I go to the gym three times in an eight day period. Would I be making better gains in chest/tri size if I did press-ups/dips on my 'days off' at home? 3 sets of 12 slow reps or something.
Yes, do more push-ups but more volume and never do the slow tempo crap for any lift. Controlled eccentric (1 sec down if that), explosive concentric every time.
You are a novice, therefore this is your answer. You will want to train the bodypart(actually full body workout) 2-3 times per week. Therefore, rest should be 48 to 72 hours. You should see great strength gains in the first two or three months due to adaptations in the Central Nervous System. Don't get into Incline bench flyes because "I want to work on my upper chest", or do preacher curls so that I have that "bicep peak." The muscle works as one unit. Therefore, you should start out doing Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. It leaves the guess work out and a non experienced lifter should not be putting together their own program. After this, he has a book called practical programming. Buy that when finished Starting Strength. That is all you need to know. Hope this helps.
Sorry One Punch, I should have read the posts before I posted the above. You already gave him that information. It get's to the point where 10% of the posts actually answer the question and the other 90% are rants. Therefore I rarely read anything but the first post.
I think bench can be applicable to sports if you fight like George Foreman: push the guy illegally and punch him off the break. I see how it helps the football linemen, especially if they are doing like half reps at the top of the motion with heavy weight quickly and "explosively", its just like pushing a guy. I just can't in good conscience agree that dips work anything like the same muscle groups as bench, at least not the way I dip, with my body pretty much in line and all the work being done by the back of my arm. I do feel bench in my chest, but never, never dips. At most I might feel the dip a little bit in my shoulder if I am using a weight attachment.
bench press and pushups will def work the chest muscles to a better extent than a basic dip (varying positions will actually hit pec majors and/or minor better as well) but the dip will still work the pecs/shoulders just for the fact that you have to use your shoulder to move the body upwards after completing the second half of the dip. The back of your arm (triceps) is easily the main focus of the exercise though. I think your football reference is great though considering you would need a powerful explosive exercise using your shoulder as the primary mover. Dynamic bench press, plyometric pushups, medicine ball throws, etc would do pretty well. Great example.
Find out your max number of push-ups for 1 set then work out 80% of that. Do 3 sets of that number 3 times a week and build up from there, something like after 2 weeks do 4 sets per day or add a day so you're doing that for 4 days a week.
Yeah as Virus said I was referring to strength training, if you do want to just put on size you can work the same muscles with different intensities on consecutive days to maximise hypertrophy apparently, I haven't really looked at what research there is to support that though. Eccentric exercise is very important for hypertrophy and requires a greater recovery period as it causes greater enzyme release, DOMS and impaired neuromuscular function than concentric exercise. Lighter loads of concentric exercise should be fine to do on consecutive days but heavy loads for strength and eccentric training should be done every other day. Mr Small was right about olympic lifters doing their lifts twice a day but that is only for 4 days a week and at certain times in their periodised plan, you need to evaluate your own needs and abilities.