Beginner Rings Exercise Tutorial 1: Rings Support Hold

DESCRIPTION

One of the most fundamental position/exercise to practice, the Support Hold forms the foundation of numerous other exercises like Dips or L-Sits. Thus it is crucial to practice this often, and especially so when beginning to play on the rings!

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Start by setting the rings at waist height (Don’t follow the video 😅)
2. Grip the rings firmly with your hands beside your waist, palms facing in
3. Press your weight downwards into the rings, lifting your body off the ground
4. Try your best to keep your arms locked straight as you will need them locked for future progressions and this strengthens the connective tissues in your joints as well, as opposed to just your muscles when you keep bent arms
5. When comfortable, try turning your palms outwards. This forms a stronger support as your shoulder blade gets externally rotated and compacted
6. Maintain a hollow body position by engaging your core and tilting your pelvis posteriorly (squeeze your butt!)
7. Straighten your legs out by pointing your toes and engaging your thigh muscles (quadriceps)

REGRESSIONS

1. Lower the rings below waist height and keep feet on the ground to take off some body weight (bend or straighten legs at an angle)

2. Start on a more stable implement like parallel bars or a simple home setup of two chairs of the same height .

💪🏻MASTERY💪🏻

5x60s hold without breaking form!

TRAINING

Use this exercise as a warm-up for your training or train for it specifically in 3-5 sets of: 12/24/36/48/60s

Increase the sets before increasing the volume!
Example:
1. 3x12s
2. 5x12s
3. 3x24s
4. 4x24s
5. 4×36 s
6. 5×36 s
7. 4×48 s
8. 4x60s
9. 5x60s

PROGRESSION

1. Once confident, you can start playing around with the angle of your arms relative to your torso like in the last part of this video where I increase the angle for reps.

2. You can add a dynamic element to your Support Hold by swinging yourself before you get up into the hold (you will be swinging back and forth while trying to maintain strict form)

3. You can start adding moves & exercises that build on the Support Hold like L-Sits and Dips.

Stay tuned for more Rings goodness!

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