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Prompted by this post
I love that video.

How do you even start being strong enough to train with gym rings like that?
I've tried and quickly stopped, as my shoulders felt like they were going to explode.

What are the 'intro' exercises for gym rings?

[a dense loner]

They are the intro exercises for gym rings. To make things easier either do stuff on your knees, building up that way or move the rings higher. Ie do flyes on knees or keep feet on floor n lift rings higher

[Muenchener]

Here's a gymnastics website with some "basic" exercises (some of which actually are basic enough for climbers not just for gymnasts):

www.drillsandskills.com Got Rings?

I did some of these things when my rings were in service (don't have anywhere to hang them in my current apartment  ), and I actually found them quite good for sorting my shoulders out wrt. strength & staiblity. Two things I found valuable were:

• always make sure to do equal amounts of pushes & pulls - pull-ups & dips, row & press-ups etc. Dips, going deeper than you can on bars - armpits to thumbs - are great
• the "skin the cat" exercise described in the link is great for building confidence that your shoulder can in fact handle extreme ranges of motion under load without exploding

[Muenchener]

Just saw this linked from the Significant Repeats thread about Alex Megos:

Alex ... is an advocate of using gym rings to build core strength and to train the antagonist muscles.

[Paul B]

funny, I'd attribute rings to helping my shoulders out massively about 5 years ago when I didn't really have shoulders (as Dense can attest) and I started getting scared of just how unstable they were at times. Opposing this; Monkeyboy and I (think?) were regularly doing rings and he went on to dislocate his shoulder not long after.

We (or I should say I) went as far as building a 'Dream Machine' for assisted work (primarily as I couldn't actually do one muscle-up at the time):



N.B. - this is HEAVILY assisted and when you drop off the weight shoots up, gravity takes over and you get a 'tug' from the harness which isn't nice. The big weight hanging in the background seems invisible to a few youtube viewers, much to my amusement.

There used to be an old ringtraining.com program (and lots of videos) that Dobbin (perhaps the wondermule still has it written down, I don't) first pointed me at and which was subsequently amended slightly (at first for ease but later on for specificity). I think the site owner took the free plans down when he started monetizing it all.

Start on your knees and get somebody there to check your form or else you'll be sagging somewhere I can guarantee it.

[Krank]

if you want to know about rings go here http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/

i would guess that anyone who injures shoulders/elbows ect. is because they didnt do enough joint preperation and conditioning and nothing to do with the rings themselves.

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Cheers for the replies/links/info everyone.

[a dense loner]

I know what muench is trying to say and most sensible people say about doing the same amount of pushes as pulls etc, however what we have to remember is we climb as well. To me this means I have done 2hours primarily using my back and shoulders, predominantly on overhanging stuff, so when I do alternate forms of exercise I want to go nowhere near a back or shoulder exercise or if I do I do a lot less than pushing stuff ie chest. If you do the same amount of pushes and pulls you're pretty much going to be massively overtraining since your back is a big muscle, well mine is anyway

[blot]

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[blot]

I'll be the fucking monster on the rings

[spinmaster]

Get some slings, much more flexible than rings. Can do lots more exercises and change the load by varying the lean or height of slings. Work well for me. Made my weak left shoulder loads stronger.

Check out Magnus on them below