Gymnastic rings are a fantastic way to workout, get fit, and build strength. For hundreds of years people have been investing their time, effort, and money into gym rings - so are gymnastic rings worth it? We break it down for you.
Time is the one resource we can’t buy and make more of. It’s limited for everyone, so how you use your time is vitally important to the quality of life you live. You can’t recycle wasted time.
One great aspect of working out with gymnastic rings is that they can actually save you time. Meaning you have more time to do the things that are important to you, such as spending time with family, planning out your food prep, or catching up on sleep.
Working out with your gymnastic rings at home, at your local park or even while on holiday, means there are no wasted hours in the car travelling back and forth to the gym. Your days of planning your life around a class time, or trying to get to the gym at a time that it isn’t too busy, are long gone. You’re now in control of how and when you spend your time.
We all want to be rewarded for our effort. And we also understand that unless we put in the effort, the results won’t show.
It may surprise you to hear that the benefits of consistently training with gymnastic rings, when used correctly, can be superior to machine and free weight exercises. How? Due to the unstable nature of the rings. When you work out with gymnastic rings, every muscle is activated and engaged throughout each exercise to naturally build strength. As a result, not just the muscle, but the entire joint becomes stronger whilst promoting a full range of motion for increased flexibility, and reduced risk of injury. As an added bonus, due to the high intensity nature of many of the exercises, you will burn fat in a more efficient manner.
So if to build muscle, increase your strength, strengthen your joints, become more flexible, lose weight, all with less chance of injury is one (or all) of what you’re looking for, then their worth become abundantly clear.
We all know that gym memberships are not exactly cheap. Once the free trials or special deals have ended, most gyms charge a decent amount for the privilege of wanting to get fit - and they keep on charging. Add to that, the petrol cost of travelling back and forth, it’s starting to add up.
The great thing about gymnastic rings is that they are a one-time purchase, with no more to pay - ever. And the more you use your rings, the cheaper they become on a cost-per workout basis. There is no reason that with the proper care, your gym rings can last for up to 10 years – that’s 120 months!
By comparison to your gym membership, they are 100% worth your money.
In the wide world of fitness, where there’s a different contraption for isolating almost every individual muscle in the body, the idea of two rings hanging in the air, each suspended by a strap, seems rather primitive. However, with all of the fancy pieces of fitness machinery that exist today, if I had to select just one piece of training equipment to use for the rest of my life, it would easily be a set of gymnastic rings.
As simple as they may be, gymnastic rings are (in my view) the most versatile, convenient, and effective piece of equipment for strength training, and they should be an essential part of every strength athlete’s inventory. Everyone from elite gymnasts to competitive powerlifters to people who just want to keep fit can benefit from adding bodyweight exercises using gymnastic rings into their training routine.
These are just a few reasons why gymnastic rings are the ideal strength training apparatus:
Gymnastic rings are perhaps the most portable and convenient piece of strength training equipment you can own. All you need is something to hang them from—a bar, a tree, a railing, a basketball hoop—and you’ve got yourself a gym (with no fees and no lines to wait in!). With rings, you can train anywhere: at the park, at the beach, on vacation, or just in the comfort of your own home. I carry my rings around with me wherever I go; after all, a training session is always imminent!
If you’ve ever tried to support your weight or perform movements on a pair of gymnastic rings, you know that it’s no walk in the park. Unlike a bar, which is fixed in place, gymnastic rings are suspended in space, free to swing and move around. This forces you to stabilize your body when performing movements and engage multiple muscles that must work together. The result is an extremely taxing, functional, and effective strength and stability-building workout for your entire upper body and core.
And if strength building isn’t enough, rings are also extremely effective for improving mobility in the upper body. Many movements on the rings (for example, muscle ups and skin-the-cat’s) not only push your body’s range of motion, but also strengthen the muscles in that increased range, resulting in tremendous improvements in mobility. If your goal is to become both strong and mobile, there’s no better training apparatus than a pair of gymnastic rings.
What other piece of equipment builds incredible pushing, pulling, and core strength all in one? The versatility of rings is one of its greatest assets; there are dozens of exercises that can be performed using them. You’ve got your classic pull-ups, push ups, and dips, then you’ve got more advanced movements like muscle ups, shoulder stands, and forward rolls, then even more advanced movements like handstand push ups and front/back levers, then superhuman gymnastic movements like the Iron Cross, Maltese, and Victorian.
Any exercise on the rings can be scaled to suit your level of strength and skill, so no matter what level you’re at, you can hop on a pair of rings and make huge strength gains.
Because performing exercises on gymnastic rings is so physically taxing and engages multiple muscles at once, they allow for an absolutely killer workout in minimal time. No need to spend time isolating each muscle; a few sets on the rings will make sure you’ve hit everything—and hit it hard. So if you’re pressed for time and still want to get in a strength training session that will leave your upper body on fire and your arms feeling like jello, hit the rings!
Of all the benefits rings have to offer, my personal favorite is the creativity that they allow me to use in my training. I do occasionally follow the sets-and-reps method, but my favorite way to train is to create long supersets that flow from one skill to another, challenging both my strength and my artistry. Besides the gains in strength, stability, and coordination, the aspect of creativity that comes along with rings training is something I find to be incredibly rewarding.