The ring muscle up is a fantastic exercise that requires exceptional strength, coordination, and body control. Gaining your first ring muscle requires a lot of practice, but the effort is worthwhile.
Continue reading to learn how to do ring muscle ups, the key ring muscle up progressions and all you need to know to master ring muscle up. Definitely a complete guide. We’ve also expressed a variety of ring exercises. And all of the methods that trainers employ, such as how to do ring muscle ups with a false grip and on the contrary how to do the ring muscle ups without the false grip.
A Ring Muscle Up: What Is It?
A ring muscle up is considered a highly skilled gymnastics exercise. In case you are unfamiliar with the terminology used in Crossfit. It involves performing a kipping ring muscle up, an in-air sit up, and a dip, all while using a set of rings, of course.
In a ring muscle up, the gymnast begins by hanging on gymnastics rings, pulls themselves up to the top of the exercise, dips to the bottom, and then pushes themselves straight up from the dip to support themselves on the rings. More than any other bodyweight exercise, this gymnastic action improves the strength, muscle, and coordination of the arm, back, and chest muscles.
As an exercise that uses the upper body instead of the lower, the Ring Muscle Up is similar to an upper body squat in that it requires a single, strong action to raise the body vertically. Its name, muscle up, comes from the fact that it works many upper body muscles simultaneously, a feat that demands a great deal of power and stamina to accomplish.
Simple muscle ups on pull-up bars are also an option for this workout, but we choose to use gymnastics rings for our ring muscle ups for an extra challenge. Additionally, the unrestricted swinging motion of gymnastics rings facilitates more organic shoulder and arm movements. The ability to perform ring muscle ups wherever we can hang a pair of rings, a suspension trainer, or link up resistance bands allows us to work out with this powerful, muscle-building exercise.
How To Do A Ring Muscle Up
In order to perform a ring muscle up, you must first assume the proper grip (the false grip), pull your body to the highest point you can reach (the top of the pull-up), shift your bodyweight over your hands to enter the dip instead of under it, and then push yourself out of the dip. The “false grip,” which provides the necessary leverage for the exercise, and the transition from pull-up to dip are the two most crucial skills for beginner muscle-uppers to acquire.
You can do a muscle up if you can perform five controlled pull-ups and dips in full range once you have mastered the grip and transition.
First Step: Hang & False Grip Setup
Set up in a hanging posture after grabbing the rings using a false grip.
Ring Muscle Up False Grip
In order to enable a proper pull-up and reduce the amount of force required to raise the chest above the rings, the false grip entails curling the hand around gymnastics rings so that the inner corner of the hand and the inside of the wrist hook onto the rings.
How To Do The Ring Muscle Up False Grip
In order to do a correct pull-up and transition to a dip, the false grip entails wrapping the hand over gymnastics rings such that the inside corner of the hand and the inside of the wrist hook onto the rings. It is simpler to get from the top of a pull-up to the bottom of a dip when the false grip is used instead of the neutral grip because it requires less body force to raise the chest above the rings.
Second Step: Lifting Up
After you’re in the fake grip, execute a pull-up by raising your body to the maximum while holding your hands and elbows in. When the thumbs touch the lower chest, pull up. For long-term elbow health and leverage, maintain your elbows near to your body while pulling, keeping your arms as close together as you can.
The knuckles of your hands should be facing each other and almost touching at the peak of the pull-up. To create an easier progression from the peak of the pull-up to the bottom of the dip, the thumbs should be lowered to the level of the chest during this portion of the exercise.
Third Step: Transition From Shifting The Shoulders Forward, Over The Hands
To transition, pull and trace your fists under your lower torso, crossing them over your hands to finish in the bottom of a dip posture. To maximize efficiency and ease of movement, keep your hands tight to your body and avoid allowing your elbows to flare excessively.
Athletes may find it difficult to get from a dip to a chest pull for a variety of reasons, including catching the dip too low, finding it difficult to raise yourself above the low position, or being unbalanced because of poor timing.
Athletes could do support swings and dip swing techniques to get over this. For all exercises, the setup is the same. Place two strong dumbells on top of stack boxes or jump boxes, spaced equally apart from the rings. Ideally, you want to stay off the ground when you’re taking the bottom position of the dip and using the dumbbells to support yourself.
Maintaining the bottom dip position, practice swinging your body (support swings). When you sink out of the bottom position at the conclusion of the backward swing, you should have a brief sensation of weightlessness. Work on the drill repeatedly to increase capacity. Move these drills to the rings after you’re familiar with them so you can become used to their instability and work with their momentum.
Fourth Step: Pushing From A Dip’s Bottom
In order to push out of the bottom of a ring dip, lean your chest forward. Raise your arms to the maximum and hold for a little while before lowering yourself back to the fake grip’s initial hanging position.
Fifth Step: Pulling Up
To gently and deliberately descend back to the hang while using a fake grip. Return to the top of a dip by lowering the torso and tracing the fists around the lower chest until the knuckles are almost in contact. To return to the top of a pull-up, gently slant the shoulders back. With a fake grip, lower the body to a hang, stop, and do the next rep.
To improve at ring muscle ups, work your way up from one ring muscle up progression to another slowly and gradually during workouts until you have the necessary strength for pulling, pushing from dip, false grip strength. As well as the technique to perform flawless, unassisted ring muscle ups.
From there, you can either include ring muscle ups into your existing regimen or perform them as a stand-alone exercise.
How to do ring muscle ups without false grip
Take hold of the rings and hang freely so that your body weight is supported. Raise your body to the rings. The goal is to produce just the right amount of force to lift oneself over the rings. Lean forward at the waist and propel yourself up and over the rings into the dip position at the top of the pull-up using your feet or knees. Elevate yourself into the supporting posture. Reverse the exercise and dip back down to get back to the starting position. Repeat this process, practicing more will eventually get you there.
Which grip is the best? False or Regular (without false) Grip
Lastly, we wanted to quickly go over the distinctions between conventional grip and false grip with you guys before we get into our progressions. To put it simply, normal grip is advised for kipping ring muscle up, whereas false grip is advised for tight muscle ups.
This is due to the fact that it can be challenging to get the optimal body positions for the kip while utilizing a false grip, and achieving an appropriate hollow-arch during the kipping action is crucial for efficiency. However, since you are essentially shortening your lever, or your arms, a false grip will offer you more leverage in a rigorous RMU. This gives you an edge throughout the changeover from a physics perspective.
Furthermore, because the rigid action lacks a weightless period during the transition, using a false grip enables you to adapt and modify your hand position, allowing for proper placement for both the draw and the dip. Finally, you may find that your lat muscles are more engaged while using a false grip. This increased activation enables a greater pull, which will facilitate the easier contraction of your tight ring muscle.
Ring Muscle Up Vs Bar Muscle Up
Although ring and bar muscle ups are quite similar, they also need a great deal of strength and expertise to do well, particularly when tired.
The primary distinction is how much more crucial it is to comprehend moving items (like rings) as opposed to stationary ones (like bars). While some athletes find it simpler to shift their body weight straight up and down when items move around them, others find it easier to kip harder on the immovable bar.
To maintain consistency in movement patterns, it is essential to mount, or to leap up and grip the rings or bar. Unlike the rings, the kip on the bar seems slower and more deliberate because it goes in the opposite direction of the lower body.
Transferring momentum into a vertical movement, which facilitates the pull and produces a brief sensation of weightlessness, is the aim of producing a solid kip. But for each form of muscle-up, there’s a better approach to transmit momentum than for the other. The goal of the ring muscle up should be to generate a large foot sweep at the peak of the swing and then quickly stop your feet to produce an action akin to a whip.
Ring muscle ups: A good way to visualize this exercise is to kick a soccer ball just in front of the rings, which will cause you to kip for a long time before you transfer your energy sharply and go over the rings.
Ring Muscle Up Progression
To assist you understand how to complete each progression. Let’s go over each stage of the ring muscle up progression now.
Push Ups, Assisted Dips, And Ring Rows
Train your basic pulling as well as pushing strength in the initial ring muscle up progression until you can complete two sets of seven for each activity. Do the ring row, or pull-up with your feet facilitated on the floor to develop your basic pulling strength. Grabbing the rings, stretching the body and legs to a 90-degree angle with the ring strapping, and then pushing to raise the body till the fists touch and glide around the chests is how the ring row is executed. Resistance bands or a suspension trainer can also be used for the ring row exercise.
You must perform push-ups to develop your fundamental pushing strength. Perform three sets of five repetitions for each movement to develop your fundamental pushing and pulling strength. As you get stronger, you should be able to perform four sets of ten reps for every single motion.
Dip Strength & Pull Ups
The next phase is to strengthen the dip muscles and the pulling and pushing strength of a pull-up. We begin by performing both exercises “assisted,” lowering the resistance, then increasing it until we are performing ring dips and pull-ups freely and without assistance.
In order to decrease resistance when training pull-ups. Begin with aided pull-ups using rings or a suspension trainer. In which both feet are held up on a box or the ground during the exercise. When starting off with aided pull-ups, the upper body should be aligned with the arms stretched overhead. The training straps, and the torso should have a bend at the hips. As you get better at performing pull-ups on the rings without help, you should increase the amount of weight.
Begin with aided dips as a way to train dips. Any dips that can accommodate supported feet will do. For the least amount of resistance, you can begin performing aided dips using low parallettes.
As you advance, go to low-level dips using the rings, where your feet are in contact with the floor to provide support and lessen resistance. Once you can do free-hanging, unaided ring dips, keep increasing the height of the rings and decreasing the amount of mass supported by your feet.
For both pull-ups and dips, begin with three sets of five repetitions per action. Aim for seven to ten reps per set. Go back to the prior progression (ring rows or aided dips) and do three to five additional sets with the goal of achieving seven repetitions if you get fewer than three in each set. This additional “smoker” makes sure we work out hard enough to see results.
The Technique & Strength Of False Grip.
Train in the false grip hung, followed by train in the ring rows of false grip pulling, and finally train in the false grip pull-ups.
The next phase is to build up the strength and technique required for ring muscle ups using a fake grip. You will continue to work on your pulling and dipping strength in addition to honing your false grip technique.
To practice the fake grip, just hang from the rings and use your false grip. To lessen resistance, begin with a static hang from the rings while supporting your feet. Aim for three to five sets of 20-second hangs. Work your way up to hanging unsupported for 20 seconds in three to five sets. Lastly, advance to performing pull-ups while holding the fake grip. First with assistance, then without.
Resistance Band Train Transitioning: Ring Pull Up To The Bottom Of The Dip
Use resistance bands to practice the false grip transition from the peak of the pull-up to the bottom of the dip.
The transition from the top of the pull-up to the bottom of the dip, which starts to integrate our motions, is the next thing we need to practice. By practicing the entire movement, we will train this transition. In order to prepare yourself for an easier transition. You will also develop a feel for pulling deeper in the pull-up, trying to bring your hands as low as possible.
Take a seat and secure your resistance band high. As you stretch your arms and direct your upper body toward the resistance band anchor. Bend at the hips but maintain a straight back. After pulling down and towards the sternum with the resistance band in hand. Ideally held with the false grip. Rotate the shoulder forward slightly and move the fist over the lower chest until your position resembles the setup for the bottom of a dip. Finally, exert like you would in a descent. Repeat the motion in reverse.
Supported Ring Muscle Ups
In this step, In order to increase our exercise volume and intensity and accomplish more, we replicate the ring muscle up action with smaller resistance rings. Set up the suspension trainer or rings in the same manner as you would for aided pull-ups. Make sure the rings are low enough so you can dip at the top without losing contact with the ground with your feet. Proceed with the entire muscle-up exercise while keeping your feet planted on the floor.
Bend at the knees and place a greater load on the feet to reduce resistance. To increase resistance, extend your legs at the knees. Shift your center of gravity outward toward the spot on the ground where the suspension trainer or rings are anchored.
Ring Muscle Ups Assisted By Momentum
It’s about time to do a ring muscle up, now that you’ve finished all of the progressions. In order to complete the exercise in this sequence, we’ll leverage our momentum while still keeping proper form. In comparison, the “strict ring muscle up” is executed at a slower, more deliberate, and consistent tempo for the whole exercise. Keep your form correct the entire time you are moving. Refrain from kipping.
For most people, having the pulling strength deep enough into the pull-up range. To get them high into a pull-up for a simple transition is the hardest aspect of the ring muscle up. We will cheat in this phase by pulling quickly and forcefully enough. To propel our bodies through the pull-up to dip transition.
Simply pull hard and quickly enough to move your body up and past the clinging point at the peak of the pull-up. While hanging in a fake grip from the bottom of the muscle up. Tilt your shoulders forward. Draw your fists along the bottom of your chest into a dip until your fist reaches your lower pec. This should happen as the momentum of your body rising upward keeps resistance low.
As you exercise the volume and intensity required to develop the strength for a rigorous muscle up. Use the momentum gained from the initial pull to help you get through your transition clinging places.
Strict Ring Muscle Ups
You are prepared for strict ring muscle ups once you have completed three momentum assisted muscle ups. Your body should maintain a constant, deliberate speed for the whole exercise when performing strict ring muscle ups. You depend on your strength throughout the entire action rather than momentum.
Ring Exercises: Workout Ideas For Using Ring Muscle Ups
Ring training opens up a world of options and introduces entirely new motivation. The difficulty of each of these ring exercises is stated. How to do ring muscle ups for beginners and advanced? Both have been provided below.
Beginner Ring Rows
Classic rowing and rings rows are similar. In this instance, a door anchor is used, for example, to secure the rings between the doors. The level of difficulty may be altered here. The execution is simpler with a more erect physique. The perfect activity for a beginner’s ring exercise.
Beginner Ring Dips With Support
Ring dips are a well appreciated workout. That helps both novice and expert athletes develop powerful triceps and serve as a support exercise for push-ups and dips. As greater weight is placed on the feet, the exercise is easier the higher the hands are raised. Elbows tucked in rather than out is crucial when extending your arms to their maximum length. Weight vests and weight discs applied to the legs are two ways to make this ring exercise more difficult. The rings may be positioned lower as well.
Beginner Ring Push Ups
Of course, push-ups are a necessary part of any full-body ring exercise. The benefit of the rings in this instance is that you may change the height of the rings to suit your preferences. Of course which will affect the level of difficulty. Push-ups are easier the higher the hands or rings are. The elbows bend backward rather than to the side, staying close to the torso. Wearing elbow sleeves while performing this ring exercise might help you stay stable and prevent scratches.
Beginner Biceps Curls
On the gymnastic rings, the Biceps Curls are also a great exercise. The bicep curls get harder the closer you go to the connection point with your feet. In the beginning posture, the body must be tense and the arms must be completely extended. You may also change the height of the rings to change the difficulty of the workout.
Advanced Ring Pull Ups
One of the most crucial bodyweight exercises is the pull-up. Which works well as an addition to a ring workout regimen. These are usually done on a pull-up bar, but gymnastic rings are also an excellent choice to practice. More bodily strain is necessary, in addition to giving more stimulus for the action. Using a dip belt is another way to up the ante.
Advanced Ring Flies
Particularly with the Ring Flies, the chest is under a lot of stress. Thus it’s necessary to have some body tension. Again, putting the rings higher will make the task easier. This complete ring exercise requires the arms to be extended.
Advanced L-Sit
The L-Sit is a ring exercise that is both visually pleasant and beautiful. It works a variety of upper body muscles, including the shoulders, triceps, core, and even the legs. This takes a certain amount of strength and mobility to complete this workout properly. It is among the fundamentals of calisthenics. To propel oneself forward and maintain stability. Your arms should be extended and your shoulder blades should be contracted downward. This ring exercise is considerably harder on the rings than it is on the floor or with parallettes.
Advanced Pike Push Ups
The greatest warm-up for handstand push-ups is the pike push-up, but it requires some attention to detail. The arms remain close to the torso, bent rearward. This movement implies that the head travels far forward and the nose travels more forward. Instead of inappropriately contacting the floor between the hands. We put tension on the portion we will require for the Handstand Push-Up (HSPU) later on as we lean forward. One of the essential exercises for calisthenics.
Ring Muscle Up Benefits
Strength and Coordination
Ring muscles up call for total body strength and coordination, encompassing the hips, lower body, arms, upper body, and core. The technique itself does need a very high degree of upper body power to execute after the chest flips around on the rings. Despite the fact that the hips provide the majority of the effort. You will be able to build strength in your arms as well as your back, triceps, biceps, lats, hips, and core with pulling exercises. Potentially proving to be a ring muscle up benefit.
You’ll need additional power and endurance in your muscles. To be able to give yourself the coordination required to begin, conclude, and resume the exercise again. Once you start stringing rounds consecutively for kipping ring muscle ups rather than simply singles.
Agility of the Shoulders
The shoulder movement in competitive CrossFit training requires not just strength but also a considerable lot of mobility. Much like any gymnastics exercise. Strong RMUs are only one example of how having fluid shoulder joints translates into other sports-specific actions. Like the handstand push-ups and push-jerks.
Gripping Power
It does take some power to hold the Olympic rings firmly in your hands and swing yourself back, forth, and upward. You will be developing a ton of strength in your hands, grip, forearms, biceps, and triceps. Even in progressive exercises that progress to effectively complete ring muscle ups, like ring rows and kipping drills. This is necessary to support your body’s weight. It also enables you to transition from the bottom hung place to the press. And lock out at the top, over the rings.
Become Formidable
Ring muscle ups are going to be crucial for you to practice and get good at. If you want to become a more formidable athlete in CrossFit or functional training contests. Knowing this movement will help you stand out in the field. Since it is routinely incorporated at the elite levels for CrossFit competitions.