Today you’ll get a beginner’s workout that you can use on a pair of gymnastic rings. Anyone can follow this workout program filled with 5 simple strength-building exercises.
Gymnastic rings are in a lot of gyms these days because of their value in strength training, adding muscle mass, and mastering your body.
The great thing about wooden rings is once you have a pair, you can use them really anywhere you like. If you’ve got a bar you can chuck them over a bar. If you’ve got a veranda they can go under your veranda, or even if you’re out at the park, they can just go over a tree branch.
FIRST EXERCISE: RING PUSH-UPS
First exercise is ring push-ups. If you haven’t done ring push-ups before they can be pretty tricky. So the best way to start is at an angle like I am. So walk the rings out, pick a good spot for your feet and do your push-ups. Now, when you do your push-ups, you don’t want your elbows to go wide. While you’re doing push-ups on the rings it’s important to keep your core engaged to stop your hips from sagging down like this. So tight core, as you get down lower, it’s going to look like this. Watch my core. As you can see there my elbows aren’t flaring out and my hips aren’t dropping in.
SECOND EXERCISE: RING ROWS
Next exercise is the ring row. Same as the ring push-up. Bring the rings out to start, you’ll find it a lot easier while you’re beginning. Keep your body nice and straight, keep your core tight, want to pull the rings to your chest and feel a squeeze in the top of your back. To make it harder, just step forward. If you have to bend your legs a little bit that’s okay, just make sure that from your knees to your shoulders is straight, you are tensing your core, tensing your glutes to keep your body nice and straight.
THIRD EXERCISE: RING SUPPORT
The third exercise is called ring support and you’re just going to hop up into the rings, straighten your arms out as much as you can and hold yourself up. So main points for the ring support. You want to keep your elbows and the rings in nice and close to your body. You have more strength in this position. The other key points, you want to tense your core again, squeeze your glutes and point your toes. Again holding the hollow body position.
FOURTH EXERCISE: DEAD HANGS
The fourth exercise that we’re going to demonstrate today is the dead hang. So we’re just going to be hanging from the rings to improve our grip strength. When you are practicing your dead hangs, if you have the room, feel free to hold your body completely straight. You don’t have to hold it in an L-set as we’ve demonstrated here. Just remember to engage your core and to point your toes.
FIFTH EXERCISE: KNEE TUCKS
So the fifth exercise for this workout is knee tucks in a ring support hold. So jump up onto the rings into your ring support hold. Now you want to pin your shoulder blades back and down. From here you want to slowly start to bring your knees up past the rings. When you start this is going to be hard, and you’re going to feel the rings shake a lot but that’s okay and that’s natural. As you practice, you build more stability in your shoulders and those knee raises will get a lot easier.
BONUS EXERCISE: CHIN-UP HOLDS
We encourage you to try your chin-up holds in a range of different holds. So don’t just stick to the one, over and over again.
Try different holds and see how they affect you. In terms of sets and reps for this beginner workout, you want to just stick to 3 sets of 10 reps or for the holds 3 sets of 10 seconds. This is a good way to start out while you build your foundation.
Now this workout is going to be best for people who are struggling to do their first chin-up. These foundational exercises are going to help you build your biceps, triceps, chest, core and your back.
Think you’re ready for a more advanced ring training program? Watch our ring muscle up tutorial.
