I’ve wanted to do weighted dips for the longest time but based on my dips with bodyweight, I figured I wasn’t ready. Dips are a great way to build upper body pushing strength and I normally do 5 sets of 10-12 reps and i’ve been doing that for a while. I wasn’t really improving but maybe i wasn’t paying attention?
Yesterday I said what the heck and just tried weighted dips after I did one body weight set. I used 12kg and got 10 solid reps. What?! I thought I wasn’t ready for these? Let’s try that again.
I grabbed a 16kg kettlebell, strapped it on, and did how may reps? 10 solid. What the heck?
At this point, I’m wondering where this is going so I continued with the 20kg. How many? 10.
I grabbed the 24kg. At this point I had done 4 sets already with more than I’d ever dipped before. So how many did I get on the 5th set with 24kg? 10!
I could have tried 28kg but I stuck with 24kg and got 8, 7, 6, 4 on my last sets so I was a happy camper. That’s dipping 108kg (my body weight plus 24kg) for five whole sets!
The point of this is that I was likely limiting myself in my head to 10 reps. If you tell yourself you will do 10, then that’s all you will do. Your mind will tell your body to start shutting down around 8. It’s like when you have to go to the bathroom and the pressure increases the closer you get to the bathroom.
You might be self-limiting like this and not even know it. If you don’t push yourself in different ways and experiment, then you’ll never know. One thing is for sure, I’ll never limit myself to bodyweight dips again. I just multiplied the effect of that exercise immensely by pushing that boundary.
Try it out and something you’ve been doing as a routine and see how it works!