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✨If you want to master ring dips, you need to directly train the exercise. There are no other shortcuts for it.
So your workout will include mobility exercises (📍7 Must-know Mobility drills) and the suitable ring dip progression (📍Best Ring dip progressions) for your current skill level.
But training with a limited set of exercises will not provide enough volume to optimize your muscular and strength potential.😢
So what can we do about it?🤔
👊We’ll add other exercises to supplement your ring dips training. In this article, we’re going to share with you a powerful chest-building routine that you can add after training your ring dip progression so you can master ring dips much faster!
🔎Why rings are perfect for building strong chest muscles?
If you have been working on your ring dips, you should know by now the growth potential gymnastics rings can offer.
The stabilization required to even just do a support hold makes everything that you do on the stable surfaces a lot harder. The difficulty increases by a huge margin that even if you have mastered dips on a stable surface, ring dips will feel like you added a ton of weight to the exercise (expect a lot of shaking when first trying the support hold).
☝️Rings increase the motor unit recruitment and will activate more muscle fibers because it demands joint stabilization. Creating a higher level of stability will help you create greater gains in the strength and power phases of the movement.
There are unlimited pathways for the rings to go in, we’re not moving in just one plane. So we have a vast potential for growth to work with.
🔎How will rings help to build stronger chest muscles?
✊Fighting instability for muscle recruitment
Everything that you normally do on a stable surface is now going to be A LOT HARDER on the rings. It will challenge your muscles in new ways, and there will be an increase in muscle recruitment and activation when performing even the simplest of movements.
✊Balanced development
Even if you’re working with non-unilateral exercises such as the ring dips, your arms will have to work independently from one another. The rings will be moving independently so you have to force stability on the rings for each arm. If you don’t, good luck even just finishing a single rep with decent form.
You’ll be less likely to favor one side compared to working on stable surfaces. This means that you’ll minimize muscle imbalances and gain equal strength for both sides of your body.
✊Strength transfer
Being stronger on rings will improve your upper body strength pretty much everywhere else. You’ll notice how things like bench press, dips, push-ups on parallel bars will become noticeably easier.
For that reason, you’ll be working on the more basic pushing exercises to supplement your ring dip journey.
✊Scalability
What’s also great with rings is that you can easily scale the difficulty of some exercises by adjusting the height of the straps. You can work with normal push-up height or also the rings higher to simulate an incline push-up. Although the exercises will be easier, expect it to be much more difficult compared to a stable surface.
📌Adjust the ring height according to your skill level so you can meet the volume requirement for the workout below.
About this workout
Workout structure
2 x per week
Rest after each round: 1 to 3 minutes
Rest between exercises : 0 to 20 seconds
This workout is structured into a circuit of 6 exercises to knock out then repeat it 2 more times. You can rest briefly after each exercise but the maximum should be 20 seconds. Only after a round of the circuit, you can rest for 1 to 3 minutes.
This workout is done two times per week. Don’t forget to balance your training with another set of 2 pulling days to get the best and balanced results from your training.
⚡️Why these particular exercises?
As mentioned earlier, we need to add volume to the primary muscles involved when doing ring dips. These are also some of the all-time favorites pushing exercises because of the general transferability of gains to many other movement patterns. You’ll feel the chest, shoulders, and arms burning from this workout. It will stress different parts of your pecs, and will also improve your core which is required for better stability on the rings.
⚡️What results will I be able to see after the workout?
The immediate results will be that you’ll have a hard time lifting a bar of soap in the shower due to fatigue. This is a good thing. Your body is responding to the high demand for the workout. Your muscles are stretched and held in various planes on the rings. It will increase your bent and straight-arm strength.
Over a course of 4 weeks, expect larger chest, tricep, and shoulder muscles which will prepare you for better ring dips
Ring dip supplement workout
Ring supinated push-ups
Target reps: 12
The first movement on the list is based on the regular push-ups but with hands with a supinated grip at the top position. The change of grip is the key to more chest activation. It promotes the squeeze motion at the top position which requires additional stability from your chest making the exercise perfect for developing the pecs.
Aside from the ring height, you can also perform the exercise on your knees for decreased level of difficulty. But it’s more preferred to do the inclined variation as the movement pattern and muscle activation (lower body) is much closer to the full ring push-ups.
You can also increase the difficulty of the exercise by moving to full supination even at the lowering phase.
🎯How to perform:
- Set the height of rings appropriate for your skill level with rings shoulder-width apart.
- Position your hands on the rings in a false grip position: meaning grip the rings with your inner knuckles wrapping around the rings.
- Align body in a straight line. Legs straight, feet together.
- Turn out the rings outward at the top position.
- As you lower down, turn it into a neutral position.
- Lower until the chest is leveled or lower than the rings.
- Push back up to starting position until rings turn out.
- Repeat for reps.
☑️Coaching pointers:
- Straight lockout arms at the top position after each rep
- Straight bodyline
- Depressed shoulders
- Retracted scapula at the bottom; protracted at the top
- Adjust to the skill level
- Elbows tucked close to your body
- Ring turnout at the top
Archer push-ups
Target reps: 12
Like other calisthenics fundamentals, unilateral work is a major asset to optimize muscle growth and fix and muscular imbalance. Our focus is to create more muscle damage for each side so that your muscles can grow bigger and stronger.
You can’t cheat your weaknesses here. If your non-dominant arm is too weak, it will show. The good thing is that you can easily scale the exercise by adjusting the right height again.
🎯How to perform:
- Set the height of rings appropriate for your skill level with rings shoulder-width apart.
- Position your hands on the rings in a false grip position: meaning grip the rings with your inner knuckles wrapping around the rings.
- Align body in a straight line. Legs straight, feet together.
- Turn out the rings outward at the top position.
- Lower down to one side of the on one arm and push the supporting arm outward while keeping it straight the whole time.
- Lower until chest is ring height.
- Push back up to start position.
- Do the same motion for the other arm.
- Repeat for reps.
☑️Coaching pointers:
- Straight lockout arms at the top position after each rep
- Straight bodyline
- Depressed shoulders
- Retracted scapula at the bottom; protracted at the top
- Adjust to the skill level
- Ring turnout at the top
- Assisting arm straight
- Working arm tucked close to the body
Wide arm push-ups
Target reps: 12
Let’s further isolate the chest muscles to add more volume to our training. The wider stance emphasizes your chest and since we’re doing it on the rings, you can go deeper to stretch out the chest. The instability of the rings allows added difficulty while keeping your shoulder safe if ever you have any shoulder limitations. The rings can move to where you feel more comfortable.
With form, just follow the standard push-up form but go wider as you lower down. Make sure your elbows move within the scapular plane. That means keeping them behind your shoulders and not flaring outwards too much.
🎯How to perform:
- Set the ring height according to your skill level.
- Go into a push-up position with a ring turn-out at the top.
- As you lower down, move your hands outwards while turning your hands inward so that the back of your hand is facing forward.
- Lower to 90 degrees.
- Push back up to starting position.
- Repeat for reps.
☑️Coaching pointers:
- Straight lockout arms at the top position after each rep
- Straight bodyline
- Depressed shoulders
- Retracted scapula at the bottom; protracted at the top
- Adjust to the skill level
- Ring turnout at the top
- Scapula moves within the scapular plane
Rings “ab roller”
Target reps: 12
The chest, shoulders, and triceps play a major role in ring push work, but core strength is also needed for much stability and to keep global body tension.
For that reason, ab rollers are one of the best core exercises you can do on the rings. It’s quite similar to the ab rollouts but done on rings so there’s an added stability factor making the exercises much harder.
The goal of the exercises is to resist movement and resist the extension of your body by bracing your core. As a result, you get a stronger core which translates to stronger stability when doing the dips or any other exercises on the rings.
Another key point why ring rollers are great is because the rings are free to move so it’s much friendlier on the joints. You can also adjust the width according to your preference; ideally shoulder-width apart but it depends on what works for you.
Maintaining the straight arm lockout allows the tension on your core. Tilt your hips forward to go into a posterior pelvic tilt to focus ab activation.
You can also adjust your difficulty by adjusting the height of rings or you can move to your knees or with feet elevated.
🎯How to perform:
- Go into a push-up position on the rings with ring height already adjusted to your skill level.
- Move your hands forward while keeping them straight until your hands your arms are overhead.
- Reverse the motion and repeat for reps.
☑️Coaching pointers:
- Hollow body position
- Posterior pelvic tilt
- Arms locked out straight
- Do not let the lower back arch
- Adjust to your skill level
Crescents
Target reps: 12
Crescent flyes are an advanced fly variation that hits the chest in multiple planes because you’re not only opening your arms to the sideward, you will also move it around making a “crescent” shape with the rings firing your chest muscles to scream for stability. It’s basically an ab ring rollout plus chest flyes in one motion.
Be sure to control the full movement of the flye to avoid any injury. As a safety precaution, it’s best to start with a lighter load by doing it on the knees or doing it on an incline.
🎯How to perform:
- Begin in a push-up position on the rings.
- Move your hands upward until your arms are overhead.
- Move your arms sidewards while keeping your arms straight simulating into a crescent shape into a lower flye position.
- From here, pull your hands together into a push-up support hold.
- Reverse the motion then repeat for reps.
☑️Coaching pointers:
- Maintain elbows straight
- Posterior pelvic tilt
- Depressed shoulders
- Hollow body position
- Squeeze elbows together when pushing back to the top position
- When arms are out to the side, keep them lower around 90 degrees
Support hold forward lean
Target hold: 12 seconds
Now we have already placed emphasis on the core, triceps, and chest, it’s now to develop your anterior deltoids which is a primary mover when doing ring dips. The forward lean from the support hold puts the should on the shoulders while adding tension to your straight arms.
🎯How to perform:
- Begin in a push-up position on the rings.
- Turn your hands outwards until your palms are facing forward while keeping your arms straight.
- Lean forward while keeping the body position. The loading should be felt on your anterior deltoids and biceps.
- Hold the position for a specified time.
☑️Coaching pointers:
- Turn out position
- Maintain locked out elbows
- Lean forward according to your skill level
- Straight bodyline
- Depressed and protracted shoulders
To Summarize:
👍Training ring dips is of course the priority. You can do 3 sets of 8 rep ring dip progression that suit your skill level. After that, you can supplement your ring dip journey with this upper body chest-building routine.
You can even do the workout as a general push-development exercise to partner with a pull routine.
This workout is quite intense,🔥 so if you’re planning to implement this into your routine, be sure that you already have complete mastery of the calisthenics fundamentals.
If you’re unsure of how solid is your calisthenics fundamentals are, check out the assessment below👇👇 so you can set a proper starting point in your calisthenics journey.
The only way you can move forward is that you know exactly where you will begin.💪