We love the ‘big’ upper body squat type moves like chin-ups, pull-ups, overhead press and the all time favourite, bar dips. Once you get good at dips they can get stale unless you start wearing a belt and hanging extra weight between your legs or wearing a weighted vest. Here is another way to increase the stimulus and break boredom with variety.
Here we take advantage of the fact that the dip, like most body weight exercise, has easier/harder ranges of motion during the movement. Then we add in the way a regular dip feels after the set-up fatigue and finish with the only real strength left…your negative ability (ability to lower with greater strength than lift).
You begin with the mid range only as a warm in, then lower into the tough part at the bottom and finally up to the easier part at the top. The point is to allow you to keep doing reps even after you cannot handle your weight in a particular range. in this case leverage is best at the top so you can squeeze out a few more reps. You may only be able to do 10 full range reps but 30 short range ones if you change your position every 10 reps. Next take a very short break like 5-10 seconds followed by as many regular reps as possible. Finally use your legs to get into the top position and just do the lowering portion of the exercise until you cannot control the descent at about 4 seconds. We start at about 8 second negatives and finish at 4 second.
Be well, be strong,
Andrew and Tierney
wefit.ca 