Gym Rings: The Only 5 Exercises You Need

Challenge: show me a piece of gym equipment that you can do more stuff with than gym rings. In my opinion, they’re the single-most versatile piece of training equipment available - you can pretty much do anything with them.

You can check the full video out here :)

But, to be super fit, you don’t have to do eveeerything. Skip the calf raises and wrist curls, as well as the bicep curls and the tricep press downs. Honestly, who has time for that?!

You really only need to work through a short list of essential exercises to work your entire body and, with rings, it’s made easy. In this article I’m going to go over 5 staple exercises you can do with the rings, as well as ways to make those exercises easier or harder, depending on where you’re at with your fitness.

Additionally, I’ll cover the basics of programming: how to structure your training, what kinds of sets/reps to do, and how much rest to take.

The 5 Most Essential Exercises to do on Rings

1. Push-Ups

Push-ups are a classic for good reason: they are a foundational exercise for any fitness plan, and when you do them on gym rings, they’re even more effective. The instability of the rings forces your muscles to engage more intensely, particularly in the chest, shoulders, triceps, and core.

Also, compared to doing push-ups on the floor, or even doing the bench press at the gym, ring push-ups allow for a greater range of motion - you can go deeper - which allows for more muscle activation. The unstable nature of the rings also challenges your stabilizing muscles, making the exercise more dynamic and beneficial.

Perhaps you want your pushups to be less difficult, which is possible to do with rings. If the opposite is the case, and you want them to be *more* difficult, archer pushups are one progression you could work towards.

Depending on where you’re at with your fitness, you can tweak your push-ups to make them easier or harder. If you’re at an early/beginner stage, you can walk your feet forward to create an incline, reducing the load on your upper body. If you’re looking for more difficult variations, you can try to progress towards the archer push-up or even the one-arm push-up.

Tip: Use your feet as a consistent point of reference to measure and adjust the difficulty. For example, start with your feet three foot-lengths away from the centerline, and as you gain strength, move your feet further back.

how to make ring push-ups easier, and how to make your assistance measurable

2. Bodyweight Rows

Unfortunately, we can’t train chest or handstands every day - you should strive to balance your push training with your pull training. Thus we have the opposite of push-ups, but just as effective of an exercise: bodyweight rows.

Bodyweight rows on gym rings are an excellent exercise for building upper body strength, particularly in the back, shoulders, and biceps. You’ll also be getting a constant core workout doing back rows on the rings and, due to the added instability of doing rows with the rings, you’ll be engaging those extra stabilizing muscles as well.

some cues to keep in mind for bodyweight rows

If you’re just starting out with the back rows and are looking for a less difficult way to do it, you can walk your feet back, making your back more and more perpendicular to the floor. You’ll gradually try to bring your back more and more parallel to the floor, until your hips are facing the ceiling, as you can see in this clip.

To make the movement more difficult variations, you can work towards the archer row and eventually the one-arm row. You can also try elevating your feet, onto a chair for example, to add difficulty to the movement.

here are some different progressions for rows

3. Ring Dips

Dips are an amazing exercise for developing the chest, shoulders, and triceps. But they’re EVEN MORE amazing when you do them on rings. Doing dips on rings is significantly more challenging due to the instability of the rings, and therefore you’re getting that much more of a workout.

Ring dips in action. They are an excellent exercise for your chest, delts, and triceps

If doing dips is too hard at first, though, you can get assistance from resistance bands. You’ll start with a thicker band which offers more assistance, and gradually use thinner and thinner bands, i.e. less and less resistance, until you are eventually able to do the dips.

If you’re too much of a beast and need to make dips more difficult, you can add weight using a dip belt, or you can try more advanced variations of dips, such as wide-arm dips or muscle-ups.

how to incorporate resistance bands in your training

4. Pull-Ups

These exercises aren’t ordered in order of importance or how classic they are, otherwise this one might be at number one or two. The pull-up is the go-to back/bi compound movement for all exercise programs, and doing them on rings brings certain added benefits.

Doing pull-ups on rings allows for a more natural range of motion, reducing strain on the wrists and shoulders.This is because the rotating handles allow our hands to move freely during the pull-up, reducing strain.

For example, when we do pull-ups with a pronated grip (palms away from us), we might feel strain at the top of the pull-up movement, and with a supinated grip(palms facing ourselves) we might feel strain in our tendons at the bottom/hanging position of the pull-up. We can avoid this by starting in a pronated grip and twisting to a supinated grip throughout the pull-up using the rings.

As with the dips, you can either add weight to make pull-ups more difficult, or you can use resistance bands for assistance if needed.

in this clip I talk about different variations of pull-up grips

5. Pistol Squats (One-Leg Squats)

While most calisthenics movements are more demanding of the upper body, we all know the rules: don’t skip leg day!

The Pistol Squat, or One-Legged Squat, may at first seem to be an overly advanced movement to be your go-to leg training exercise with rings, but there are many ways to bring its difficulty level down and make it a more accessible exercise. And, once you’ve got the technique again, you’ll quickly see the benefits to your fitness this movement brings. Pistol squats are one of the best exercises for developing single-leg strength, as well as for improving your balance and stability.

Do do the pistol squats:

Hold the rings at chest height for support.
Extend one leg out in front of you and lower your body into a squat position on the other leg.
Push through the heel of your squatting leg to return to the starting position.

Beginners:

Use the rings to assist with balance and control, or do partial squats to build up strength.

Intermediate:

Perform the exercise without the rings

Advanced:

You can put resistance bands around your shoulders and anchored under your feet to add resistance and difficulty

how to use the rings as well as the bands. You can use the bands for assistance as well as added resistance

Programming

Now you’ve got the core-set of exercises to focus on, but a few questions remain:

How often to do these exercises?
How should I split them
How many sets/reps to do of each exercise.

Let’s quickly go over that here.

Training frequence/splits

Training 2-3x/week:

f you’re training 2-3 times a week, doing all 5 exercises each session would be an effective approach.

Training 4-6x/week:

For those looking to increase their training volume, especially intermediate or advanced practitioners, splitting workouts into push and pull days can be beneficial. This approach allows for more targeted training and the inclusion of advanced exercises like the front and back lever.

If you're training at a higher volume, you may start to play with more advanced movements, such as the back or front lever.

Sets/reps:

Regarding sets, starting with three sets is a good start and, as you grow stronger, you can gradually increase to four, five, or even six sets.The key is to find the right volume for your body and to monitor your recovery and performance.

When it comes to repetitions, aim to stay close to failure without necessarily reaching it every time. Depending on what your goals are, your reps could range between 3 and 15 reps. Higher reps would be advisable if your goal is muscle building and lower reps for strength. However, lower reps can be harder on your joints, so balancing volume with injury risk is something to keep in mind.

Including supersets in your training regimen is a good way to make your sessions more efficient. Supersets are when you pair opposing muscle groups consecutively, for example doing 10 handstand push-ups followed immediately by 10 pull-ups. Because you’re training one muscle group and then another that has not been worked at all, you might be able to get more volume done in less time like this. Stll, resting enough between sets to maintain the quality of each set is vital; if you can perform nearly as many reps in your next set as in the previous one, you've gotten enough rest.

in this clip I talk about what kind of approaches you can use in regards to sets/reps

That’s basically it for the programming aspect of your training. **Keep an eye out for an upcoming follow-along video where you can see how to apply all these principles! :)

Conclusion

There you have it. The only 5 exercises you need to train your whole body - push ups, rows, dips, pull ups, and pistol squats - with arguably the only piece of equipment you need: gym rings.

Gym rings offer an unparalleled level of versatility and effectiveness in your training routine. Haven’t got any yet? I offer top-quality, ethically made minimalist gym rings as well as resistance bands. You can grab a pair here, or you can this video out to learn all about them.

Hope you got something out of this article, it was a biggie! If you’ve got any questions, please hit me up in the comments here, on IG, or youtube, and I’ll do my best to reply.

The Only 5 Gym Ring Exercises You Need!