Well I'm about 6 ft 3, even if I went close grip there is no way in hell I'd get a 2 ft long ROM as I just measured distance from my chest to where the bar would be sitting at the begining of the lift and it's not even close to 2 feet. You either have freakishly long arms or a solid innacuracy in your approximation.
From my chest to where I hold the bar is just under 2 foot, say 55cm. My arms aren't freakishly long at all.
By saying that my ROM is about 1 foot I meant that the bar does not touch the chest, but it stops about 1 inch, maybe 2 above it. That is with a normal Bench grip for my height, without arching my back in a powerlifter stance or going super-wide.
I don't arch my back, I lay flat on the bench with my back flat on the bench. If you have a ROM of 1 foot, you either have short arms, hold the bar quite wide or you're going half way down. If you're 6'3, you're quite a bit bigger than me, so assuming your arms are in proportion, your arms should be over 2 foot, meaning your range of motion, providing you're not close gripping or wide gripping the bar. I keep my middle fingers at the smooth rings on the bar.
I don't think a lift that stops 1 or 2 inches far from the chest can be considered a partial as long as my ROM is twice than what I've seen in powerlifter competition. But fair enough, this is a powerlifting thread.
I wasn't debating it stopping 1-2" from the chest, but rather how could it be 1-2" when you say your forearms are 90 degrees to your upper arms. If I place my arms in the same position, there's a foot between my chest and where I'd hold the bar. But,
if it is 1-2", I don't understand how that 1-2" will "strain" you at all?
For the love of God, I am NOT going halfway down, I'm just not touching my chest, sure it would be a 1 inch ROM if I was 5 ft tall and used a powerlifter stance, but I am not. I can touch the bar on my chest, but especially when going heavy I can confortably push the weight up, but I'm feeling like I'm begging for a shoulder injury.
As I've said, the rest of what you've said indicates that you're going half way down (1 foot ROM, arms 90 degrees).
Same for the squats, if you think parallel is half of a squat then you are wrong. Some people do not have super flexibility, I don't see why a perfectly parallel squat can not be considered a valid lift, but that's just me.
I don't think you need to be super flexible to do a proper squat. A parallel squat isn't really a full squat. Without a barbell, people will tend to do a full squat, with a barbell they act differently, I don't know why. I'm pretty sure any one who squats parallel though can actually go further down, but they choose not to because it's harder. A half squat (parallel) adds about 30KG on to what weight I can move. It's basically like thinking you can shoulder press 100KG because you can move it down from lock out to the top of your head, when that's actually the easiest part, getting it from chest is the hardest part.
If you are lucky enough to be that flexible so you can touch your biceps with your forearms when doing dips then good for you, for 90% of the people that's just unnecessary strain and huge risk of injury on their shoulder joint.
You'll injure yourself doing anything in the gym if you're doing it wrong. Again though, it's not really about flexibility, it's to do with it being easy. It's a lot easier to do dips using half of your ROM than it is to do them at full ROM. "I won't do full ROM in case I hurt my self" isn't a reason for not doing full ROM, you may as well not do anything in the gym.
What you've shown is that there's about a foot worth of movement from image 2, to image 4, you've said you don't bench press in the position you show in image 2, so if you were locked out, you'd have a 2 foot ROM from lock out to chest.[/quote]
All lifts were judged by a former competing powerlifter