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Ring dips

Difficulty: Intermediate

A fundamental gym rings exercise and popular bodyweight movement – rings dips develop excellent triceps and shoulder fexibility.

How to

  1. Adjust the height of the rings so that your feet will not touch the ground between
    repetitions.
  2. Mount the rings and assume the support position. You should be above the rings, arms straight, supporting your body weight.
  3. Lower your body down by bending at the elbows and keeping shoulders close to your sides. Keep the movement steady and controlled. If possible, continue down until your shoulders almost touch your hands for a full range of motion.
  4. Press your body back to the original starting position.

Notes: Leg position can be bent, crossed or straight during the exercise.
Practice the false grip pull-up to strengthen your wrists and prepare for the muscle-up.

Guide

Performing dips on gymnastic rings adds instability to the exercise due to the free
movement of the rings and increases muscular recruitment to help support the body.
This not only makes ring dips more difficult and rewarding than standard dips, but also
safer, as the joints are free to track naturally as the rings rotate.

Ring Dips for Beginners

Many people find the ring dip difficult, if not unachievable, when just starting out. It’s recommend that you first master the support position, which is essentially the starting position of a ring dip.
The support position involves holding your body weight whilst stationary above the rings, arms straight. When you can hold this for over twenty seconds try introducing partial dips and gradually increase the range of motion as you get stronger until you
can do full dips.

Advanced Ring Dips-Weighted ring dips

Adding additional weight to your ring dips is a very eective way of increasing the exercise intensity and to maximise development. Please note that weighted ring dips should only be attempted when fully competent with standard dips (performing at least 12 unassisted BW dips), and you should start small and incrementally add weight.
When you’re performing 15+ pull-ups it’s time to start considering advanced techniques.

A natural progression from the ring pull-up is the muscle-up.
The muscle-up is an awesome upper-body exercise that begins as a pull-up exercise and ends with your body being above the rings.

Try the following ways of adding weight to your ring dips:

​■  A weighted vest is a simple and versatile way of adding weight to ring dips. The great thing about weighted vests is that they’re comfortable and evenly distribute the weight over your body.

​■ A dipping belt can be used to attach weight plates to your waist and control the amount of added resistance.
weight over your body.

​■ Try holding a dumbbell or medicine ball between your feet or legs for added weight, but this is only usually possible for lighter weights as it can become uncomfortable and unwieldy.