Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [175]
Figure 7-43. Dips can be done between two chairs if other equipment is not available or if you are traveling.
To perform dips, select your grip and jump up into position on the bars, with your elbows locked and chest up. Take a big breath and hold it; start down by unlocking your elbows and leaning forward a little; and continue down until your shoulders are below your elbows. This position is easily identified by someone watching you; the humerus at the shoulder will dip below parallel. This criterion ensures a complete range of motion, plus a good stretch for the pecs. It also provides a way to judge the completeness of the rep – a way to quantify the work and compare performances between two people, thus serving the same purpose that the below-parallel criterion does in the squat. Drive your body up out of the bottom stretched position until your elbows are locked out, raising your chest into position directly above your hands on the bar. Exhale at the top after finishing the rep, and when you need a breath, be sure to take it only when you’re locked out at the top. Don’t exhale during the rep; the pressure provides rib cage support that is important for effective control of the body while it is moving.
Figure 7-44. Dips done in a power rack, making use of equipment that’s already in the gym.
The two most common errors in performing dips involve the completeness of the movement. Most people, when not being yelled at about it, will cut the depth off above parallel. They do this because it is easier to do a partial dip than a full dip, just as it’s easier to do a partial squat than a full squat. A partial dip does not carry the injury potential that a partial squat does. But partial dips are not as valuable as deep dips for the same reason that half-squats are less than adequate: they work less muscle mass. If you go to the trouble of loading a dip belt to do the exercise weighted, and then cheat the depth, you are just wasting training time and kidding yourself about how strong you are, just like when you cheat any other exercise. Do your dips deep, with a lighter weight if necessary, so you don’t miss the actual benefit.
The other problem is a failure to lock out the elbows at the top between reps. This is not the heinous crime that cutting off the depth is, because it is usually unintentional. Tired triceps don’t always know they are not completely contracted. The chest-up position at the finish helps cue the elbow lockout because it pulls the mass of the upper part of the torso behind the hands so that the triceps can extend the elbows against a more evenly distributed load.
And gentlemen, when you’re doing weighted dips with a chain and a belt, be sure to arrange the chain and plates in such a way as to minimize the chance of damage to the important structures that are in unfortunate proximity, in the event of a loss of control or a swinging plate.
Figure 7-45. Weighted dips, done with a dip belt and plates.
Ring dips are best left to gymnasts or other people at lighter bodyweights who are not training primarily for strength. Ring dips are a dangerous movement for your shoulders, and weighted ring dips are foolish for anybody; it doesn’t take very much lateral movement of the rings to place the shoulder joints in a position of such instability that it cannot be controlled. The shoulders can easily be impinged during a dip because the load is driving the humerus and AC joint together, and the addition of lateral moment force to the configuration has resulted in many avoidable surgical repairs to many rotator cuffs (see Figure 3-7). Do your shoulders a favor, and just do your dips on bars.
Barbell rows
First, barbell rows are not a substitute for power cleans. If you use them for this purpose, you have decided to omit a more important exercise in favor of an assistance exercise, an easier movement that does not provide most of the benefits of the more important basic exercise. I say this because of the prevalence of this substitution since the second edition of this book was