Dips are my nemesis. Maybe not as much as the muscle-up, but there are dips in the muscle-up so I can think it’s fair to say that dips are one of the most frustrating movements in CrossFit for me! I see a lot of members at the gym struggle with dips and see others who are amazing at them, but one thing I don’t see often is people efficiently kipping their dips.
First of all, the kip isn’t always necessary. Just as in pull-ups, sometimes we want strict ones to work on strength while sometimes we call for kipping pull-ups for speed and volume. In a workout like Fran, your time will benefit from your ability to kip or do a butterfly pull-up. Kipping also helps when you get tired and fatigued. The extra kip will help you pop your chin over the bar when you feel like you might not make it. So if we are kipping in our pull-ups, why don’t more people kip in their dips?
As people fatigue in WODS, like Elizabeth for example, often times they continue to try to do strict dips while their range of motion is suffering. People may not go deep enough or they fail to lock it out at the type. A reason that many of us are not kipping in the dip is that we 1) Do not know how or 2) It’s an awkward movement compared to the kip in the pull-up.
First off let’s review proper dip ROM and positioning. In the set-up, extended your elbows with your feet together, slightly in front of the body. From there, you “simply” dip down until your shoulders are below the elbows and then press back up. You want to think about pressing your hands down into the rings or bar. The shoulders should come forward and the forearms should stay nearly vertical.
That’s a strict dip, so now on to adding the kip for efficiency…
To kip in a dip, bring your feet up to your chest and push. It’s not about kicking down (which is what I usually try to do when I try to kip my dips), it’s about bringing your body up. You want to get the momentum of your legs coming up and then follow it up with your arms. A lot of times when we are learning the kipping dip, we end up just kicking our legs down thus bringing your momentum down, so just visualize yourself bringing the legs up to move the body upwards.
If you already have a strict dip, and aren’t kipping your dips in workouts, try this technique for kipping and see if it helps!
