Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Since dips hit the chest, shoulder and triceps, I used to do all those body parts in one day. Since there is a lot of overlap, and I started doing chest on one day and shoulders and triceps on another day, I cut the dips out! I figure too much oberlap and possible over training. What do you all think?

-Rich

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What do I do when not bodybuilding or working? Spend time with family, play guitar, write music, snowboard, roast coffee, travel, read, fight for those who are less fortunate than myself.

Everyone's different, but most people recover well enough from the upper body exercises you mentioned to train them twice a week, if they want to. I'm not an expert, though.

I recently started doing my light assistance work on a different day than the main lift. For example, I do heavy overhead press on one day, then light assistance work for overhead press on a different day. That way I'm hitting more or less the same muscles twice a week, once heavy, once light. You could consider dips an assistance exercise for either overhead press or bench.

I remember you were having some health issues recently, which is a bummer. How ya feeling lately?

Still having a lot of shoulder pain in my left shoulder and elbow and wrist issues.....

I realized tonight that I can no longer do overhead presses. I get far too much pain in my left shoulder! I will have to rely on chest press, dips and side raises, front and rear raises for shoulder...no more overhead press.

I did dips tonight but my chest was still sore from Monday's workout.

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What do I do when not bodybuilding or working? Spend time with family, play guitar, write music, snowboard, roast coffee, travel, read, fight for those who are less fortunate than myself.

Sorry to hear that!

I do a LOT of dips - weighted dips are the cornerstone of my push routine.

I do full-body workouts 3 x week so for me there's no issue with overlapping. However I think avoiding superior compound movements like thiss due to worries about overlapping is going to be counterproductive in the long run. There's a reason weighted dips are often referred to as the 'upper body squat' - because they're f*cking awesome.

I struggle with overhead work too, in my case due to a persistent issue with a bulging spinal disc.

Apart from dips which hit the delts hard, I also do elevated push ups on gymnastic rings i.e. elevated means the rings are near ground level & my feet are on a higher bench/platform, so that the angle of my body recruits the delts more than if my body was flat.

I also do an exercise call 'cross pulls' that hits EVERY muscle in the body above the abs including delts:



Make sure you're very well warmed up before attempting this exercise otherwise you're likely to tear a bicep tendon!