How Clients Lisa and Tim performed Their First Ring Dips
Having gyms closed for a good few months forced me to be creative with my training and that of my clients. A silver lining to gym closures was that it forced me to use gymnastics rings in all my client's programming. All of them had a desire to get stronger and were up for a new challenge.
Both Tim and Lisa (seen on the videos below) wanted to improve their overall strength, and the gymnastics rings have dramatically improved their upper body and core strength.
In four weeks, both Lisa and Tim were able to go from a stable position hold on the rings to performing multiple reps of dips. Here is how we did it.
Support holds. Every workout would include both Lisa and Tim performing top position support holds for up to 20 seconds. This simple hold is made very challenging by the instability of the rings.
Ring Push-Ups. Both programs included a progression of the ring push-ups. This exercise uses the same muscles as the ring dips, only with the benefit of your feet being on the ground for stability. These started as just the negative part of the push-up. So stabilising at the top and lowering down to the bottom position and holding at the bottom. They would then walk through instead of pushing back up to the top.
Rind Dip negatives. Both Lisa and Tim would get themselves into the top hold position and lower themselves slowly to the bottom of the dip position. They would then hold in that fully stretched position for a few seconds. We did this for four weeks, slowly increasing the number of reps each workout.
Single Reps. Once they had both increased their strength enough to perform 6-7 single negative reps, we started to include single full reps. The key is performing the reps with maximum time under tension and proper form.
3 full reps. After four weeks of increasing our number of single reps, both Lisa and Tim had a crack at performing multiple reps, and both nailed them as you can see in the videos.
Well done, Lisa and Tim. Consistency was the key for both of you, and I enjoy watching your progress each week.