Dips and behind the shoulder pressing

So I've heard from numerous sources (non gymnastic sources that is) that any kind of behind the shoulder pressing should be avoided, and dips in particular get slandered a lot.  General advice seems to be if you MUST do dips, never go below parallel and if you feel it in the shoulders more than the triceps, you've gone too far and will immediately dislocate your shoulder, tear your pecs, bust open your AC joint and be crippled for life....

But common advice for the muscle up seems to be to work dips as deep as possible, which places quite a bit of emphasis on shoulders...  And then there's the back lever, which is an even more strenuous behind-the-shoulder press.

I've been getting a slight pain in one of my pecs, seems to be at an insertion point into the clavicle, and so I'm wondering about the legitimacy of various peoples claims. 

So what are the real dangers of dips and back levers, and how do you adequately prepare your shoulders to deal with the stresses?  I know about german hang, but is there anything else I should be working on?

Well I've stopped training back lever and replaced it with working tucked 360 pulls for reps, as well as reducing the ROM of my ring dips to just the top of the rings, rather than trying to touch my hands.

Don't suppose you have any idea how many reps I should get on each before moving forward?

 If your mobility is shite, yes they are movements that can cause pain. I say work on the flexibility.

 There are virtually no Olympic Lifters who do not work BTN. Many Powerlifters will lack that ability and never do so because they never had that mobiity in the first place or they lost it through their career and training.

 Fix shoulders first.

Zach Armijo said:

If a matter of strength, I'd stick with a 5x5. For joints and mobility work on German hangs and for dips, back to p bar dips as low as you can currently go. Goal being close to shoulders to hands.

With PB dips, I can get my shoulders to touch my hands with absolutely no problems, for 5x5....  The second you add the instability of the rings it gets MUCH harder, I can't dip with a neutral grip yet, and with a full ROM I can only get 1-2 dips.  However, I think the majority of the stress I was feeling was from adding too much back lever volume too quickly.

Dips and behind the neck press are good indicators of your personal potential for shoulder injury due to poor scapular control/mobility.

This is by NO means a comprehensive list, but if these things give anyone problems, then there are a lot of things that need to change.

Right now it is in vogue to talk shit about dips, I don't know why.... My guess is that people don't realize that training with bad form will absolutely wreck you, and that rehab takes a LONG time, because you aren't just fixing the shoulder itself... you have to re-learn how to dip from scratch. That's not a small goal, I mean you aren't going to go from years of dips hurting your shoulders to doing 3 sets of 10 dips pain free AND with good form in 12 weeks. It might take a year, but from there you are home free.

The fitness community doesn't know what it means to invest in oneself... it's kind of sad that even big names like Hannibal can tell people this and they STILL don't listen!

So what defines good form on a dip?  I've heard before that you should lock your shoulders to avoid any shrugging.  I'm pretty sure this is bad advice....

It depends. The biggest part of good form on dips is

1) no anterior scapular tilt

2) Elbows stay close to your body (they don't flare outside of the base of support, which is your hands grip the dip bar)

3) No arching the back

4) No swaying

Those are the basics, but during all of this your shoulders should FEEL stable. That involves scapular muscles and the shoulder rotator cuff muscles.

So, obviously, training these muscles separately to build strength, and then using the dip as a skill to learn how to USE them, is very important.

Subscapularis is probably the most important muscle when dipping, it is responsible for an awful lot of shoulder stability and doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, but all the rotator cuff muscles should be worked. Isolation work ALONE won't accomplish much, but using the isolation work for building strength, that you then learn how to USE with skills like dips, is a very potent combination.

My suggested exercise list for people with this issue, at least in the beginning, are:

1) Cable or band internal rotations

2) Cable or band external rotations

3) Push ups with a plus

4) GOOD FORM on lateral raises in the plane of the scapula (15-30 degrees in front of the frontal plane, which is the imaginary vertical sheet that cuts your body in to front and back halves)

Now that I am out of school, perhaps I can actually start working on teaching people how to do things correctly, starting with the very basics.

Zach Armijo said:

Small wonder why Coach took BL out... just be mindful of the volume and compounding stress.

Took BL out of what?

The Wykydtron said:

Took BL out of what?

The foundation series I assume.