The gymnastics rings are the tool for building an impressive upper body. Without touching a single weight, you can build to elite levels of strength and musculature just using your own bodyweight. They are the basis for my entire upper body strength training system, and epitomise what I love most in strength training: simplicity, elegance and brutal efficacy.
That said, to the uninitiated the rings can seem like a complicated beast and it can be almost impossible to know where to start with them. It doesn’t need to be this tricky – despite the beautiful complexity of human shoulder anatomy, upper body strength development is extremely straightforward.
Upper body strength mechanics
People so often miss the mark when foraying into bodyweight training, getting bogged down in static holds, prehab, and a host of irrelevant exercises which lead nowhere fast.
Here’s the deal. To build a muscular, aesthetic, strong upper body, there’s only one thing you must do: get very strong.
This strength is really not as specific as you might assume. If you want to build up to back levers, front levers, one arm chins, handstand pushups, planches, hollow body presses, press handstands, even just the humble muscle up, you do not need to work on all these things and more to get there. You do not need specific exercises aimed at fixing X, Y and Z neuromuscular deficit as advised by Dr Expert in order to achieve your side lever. You just need to add a shit load of strength and muscle mass to your upper body.
So how do we achieve this as quickly and effectively as possible? By pushing to get progressively stronger in the four major planes of motion, and being ready for the time and food and sleep that it’s going to take for your body to build the necessary muscle. Once it has, the strength is all yours. And the beauty of this is, by working solely on four distinct planes of motion, all of those movements listed above (and plenty more) become unlocked. That is elegant.
How to use the rings to build an upper body
The four major planes of motion I refer to simply divide all human upper body movement into its four most basic patterns: horizontal pushing, horizontal pulling, vertical pushing, and vertical pulling.
For each of those movement patterns, we need to set a goal level of ability that is extremely challenging and can be progressively worked towards, such that by the time we get there the body will have been forced to increase its muscularity and strength to a serious level, strength that is then transferrable to all similar movement patterns. We will then have achieved our goal.
What this boils down to is four movements that are all you need to work on* in order to build an elite upper body, capable of all of the skills listed above, on the rings and otherwise. These are:
- The planche (pushup) = horizontal pushing
- The front lever (row) = horizontal pulling
- The handstand pushup = vertical pushing
- The one-arm chinup = vertical pulling
*Note that while the actual level that you choose to achieve to may be arbitrary, these four goals all require similar relative levels of strength (and thus mass) from their associated musculature. This strength, as well as equating to the full set of impressive bodyweight strength movements, represents an exceptional level of relative strength for any human being (“relative” implying both high muscle mass and low “dead weight” body fat). Anything beyond these goals is unnecessary for those other than career specialists – leave that to the elite gymnasts.
Set and Forget
These four movements are now your upper body strength goals. Use the rings, along with the parallettes, floor and bar, to work progressions of these four movements, consistently striving to achieve them in all your upper body strength work.
Serious progress comes from narrowing down a complex outcome into a set of distinct, tangible, high-yeild goals. These four movements are those goals. They are truly the 10% that 90% of your results will come from. Chase them relentlessly, avoid distraction, and all you could hope to gain from upper body strength development will steadily become yours.