knees a little, but this probably means that the machine is inadequate.  Sometimes you have to say no to an inadequate machine or one that has not been adequately maintained, rendering it both dangerous and uncomfortable.

The Bar Dip exercise is an old-school classic ‘bodyweight exercise’.  Most beginners find these very uncomfortable and awkward, and many won’t even be able to do one rep.  That’s where the Assisted Dips machine becomes so helpful.  This is a fabulous invention that incorporates a reverse pulley system, providing an adjustable upward force on a padded ‘plate’ that you kneel on.  And now anyone can do a few reps with the correct technique to build on their upper body strength – until eventually they can do several reps with perfect technique without any assistance (just lifting their free-swinging bodyweight).

This machine is my favourite gym machine because it usually has overhead bars, which means you can also use it for Assisted Pull-ups to work on your back muscles. Fantastic!

This exercise engages a fantastic combination of muscle groups.  All Bar Dip exercises will work the Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Arms, and Core in varied amounts.  When I was an 800m track and middle-distance runner, I would complement my training schedule with some intense gym workouts, primarily targeting the body areas that supported my main running training.