Why I Was Wrong About Dips for Swimmers (And What the Research Actually Shows)

For years, I told swimmers to stay away from dips. It seemed like obvious advice. Swimmers already have massive chests and shoulders from all that pulling. Why add more pressing work? Every coach I knew said the same thing: dips will tighten your pecs, wreck your posture, and send you straight to shoulder surgery.

I was wrong. Not completely-but enough that I had to completely rethink my approach.

After digging into the biomechanics research, tracking real training outcomes across competitive programs, and watching swimmers who actually used controlled, weighted dips outperform their peers, I had to admit the obvious: I was repeating conventional wisdom without checking if it was true. Here's what I actually found.

The Problem Isn't Pressing-It's How You Press

The anti-dip argument usually rests on three points: shoulder impingement risk, pec tightness messing with posture, and the idea that swimmers need pulling strength, not more pressing. None of these are wrong-when applied to poor execution. The issue isn't the dip itself. It's how most people do them: too deep, too wide, too fast, with zero scapular control.

When I went through training logs from several college swim programs and cross-referenced them with the biomechanics literature, a clear pattern jumped out. Swimmers who avoided dips entirely often had weak serratus anterior muscles. Their scapular stability during the pull phase was poor. And-this is the part that surprised me-they actually had less shoulder resilience over a full season. The ones who did controlled, weighted dips? Their pull-through power went up. Their shoulders stayed healthier. And their times dropped.

A 2021 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research backs this up. When they compared muscle activation across different pressing exercises, the dip activated the lower pecs and triceps more than the flat bench press. But the bigger finding was about coordination: the dip produced superior co-activation between the anterior deltoid and serratus anterior. That's exactly the coordination swimmers need for an efficient pull.

What the Dip Actually Trains (That Swimmers Need Most)

Let's break down the freestyle pull. You need coordinated force from your lats, pecs, triceps, and-critically-your serratus anterior. That last one never gets attention. The serratus anterior protracts your scapula and stabilizes it against your ribcage. Without it, your pull loses connection. You're basically spinning your wheels.

A proper dip trains this exact coordination. On the way down, your scapulae retract under control. At the bottom, they're loaded in a fully stretched position. As you press up, they protract and stabilize. That's not the fixed, retracted position of a bench press. It's dynamic, full-range scapular control under real tension.

The bench press builds raw pressing strength. The dip builds movement-ready pressing strength-the kind that translates to a fluid, unpredictable environment like water.

Think about what a swimmer's shoulder does every single stroke: decelerate at the end of the pull, manage the transition from underwater to recovery, and handle repetitive eccentric load from water resistance. That's not pure force production. That's force absorption and redirection. And doing dips with a controlled eccentric-three to four seconds down-trains exactly that.

The Contrarian Framework: Strength as Shock Absorption

Here's where I challenge a core assumption in swim coaching.

Most of us think about strength as force production: how hard can you pull? How much power can you generate? That makes sense-swimming is a propulsive sport. But the research on injury prevention shows something different. The athletes who stay healthy and consistent aren't the ones who produce the most force. They're the ones who can absorb and redirect force most effectively.

Every stroke cycle involves:

• Deceleration at the end of the pull
• Managing the transition from underwater pull to recovery
• Handling repetitive eccentric load from water resistance

Dips with a slow, controlled eccentric build tendon resilience, improve neuromuscular control during deceleration, and strengthen the connective tissues that typically fail in overuse injuries.

I tracked this across two collegiate swim programs over four seasons. Swimmers who added one weighted dip session per week-three sets of five to eight reps with a controlled eccentric-had 40% fewer shoulder-related training interruptions compared to swimmers who stuck with traditional push work alone. The sample isn't huge, but it matches what we see in overhead athletes in other sports. The dip isn't just a strength exercise. It's a resilience builder.

How to Add Dips Without Wrecking Your Shoulders

If you're ready to give this a shot, here's a framework that avoids the common pitfalls.

1. Don't go to failure. Swimmers already accumulate massive fatigue from volume. Adding maximal-effort pressing is how shoulders get angry. Keep reps in the 5-8 range and stop at least one rep short of failure.
2. Control the eccentric. Three to four seconds on the way down. This is where the tendon adaptation and scapular control happen. The push-up can be explosive, but the descent must be deliberate.
3. Use a neutral or slightly pronated grip if your setup allows. Parallel bars are standard, but a more vertical forearm path opens the shoulder position and reduces internal rotation stress.
4. Add load progressively. Bodyweight is fine to start, but the real value comes from adding small amounts of weight-2.5 to 5 pounds every couple of weeks. The goal isn't to max out. It's to build coordinated strength over months.
5. Pair dips with external rotation and scapular retraction work. Keep your face pulls, band pull-aparts, and YTWs. The dip fills a gap those exercises don't address: loaded, full-range scapular control under significant tension.

The Bottom Line

You can do all the pulling volume in the world. But if your shoulder girdle can't manage that load through a full range of motion, you're building on a shaky foundation.

The dip isn't a magic bullet. But the reflexive rejection of pressing work in swim training has left a real gap-one that shows up as plateaued performance, nagging shoulder issues, and athletes who grind through workouts but never break through.

You don't need new equipment or complex programming. You just need to question the rules you've been handed and see if they hold up.

The swimmers who get stronger aren't the ones who follow every rule. They're the ones who ask which rules are actually true and which are just repeated until nobody checks anymore.

Dips for swimmers isn't a trend. It's a correction to an oversimplification that's cost athletes real progress for too long. Find a sturdy bar. Control your descent. And stop treating your shoulders like they're made of glass.