How far apart should parallel bars be?

Hi, I'm building a set of dipping bars for my power cage.

For good bio mechanics, I'm wondering

how far apart they should be for the regular (non Bulgarian) dips?

And would Russian dips when you have to

lower onto the upper arms require a different width?

As an aside, the width between the bars themselves could be measured a couple of ways.

Distance between the bars or distance between the center points of the bars.

The latter seems a more portable number since dipping bars can vary in thickness.

Should the distance be the width of your hands

when your arms are hanging naturally at your sides

(without the lats being contracted).

Or the width when the lats are contracted?

Or the biacromial width of the shoulders?

(distance between hard bony points on the upper part of the shoulder)

Or the width of your hands when they are near the shoulder joint

(ok that's perhaps a bit too fuzzy of a description)

Or something else?

I'm 195cm tall with average shoulder width and proportional arm lengths

for my height if that changes things at all.

When we set up the bars at the gym we take the length from your elbow to the end of your fingers when outstretched as the length from the inside of one bar to another.

Approximately shoulder with and/or maybe an inch or two outside.

Finger tip to elbow... plus two fingers from the other hand if you want.

Interesting, assuming parallel bars which are 1.5" in diameter, fingertips to elbow between the bars corresponds to the distance between my hands (where they would be holding the bars) when my arms are hanging relaxed at my sides.

Well actually to be more correct, when my arms are hanging naturally at my sides and then I carefully straighten my arms (as if I were at the top of a dip).

As my lats get bigger I could see that distance easily increasing by the suggested optional additional 2 fingers width.

Thanks for the responses.

I have a portable pull-up bar that can be used as PB when inverted. However the distance between the bars are from my elbow to the end of my finger tips, plus about 5 fingers. So is it still okay for me to practice my tuck planches on these bars? I would practice them on the floor but my wrists start to hurt after a while.

Farago316 said:

I have a portable pull-up bar that can be used as PB when inverted. However the distance between the bars are from my elbow to the end of my finger tips, plus about 5 fingers. So is it still okay for me to practice my tuck planches on these bars? I would practice them on the floor but my wrists start to hurt after a while.

Sure.

It's close enough IMO. Anymore and that's pushing it...

I know this is a really old post, but was wondering how you put together the dipping / parallel bars?

I'm about to try making some for a powercage and was wondering if I could get some tips

I had planned to get two even shovel handles or thick dowel the width of the powerrack to sit on the steel crossbars. Then a small plank for each end to screw the dowel into so the bars wouldn't move around (side to side) and the bars would have the planks as a lip that would sit over the steel cross bars to stop it moving front to back.

Kind of like this looking at it front on:

O O

===============

Or this top down:

II II

II============II

---II----------------II---

II II

II II

II II

II II

---II----------------II---

II============II

II II

I was thinking that I could also make a board with lips to sit on top of the PBs to use for lower back exercises.

Thanks for any advice!

Just a quick remark that it's very useful to design the parallel bars so that the distance between them is adjustable. I did mine with modular pipe/connector range, and this allows to practice not only various dips but also set the bars wide apart and do cross work on them too. This won't achieve the cross on rings, of course, but it's been useful as a side drill.

Thanks img