Programming For Weighted Dips

If it isn’t blatantly obvious from story posts I’ve made, I really like weighted dips. Official Bro Science University conducted research has shown that there is a direct correlation to being jacked and being able to rep out multiple plates on weighted dips. But in seriousness, we see a lot of the top lifters and strongest benchers hitting some pretty impressive sets on weighted dips. And as I have posted some of my athlete’s weighted dip accomplishments, I have gotten a lot of messages on how I program them, to the point where I felt it must be a larger question people want answered through a more encompassing informative post.

As far as I know, I do program weighted dips in a slightly different way than most. I have found great benefit in having a low rep top set (3-5 reps) to precede rep work (6-12 reps). Unlike with what I see on something like dumbbell bench press or machine chest press, with weight dips (or weighted pull-ups) I find there to be a pretty notable potentiation effect from doing a heavy set prior to rep work. Doing this with other types of pressing accessory work seems to induce too much fatigue to see the potentiation effect. But with weighted dips, I find that people are able to handle higher absolute loads on their rep work if it is preceded by a heavier top set. I also find that people generally underestimate their strength capabilities on weighted dips, and when just prescribing rep work alone, they tend to pick a load they can seemingly manage through multiple sets, rather than prioritizing load progression week to week. And the fact is many powerlifters would be fairly surprised just how much they can rep out on weighted dips once they prioritize load progression. So the model of a heavy low rep top set followed by rep work has produced more consistent results than other strategies I have implemented.

As can be seen in the graphics above (CLICK HERE), it is a fairly simple set up. I program a top set in the 3-5 rep range near failure, followed by 2 to 3 sets in the 6-12 rep range where load can be adjusted each set to stay around 2 reps short of failure. Likely earlier in the block, the lifter will start out more conservative, staying a little further from failure, so that they have room to progress and overload through the block as adaptations occur. The progression block to block follows a very standard periodized model, and once those 3 blocks are complete, either it’s time to cycle out weighted dips and rotate a new accessory in, or I just cycle back to block 1 and reset the progression and aim to beat previous numbers through the same cycle again.

As for when to program weighted dips within a microcycle, the main thing that needs to be understood is that they have a higher fatigue cost than something like a machine press for most lifters. You will need time to recover, so strategically you want to place them where you have ample time to recover from. It is hard to give a full encompassing example of where they should be placed, because it depends on each lifter and how their bench microcycle is set up. But the majority of lifters are going to be best suited to either have weighted dips programmed on their primary or secondary bench days, where stress is already high and likely is set up to have ample recovery afterwards.

Lastly, weighted dips are not for everyone. For some it tends to cause excessive fatigue that leaks into their competition bench. For others I have found weighted dips, likely due to their anthropometry, is just a bit too hard on their shoulders. For others though, I have seen a direct correlation to bench progress when their weighted dip strength is drastically increasing, and it may be the only accessory movement I can say that for in regards to bench press. I want to keep from giving too many broad generalizations on who weighted dips works best for, because honestly they could be a good fit for just about anyone, but if I had to give 3 main characteristics of lifters who respond best it would be…..

-Lifters with a more normalized range of motion on bench press.

-Lifters who have a bench frequency of 4 or less days, in particular those who bench 2-3 days a week.

-Lifters who need to prioritize gaining upper body muscle mass.

Fix Your Conventional Deadlift Form With This Variation

So today is a post for the conventional pullers out there, and maybe there is even some application to sumo as well. But there is a variation I have found myself programming more often lately, and that is a conventional deadlift to a 3 second eccentric RDL/SLDL. I by no means invented this, but it’s not something I see commonly utilized, and I have found really good benefit from it lately in regards to establishing good setup and technique. If you watched my Top 3 Deadlift Variations video on YouTube, you likely remember one of those being a Tempo Eccentric Deadlift. And while I still like that variation, I have started shifting to this new variation for my conventional pullers as it tends to be more replicable in their actual setup, slack pull, and wedge. The conventional deadlift to 3 second eccentric is trying to mimic the “RDL Slack Pull” setup that I cover in my slack pull tutorial on YouTube. You use the eccentric RDL portion of this movement to put you into the optimal position to then wedge from that “RDL Slack Pull” position on reps 2 and on. And the goal from there is to mimic that exact same pattern and feeling on all reps of your regular conventional deadlift. Brayden is shown in this post (CLICK HERE), and he struggled with the hinge and wedge aspect of his conventional deadlift. Typical cueing helped to an extent, but I could tell that the more he “felt” the correct position, the more it clicked. So in applying this variation to him, we’ve seen some notable improvement with his initial starting position. So how do I program this? Almost always as a secondary day deadlift variation where the emphasis is on technical improvement. There is benefit as well in being self limiting, but more so this variation is strategically implemented to help lifters get a better sense of positioning within their slack pull and wedge setup.

Defining What Is Good Technique – CLICK HERE

Lifter Case Study: Drew

So I wanted to do a little case study breakdown of Drew, because his programming is one of the biggest outliers in comparison to other athletes I coach. He is probably not the best person to copy in regards to program set up, but what I do hope to showcase here is the thought process behind following the data presented versus forcing preconceived bias. And possibly within that, you may find a couple things here or there that may be applicable to you, but more so see what “following the data” truly looks like. To start off in short, Drew came to me with years of chronic knee and back pain, which I have detailed in past posts. He saw multiple specialists to no avail, and to this day neither of us really have any idea what the issue was. But honestly that doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t change the fact that we needed to drop the preconceived bias of what we think we should do and instead follow what worked. 

In the above slides (CLICK HERE) you will see some lifts from this week where he is repping out 595×4 on deadlift at what he rated a 5 RPE, 474×2 on Safety Bar squat at 6.5 RPE, and then 3 slides of his current squat and deadlift setup. Both the squat and deadlift are massive PRs, and at this point about 6 weeks out from his next meet, we are working at sub 7 RPEs, doing very little competition squat work, and doing only reps of 3 or higher on deadlift. None of that makes sense in the general landscape of most powerlifting programming, but it doesn’t matter. 595lbs is just 30lbs off his best single from last prep on deadlift, and 474lbs. on Safety Bar is 30lbs. off his best Competition squat from last prep, which both of those were at notably higher RPEs. And maybe the biggest PR currently is that it has been I believe 4-5 years since Drew has been able to do uni-lateral quad accessory work, and he’s currently hitting Bulgarian Split Squats with 70-90lb. dumbbells in each hand.

I could probably write an E-Book explaining all factors and decision making of how we arrived at this current setup, but for the sake of you all I’ll try to keep it to the 3 main things we found that led to this system. 

1.) If it is not blatantly obvious, Drew cannot tolerate high volume squatting. We do 2 singles on Monday, and then 2 ascending sets up to a top set on both Wednesday and Saturday. His workload is extremely minimal and for most would be below their minimum effective volume. But for him it is spot on. We keep reps at all times 5 or below, and for the most part doing all top sets in the 2-4 rep range. Anytime I have tried to push that higher it hasn’t gone well, whether that be higher rep ranges or more total sets. At one point I had him doing 4-5 sets each day and that didn’t work. He responds to a very minimum dosage and very low RPEs.

2.) In combination with point number 1, we did not arrive at pain free squatting until we also brough the relative intensity down on deadlift. That was the final piece of the puzzle that really took me a while to figure out. And if you have read past posts, it was kind of on accident. In the first meet I worked with Drew, he had a pretty acute knee flare up on his 3rd squat and could barely walk for 2 weeks, so we really had to pull back. And he had done this before, this was nothing new. But each time as the weights crept up the pain increased as well. Since this is the first time I had worked with him through this slow load management phase though, something that became evident is that it was not squat intensity that was creating the increased pain, it was whenever deadlift intensity reached a certain threshold. And sure enough, once we pulled back deadlift intensity pain subsided and he was able to squat pain free. And double benefit, his deadlift progressed even better at these more submaximal relative and absolute intensities. 

3.) And lastly, we had the back pain issue, which stemmed from low bar squatting. After his last meet, just to be able to get back to a pain free state, I programmed this current microcycle layout of just 2 competition squat singles on his Monday tertiary day, and then SSB for both the primary and secondary day. At first this was supposed to be just a setup to help him return to a pain free state, but we came to realize he was getting stronger than he ever had before, had no knee pain still, and now had no back pain. So I told him leading into this coming meet, why mess with that. Let’s just keep rolling with this setup because it’s the best you’ve ever felt and arguably the best progress he’s had in 5+ years. Does it defy conventional wisdom, yes, but why mess with what is working. I am pretty confident at this point we now have the micro and meso cycle setup that we are going to continue to use for the foreseeable future, and excited to see within this the progress Drew can continue to make!

The Role Of Plantar Flexion In The Squat

Contrary to the lack of calf raises that powerlifters do, the calf muscles actually do have an important role within the squat. The calf muscles at certain degrees of knee flexion actually aid in knee extension, but more importantly for the topic today, the calf muscles help to stabilize your control of your center of gravity through plantar flexion. Above are 2 videos (CLICK HERE) of Demetria that are exactly a week apart, with her squatting 253lbs. on the left and 264lbs. on the right. On the left she struggled with allowing her center of mass to shift forward at the bottom, and that resulted in a lot of the shifting back and forth you see during the concentric. Versus on the right, I simply cued her to start with some slight big toe pressure to create a more active foot position and active plantar flexion from the get go. If you scroll to the next video, you can see the difference in her foot position in slo mo and the fairly notable difference in her foot control and maintenance of her center of mass. And if you scroll just another slide further (slides 3 through 6), I really dive into what it means to control your center of mass through active plantar flexion and the role of the calf within the squat. Then from there, how do you apply this? For me I simply like the cue of some slight big toe pressure in your setup, and I cover this in great detail in my comprehensive guide to foot rooting video on YouTube (CLICK HERE). It does not need to be something that we overly cue, but more so just be conscious of how plantar flexion and the calf muscles can help in regards to stabilizing our position at the bottom of the squat. As I mentioned in one of my stories last week, if you had to choose to bias to the heel or to the toes, I’d likely prefer the toes. Because with the heel, we have nothing that can actively stabilize our position back to midfoot. But when we shift to our toes, we have the ability to stabilize through plantar flexion. Now does this mean you need to start doing 3 times a week frequency calf raises? Probably not (in my case maybe yes, they are twigs) but calf raises likely are a somewhat underutilized accessory movement for powerlifters considering the calf’s role. It’s something I haven’t really experimented with, but I’d be interested if someone has prioritized calf training and actually seen a difference in their squat. My guess is the impact would be minimal, in large part because the squat does strengthen the calf to a degree due to the active stabilization required.