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I see too many people at gyms doing the traditional tricep pushup (or tricep dips exercise). This exercise potentially compromises the shoulder and could lead to injury. Marjorie Gingras provides an excellent explanation on how to protect your shoulder during movement and exercise in her blog post.

A much safer alternative to the tricep dips exercise is the narrow pushup. In the video, I demonstrate this exercise.

A Safe Alternative to the Tricep Dips

Hi. I’m Margaret Martin at MelioGuide, and today I want to talk about an alternative way doing the tricep dips exercise.

I’ll often at gym see people doing unsafe maneuvers for their shoulders in a quest to strengthen themselves but without realizing that it’s going to cause them problems down the road.

tricep dips

Shoulder Injury Prevention

If you have not have the opportunity to listen to Marjorie’s blog that she did on shoulder injury prevention, I strongly encourage you to review it.

In the video blog, she talks about the head of the humerus really coming forward in the glenoid fossa, and that’s going to put too much strain on the anterior capsule.

Individuals that might choose to do a tricep where they’re doing a dip, this is a lot of stress on the interior capsule of the shoulder.

Alternative to Tricep Dips

A much safer alternative to working shoulders would be to do a narrow pushup.

A narrow pushup would see your hands at shoulder width or more narrow, and where your upper arms are going parallel to your body making sure that you keep a nice strong plank position as you do so.

Just as I’ve discussed in the Exercise for Better Bones, when it comes to push ups or in the Strengthen your Core when it comes to planks, just because I’m demonstrating it from the chair doesn’t mean that’s the ideal position for you.

Your narrow pushup might be starting from the wall or it might be on the fourth step or might be on the ground.

Make sure that you challenge yourself at the level that most appropriate for you in a way that’s going to increase the longevity of your body, and not put you at risk.

So, it’s Margaret from MelioGuide. Thanks for tuning in.

Joint Health

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