MAKE THE DIP A KILLER FINISHING MOVE!

Slow down the speed on the eccentric portion of each rep to speed up chest gains and maximize that delicious feeling of next-day muscle soreness

Who works out when they’re on vacation? That’s what I did in the fitness-obsessed city of Rio de Janeiro some years ago, not quite realizing the absolute requirement of air conditioning and bringing along bottles (yes, plural!) of purified water.

Still, I invested a few bucks in getting a personal trainer (it wasn’t much at all!) and trying some new training ideas. Wow, it ended up being a gold mine!

Here’s one nugget I learned that’s put at the tail end of an intense chest workout filled with presses and flyes. That, of course, is the ideal time to do movements and techniques that thoroughly exhaust and pump the muscle.

Admittedly, I was pooped from lifting weights, but we all know (and so did my trainer!) that we’re stronger lowering them. So that’s where this last exercise was targeted: on the negative.

You’ve probably heard of negatives—the portion of the rep in which you lower the weight under control—but most people focus on the positive rep (the lift against gravity). If you’ve done negative (also called eccentric) movements before, you probably did them at the end of your set when you couldn’t lift the weight anymore. Your partner helps you raise the weight, and you slowly lower it. The fact is, you’re typically stronger on the negative: It’s easier to control the lowering of a heavy weight than to lift it. And research shows that negative training can cause all sorts of micro-damage to muscle fibres and next-day muscle soreness (called delayed-onset muscle soreness, or DOMS.) With this exercise, it’s negatives only!

The body-weight dip is commonly done to target the lower pecs, and for most bodybuilders is quite easy. But now you’re doing it last in your chest workout, after your pecs are incredibly fatigued. While you count to 5 with most negatives, here you count to 10, taking a full 10 seconds to lower yourself from the arms-extended position to the bottom. No fast 10s … a real count to 10.

Start in the up position, and s-l-o-w-l-y lower yourself. After you reach the bottom, put your foot on the bar or box situated under the dip station and hop back up to the top position (using your legs; don’t press back up!). Do the same for the next rep, taking 10 seconds to lower yourself. Pretty soon, you find yourself struggling to control the rate of the descent, but it’s important to slow yourself down as best you can. Do as many reps as you can; when you can no longer do a rep for longer than about 4 or 5 seconds, end the set. Repeat for a total of 3 sets and you’ll have just pumped up your pecs in an entirely new—and negative—way.

DIP-TRAINING POINTERS

• Don’t overextend your shoulder joints at the bottom. Yes, you can go too low.

• For a better chest emphasis and less on the triceps,

• Allow your elbows to flare out. Keeping them tight to your sides is for triceps.

• Because you’re doing this last, don’t worry about a weight belt.

• Make sure you have a stable object underneath to place your feet and hop back up to full arm extension.