Bodyweight dips after we can do 30+ reps?

[huskers1998]

Insofar as the dip improves strength, it only gets stronger when you add weight.

Chins work the same way. They start with a rep progression instead of adding weight for two main reasons:

1) At the stage they are added into programming, the trainee is usually adding bodyweight. An "isochoric" chin up workout therefore represents a strength increase. For those trainees that might not, adding reps is reasonable training "heuristic"

Programming chins for trainees beyond the novice stage needs to take this into account. The bodyweight chins for an intermediate are not a primary training stress: they're effectively a "light day." If you are programming no weighted chins for a trainee who is maintaining their bodyweight, you are probably not doing them a whole lot of good

2) From an ergonomic, practical, and physiological point of view, chins are a pain in the ass to load. This is probably the most important reason. They are not a barbell movement, so the ergonomic benefits of that equipment are lost. The problem of adding weight such that the weight is secure, evenly distributed, and freely incrementable has no straightforward solution: one or more of those things must be sacrificed to achieve the others in the absence of specialized equipment. Notably, the most common solution (barbell weights suspended from a belt or chain) is neither stable nor evenly distributed.

Further, the control of the weight added is not straightforward. The weight you are actually moving changes with your outfit and breakfast and how big a shit you took this morning. This can be ameliorated somewhat by weighing yourself and micro loading the movement appropriately but at that point it is basically no longer worth it.

Finally, the movement itself is not really suited for loading in this way. It's puts a lot of stress through small joints bot really made to resist it (the arms and shoulders are much better at resisting compression than tension), and at upper limits of weight becomes more taxing than it is worth, partially due to the ergonomic deficiencies noted above. Some idle evolutionary speculation might note that rarely has a primate of any kind ever had to pull up anything above it's bodyweight much bigger than a particularly fat baby, and at any rate the human solution to this problem (as the babies got fatter) was to simply remain on the ground in the long term, which seems to have worked out alright.

Why am I giving you this long explanation of chins in a question about dips? Because dips have every single one of these disadvantages, with the addition that they are not an independent movement pattern from the main lifts: they are just awkward bench presses.

IF an intermediate trainee, in spite of all of these disadvantages, wishes to make further progress on chins, they will find that they MUST include weighted chin ups. These disadvantages compound such that most trainees at this stage find that simply progressing their deadlift and presses does most of the work progressing their chins might do. A trainee that wishes to progress their dips *will invariably* find that progressing their bench press does everything that progressing their dips might do.

To summarize: if you wish to progress your dips, you will have to add weight. The fact that you are doing 35 unweighted dips means you almost certainly do not need to progress your dips.

Thank you for the response and I understand your point. Currently I alternate 3x5 weighted dips and 3x5 weight chinups with 3xBW dip and chinups. So should I just do 3x5 weighted dips every time I dip? Or should I do 1 day of 3x5 dips with heavier weight alternated with 1 day of 3x10-15 dips(or another rep range you recommend)? Also, I currently am hitting around 18,17,16 on chinups. Would it be advisable for me to cut out that BW days as well?

[huskers1998]

Height and weight? Bench and press numbers?

I am 6 ft 215(still gaining) and 335x2 was the heaviest I did before dropping the weight and working back up so hopefully I will be stronger than that shortly.

[Jason Donaldson]

I am following the LP so my bench has been going up as my dips have went up.

Between this thread and another one (Texas method 6x a week(upper/lower day)), where you mention GHRs as part of the LP, where are you getting your information on the NLP and post-novice programming? It really sounds like you're looking at old information, or perhaps information about Starting Strength, not from Starting Strength, either of which could be confusing you.

If you have any of the books, what edition are they?

[Mark Rippetoe]

My appolgoies for using the incorrect terminology, but they are in Starting strength as one of the exercises you can add to the LP as you progress. So I mistakenly assumed I was still doing your LP.

I really don't understand why you are responding like this. I bought and read all of your books and am following your routines as laid out in the book. I am not trying to add in something out of left field "hey rip can how can I progress on wrist curls?". I am just asking for clarification on something that you have written. If I am reading your words so incorrectly that you feel the need to mock me, I would appreciate it if you atleast could correct me and tell me what rep ranges I should do on my dips going forward. Should I just do 3x5 every dip session or should I continue to alternate 3x5 and higher rep days only instead of BW I add some weight on, if so, what rep range?

Once again: in no edition of the book are dips included in the NLP. Don't do them. Or, do them if you want to.

[huskers1998]

Between this thread and another one (Texas method 6x a week(upper/lower day)), where you mention GHRs as part of the LP, where are you getting your information on the NLP and post-novice programming? It really sounds like you're looking at old information, or perhaps information about Starting Strength, not from Starting Strength, either of which could be confusing you.

If you have any of the books, what edition are they?

I have practical programming vol 3, starting strenght vol 3, mean ol mr gravity, and strong enough. I also have starting strength vol 1 and 2 and practical programming 2 from back when I was a kid.

In practical programming for starting strength vol 3. The advanced beginner routine has back extensions alternated with deadlift/clean days. Back extensions, in starting strength vol 3 are said to be done for 3x10-15. I can already do 3x15 and Mark has said not to add weight to back extensions in the LP. In that same section of back extensions there is a progression for how to go from Back extensions to GHR. So I assumed this was what you were supposed to do once you finish up 3x15 Back extensions on the advance LP.

As for dips they are mentioned in the back of starting strength vol 3 as an example of a lift to add once you get more advanced, I was mistaken in thinking that if I added in dips I would still be doing the LP.

Once again: in no edition of the book are dips included in the NLP. Don't do them. Or, do them if you want to.

Understood. Thank you. I am going to remove them from my routine. However, what should I do for chinups? Since I am running int the same problem I have been alternating 3x5 weighted chinups with 3x5 BW chinups as per the Advanced novice LP in practical programming vol 3. But I am now doing close to 20 reps of chins. I assume, based off your response to me doing 30 dips, this is too high repetitions. How would you recommend I progress on chinups? Thanks again.

[Maybach]

Thank you for the response and I understand your point. Currently I alternate 3x5 weighted dips and 3x5 weight chinups with 3xBW dip and chinups. So should I just do 3x5 weighted dips every time I dip? Or should I do 1 day of 3x5 dips with heavier weight alternated with 1 day of 3x10-15 dips(or another rep range you recommend)? Also, I currently am hitting around 18,17,16 on chinups. Would it be advisable for me to cut out that BW days as well?

I don't think you should be doing ANY dips. If they are going to do you any good, adding weight is the only way they might do so.

If you are alternating a lighter and a heavier weight on a single exercise, you are definitionally not doing an LP, because the graph of increases is not a line.

You appear to have some misconceptions about why and when ancillary exercises might be incorporated. If your programming resembles what you laid out in the other thread, I don't think you have any business doing dips (you certainly cannot complain about time spent in the gym while you insist on incorporating sets of 35 into your routine) and chins progress should probably not be pursued so aggressively.

[huskers1998]

I don't think you should be doing ANY dips. If they are going to do you any good, adding weight is the only way they might do so.

If you are alternating a lighter and a heavier weight on a single exercise, you are definitionally not doing an LP, because the graph of increases is not a line.

You appear to have some misconceptions about why and when ancillary exercises might be incorporated. If your programming resembles what you laid out in the other thread, I don't think you have any business doing dips (you certainly cannot complain about time spent in the gym while you insist on incorporating sets of 35 into your routine) and chins progress should probably not be pursued so aggressively.

I am not insisting on doing sets of 35. That is the reason I came here, to ask if it was recommended since in the book it states to do BW dips to failure alternated with 3x5 while LPing the 3x5. At no point did it say "once you can do X reps you should stop doing more BW dips". Mark told me to not do them, so I am not going to do them.

What is your take on chin ups now that I can do around 3 sets of near 20? Chin ups are in the beginner LP but again there is no cutoff for when you should stop doing BW chinups and I don't want to get into the same predicament where I am doing 35 chinups and getting yelled at for not following the routine.

[biggah_traps]

I am not insisting on doing sets of 35. That is the reason I came here, to ask if it was recommended since in the book it states to do BW dips to failure alternated with 3x5 while LPing the 3x5. At no point did it say "once you can do X reps you should stop doing more BW dips". Mark told me to not do them, so I am not going to do them.

What is your take on chin ups now that I can do around 3 sets of near 20? Chin ups are in the beginner LP but again there is no cutoff for when you should stop doing BW chinups and I don't want to get into the same predicament where I am doing 35 chinups and getting yelled at for not following the routine.

I personally do sets of 5 progressively overloaded chin ups like any other lift. So I did 3 sets of 5 while on LP, jazz them up slightly now I'm post novice

[huskers1998]

I personally do sets of 5 progressively overloaded chin ups like any other lift. So I did 3 sets of 5 while on LP, jazz them up slightly now I'm post novice

Thanks for the reply Biggah.

[Maybach]

I am not insisting on doing sets of 35. That is the reason I came here, to ask if it was recommended since in the book it states to do BW dips to failure alternated with 3x5 while LPing the 3x5. At no point did it say "once you can do X reps you should stop doing more BW dips". Mark told me to not do them, so I am not going to do them.

What is your take on chin ups now that I can do around 3 sets of near 20? Chin ups are in the beginner LP but again there is no cutoff for when you should stop doing BW chinups and I don't want to get into the same predicament where I am doing 35 chinups and getting yelled at for not following the routine.

The cutoff for when you introduce weighted chin ups is around 15, since 15 is a (slightly arbitrary) cutoff for when you start getting into conditioning stresses for the movement.

The only way to strengthen a movement is to add weight. So, you add weight.

For all the reasons I laid out before, chins are an assistance exercise. Your progress on them is going to follow, not lead, progress on the other lifts. Like Rip said, the specific way you do them doesn't matter: incorporate them into your routine in whatever way fits. If they get stuck, but the other lifts are progressing, it doesn't matter.

You're getting yelled at because a) you are doing dips, which are not in the NLP. They have very limited utility as an assistance exercise for the bench, and there's no reason to include them unless they are actively doing something to increase your bench. Which it doesn't seem like you know they are doing. And b) you are doing 35 reps of them. Nothing you do for 35 reps constitutes a force production stress. I know this seems arbitrary but think about it for a second. There may not be a "hard cutoff" for when to stop including bodyweight exercises but if there were, it would be less than 35.