I’ve heard mixed things about dips when it comes to how low you should go. Despite the common type of dip I see at my gym where people only move about 4 inches, how low is to low?
When I do them I go down till my shoulders are below my elbows, but I read somewhere (forget where) that going that low is bad for your shoulders. Do you stop when your upper arm is parallel, or keep going until your hand almost touches your shoulder?
Yes my athletic therapist says that dips is an aggressive shoulder excercise. I would not go down lower than elbow height.
Parallel, or–pending on your particulars–a hair below from everything I’ve read.
I have always gone as low as possible. I think if you have no particular shoulder problems, and aren’t using too much weight, the stretch is actually good for your shoulder joint.
I have flexible shoulders, so I always went as low as possible (ATG, if you will). I got up to some decent added weight and put size on my triceps. I also hurt my shoulders; it was a slow process so I didn’t realise what it was.
It took me a couple of training cycles to see the trend and since I stopped dipping (over a year ago) my shoulders have been much better. I really like dips and would like to start doing them again, but I think I will only go to parallel this time.
None of the 4" crap though! 
[quote]dswithers wrote:
I have always gone as low as possible. I think if you have no particular shoulder problems, and aren’t using too much weight, the stretch is actually good for your shoulder joint.[/quote]
I agree. Unless injury precludes you from it going deep and getting a good stretch is better IMO.
D
It depends on the apparatus being used to do dips on. If the bars are far apart, then you don’t want to try to go extremely low. On the other hand if you’re doing dips on rings, you can go down until your shoulders touch your hands.
You can go as low as YOUR body wants to. Stand sideways by a mirror. Pretend u are doing the eccentric portion by pulling your elbows upwards. This is how far you have in shoulder extension. Theres no point in going beyond this. If your upper arms are not parallel, you can get there by slightly leaning forward. You can do this with dips by flexing ur hips and holding this position and ur upper body will drift forward.
That’s a good idea to see how far I can raise my elbows back. I’ll give that a try and go from there.