Ring Push-up

 Main muscle worked: Chest

 Other muscles worked: Abdominals, Shoulders

 Equipment: Rings

 Mechanics Type: Compound

 Exercise Instructions: Basic Ring Push-up

1. Adjust the height of the rings relevant to your fitness level (the lower the rings the more difficult the exercise).
2. Grip the rings, keep your body straight and your legs fully extended behind you.
3. Slowly lower yourself down towards the floor.
4. Pause at the bottom of the exercise then push yourself back up to the starting position. Do not lock out your elbows to maintain tension throughout the muscles during the exercise.
5. Repeat.

 Exercise Information: Basic Ring Push-up

The push-up is a staple body weight exercise that almost everyone is familiar with. Adding gymnastic rings into the mix suspends your hands above ground and the independent movement of the rings makes the exercise much more difficult to control. As a result you recruit many more stabiliser muscles and maximise the benefits from the exercise.

Ring push-ups are a great way to develop the chest and shoulder muscles, and altering the variable height of the rings allow you to control the difficulty of the exericse.

 Exercise variations:

There are many variations on the ring push-up that we summarise below. Remember that as well as these variations you can try altering the height of the rings and experimenting with hand and foot positions to meet your needs.

Wide grip ring push-up

The wide grip push-up is the same as the basic push-up except the hands are positioned further apart so they go out past your shoulders. This is one of the more difficult basic push-up exercises and focuses upon the outer muscles of the chest, rear deltoids and back.

Ring triceps push-up

Similar to the basic push-up except it focuses on the triceps muscles rather than chest.

Grip the rings as you would a normal push-up but as you lower your body down you keep the hands close together slightly in front of the head, rather than under the chest. Lower your body down as per the standard push-up but make sure to keep the elbows in so all the tension is focused on the tricep muscle.

Ring jack-knife push-up

The jack-knife push-up is one of our favourite variations and emphasises shoulder development with a great hit to the abdominals.

You begin in the basic pushup position and slide the rings straight forward as far as possible without bending the arms, your body stretching forwards. Maintain the hold then pull-back to the starting position.

Single Leg Pushups

Lift one leg from the floor and keep it elevated throghout the exercise. Switch legs after one set is complete.

This will further unstable the body and place emphasis on core development.

Pseudo-Planche Pushups

Like the standard pushup, but you grip the rings near your hips and turn the rings out so that you are now in a reverse grip position. The Psuedo-Planche Pushup is substantially more difficult than a regular pushup.

 Beginners

Start with the basic push-up and work from there introducing variations as you progress.

If you are struggling keep the rings set quite high and lower them as you become stronger.

 Experts

Try composing a push-up routine with a target number of repetitions and sets and add a few push-up variations into the mix. Your chest will thank you for it.

Continue to lower the rings to increase the difficulty of the exercise and increasing the height of the feet transfers more bodyweight onto the hands to increase the effectiveness of the exercise.