Reply With QuoteWhy would you want to do 30, 40, or 50 dips?
Member
Bodyweight dips after we can do 30+ reps?
Once we can do 15 reps as per SS you should alternate between a 3x5 day and a 3x max BW dips. Should we do this indefinitely or would there be an upper limit on BW days such as 30, 40, or 50 then we should switch to just all 3x5 weighted dip days?
TMPHBITEU
Why would you want to do 30, 40, or 50 dips?
✓ Member
For that matter, what is your reason for doing dips at all?
Member
Thanks for the reply. I don't want to unless you recommend it. In the pullup section it says once you can do 12-15 reps you could possibly start alternating 3x5 with higher rep BW workouts. And I saw another post from you, when doing my research that dips should follow the same progression. However, I am at the point where I am doing 35,33, 31 on my BW Dip days and was wondering if I should just keep pushing the reps higher on the higher rep BW days or should I just do 3x5 every dip day. Or should I do 3x5 alternated with higher rep weighted days, if so what rep range would you recommend.Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
TMPHBITEU
Has 35 reps in the dip increased your bench?
Member
Height and weight? Bench and press numbers?
Member
I am following the LP so my bench has been going up as my dips have went up.
Could you please just tell me what the recommended progression for dips is at this point?
Member
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.
TMPHBITEU
Dips are not in the Novice Linear Progression, so you are not doing the LP. At least not our LP.
Member
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?
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