If you work out from home, then one of the most incredibly powerful pieces of kit you can buy is gymnastic rings.

Gymnastic rings are rings attached to straps that can hang from your pull up bar. From there, they then enable you to perform dips, inverted push-ups, bodyweight rows and much more.

They do everything that TRX does in other words – and more seeing as TRX isn’t good for dips – but they cost a fraction of the amount. You can get them on Amazon for $20-40! Plus they’re easy to pack away when not in use and can be taken with you on holiday or anywhere else.

Take a look at some of the things you can do with gymnastic rings for inspiration and to demonstrate just how powerful and versatile they are.

Dips

One of the most obvious things you can do with rings is the dip. A dip simply involves gripping one ring in either hand and then gradually lowering yourself in the middle. This is an excellent way to train the pecs, shoulders, and triceps and it also requires a lot of balance and stability.

What’s interesting about dips is that you actually can’t do them as well on TRX – despite it costing a lot more!

Flyes

You might not have expected this but you can actually perform flyes using gymnastic rings. All you need to do is to lean forward holding one in each hand with your arms apart in a cross position. Now bring them together in the middle to push your body-weight back up. This is an excellent way to train your pecs and your grip at the same time.

Pull Ups

Using rings to perform pull-ups is quite a lot different from not using rings. That’s because this has your hands facing inward which makes it a neutral grip pull up instead of a regular pull up. As a result, you’ll hit the lats at a different angle, while the wobbly nature of the rings will force you to engage your stabilizer muscles to keep the rings steady and prevent your body from rolling.

Inverted Push Ups

Inverted push-ups are surprisingly not a form of push up… but rather another form of pull up! The reason they have this name is that they are effectively push ups turned upside down. Here, you’ll hold onto the rings which are dangling a bit lower and then perform pull-ups for your upper body only, with your heels resting on the floor. This allows you to lift a smaller amount of weight during pull-ups, which thereby trains your lats but also allows you to use this as part of a drop set. In other words, perform as many regular pull-ups as you can, then switch to this to carry on.

Lunge

Performing a lunge with one leg looped into a gymnastic ring is a great way to make it a lot more difficult. This requires more balance again and stimulates the production of more growth hormones as a result.