Ring Training for Elite Fitness

Legal Copyright © 2009 Power Athletes, LLC, All Rights Reserved

Don't Steal this Book This book is written for customers who have purchased the EXF Rings from Ringtraining.com or an authorized dealer. It is not for re-sale, distribution, inclusion with any other product, duplication or public sharing of any kind. One printed copy for personal use is permitted. We worked hard on this book and care about our customers. Please let us know if you received this book from an unauthorized source. E-mail us at [email protected]. We will give them a friendly warning. If that does not work, we will unleash our lawyers on them. Seriously. We have lawyers. Mean ones. If you want to end up homeless and begging for spare change, then please steal this book. Pirate our work and see what happens. But don't say we didn't warn you. We just did.

We Are Not Your Mom or Your Doctor or Your Trainer This book is written for informational purposes only. Reading is not a substitute for hands-on learning from a qualified, professional trainer. You can see this book, but it can't see you. You are responsible for your own safety. Don't perform any exercises if you consider them unsafe for your skill level or for your health and fitness level. If you have any health concerns, be sure to seek the advice of a medical professional before starting any fitness program. Do not use the rings for any other purpose than fitness training. They are not a toy and can lead to serious injury if mis-used. As much as we like watching stupid people do stupid things on YouTube, we do not want to see our rings in those videos. If you do not agree to take full responsibility to train safely with your EXF Rings, then please put them back in the box and return them to us. Power Athletes, LLC and Tyler Hass are not liable for any injuries, mental distress, bruised egos or excessive soreness caused as a result of this book or any equipment mentioned. Thank you. We hope you enjoy your ring training!

Table of Contents Setup Introduction Basic Exercises Support Ring Pushup Ring Row Dip Pullup L-Sit L-Pullup

Scaling Fulcrum Principle Torque Principle Body Angle

The Muscle-Up the False Grip Center Your Bodyweight Keep Your Friends Close and the Rings Closer the Shoulder Roll Suck Your Chest In and Up Slow and Steady Corkscrew Your Hands

Muscle-Up Progression Exercises Support Holds Dips and Tactical Dips False Grip Rows False Grip Pullups Pullups Reverse Muscle-Up Rowing Muscle-Up Jumping Muscle-Up Kipping Muscle-Up Substitutions for the Muscle-Up

Flexibility Training

Skinning the Cat Stick Stretch Wall Stretch Reverse Wrist Stretch

Training the 3 to 5 Rule Density Training Brice Strength Program the EXF Pullup Program Programming Unstructured Training Ten Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Rings Conclusion

Setup The EXF Rings have a brand new mounting system. It is the most flexible and effective system for hanging rings that has ever been designed. However, it can be confusing at first, since it is different from what you might have seen in the past. But after a few minutes, you'll be ready to go. After that, you will find the new system to be a huge time-saver! You can also watch a video of the setup process if you visit: www.ringtraining.com/setup

First Time Setup When you first unbox your rings, there's just a few steps you need to take before you start training. This is a one-time deal, so don't worry. It just takes a minute and for the rest of eternity, you will be saving a minute or two (compared to ordinary rings) every time you set up your rings!

1. Attach S-Buckle to the loop at the end of the strap. Slide loop to center bar of S-Buckle.

2. Feed webbing through slots with printed side down.

3. Pass webbing through ring. Make sure the strap is not twisted.

4. Depress lever in cam buckle and feed webbing through the window in the back of the buckle. Incorrectly feeding the webbing can break the buckle and damage is NOT covered by warranty. Observe the “FEED WEBBING” arrow on theside of the buckle. The rings are now ready to be mounted.

EXF Mode EXF Mode is the normal setup mode most people will use for the EXF Rings. It allows you to set them up very quickly and double the length of the webbing for a full 17 foot range. However, to take them down, you must be able to reach them, so you might need a ladder. If this is a problem, use Legacy Mode. 1. Place S-Buckle over mounting surface.

2. Place webbing inside S-Buckle and pull tight. Ensure there are no twists.

Legacy Mode This is the same as what you will find on all previous generation rings. It is slower and you only have half the length of the webbing to work with (8.5 foot range), but you can set up the rings on an overhead surface that is out of reach, without needing a ladder.

1. Slide the S-Buckle towards the cam buckle by pulling the webbing through the slots. You can remove the S-Buckle now or attach it to the adjacent webbing. 2. Depress the lever on the cam buckle and pull the excess webbing through, fully removing the strap from the cam buckle. 3. Throw strap over mounting surface. 4. Feed webbing back through the cam buckle, making sure it is fed in through the window in the back of the buckle, as directed by the "FEED Webbing" diagram.

Additional Tips: Always protect the straps with a towel or something soft when placing the straps over an abrasive surface, such as wood. Keep your training area clear of anything or anyone that could distract or get in the way of a person performing exercises on the rings. Do not perform any dismounts or swinging moves on the EXF Rings. They are not intended for competitive gymnastics. These movements require proper instruction

and landing mats. Handstand training is great on the rings, but extremely challenging. Be sure to have padding beneath you and a spotter ready to assist you. When mounting the rings, always test each ring with your full bodyweight to make sure it is securely mounted. For more advice and examples of actual installations done by real customers, check out this thread on our discussion board: http://www.powerathletesmag.com/wforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1231

Introduction What is Ring Training? Gymnastics rings are legendary for producing unparalleled levels of upper body and core strength. This apparatus has been around for hundreds of years and has always been respected and even feared for the incredible amount of strength required to train on them. They have also exposed countless meatheads to the fact that lat pulldowns and tricep kickbacks don't develop nearly as much strength as they think. Several years ago, I set up a pair of rings at the Arnold Fitness Expo. This is the world's largest fitness industry exhibition. With over 80,000 attendees, only 10 people were courageous enough to get on the rings. Eight of them were kids. Children see a fun toy when they look at rings. Adults see a potentially ebarrassing way to kill themselves. That's what I've set out to change. The benefits of ring training are so profound, that people of all ages should, and must, train with them if they hope to maximize their physical potential. And let's not forget women. The rings are a men's only event in gymnastics, but the benefits are the same. Women sometimes do better on rings than weights, because it levels the playing field a bit. A 200 lbs guy with a 300 lbs bench is as intimidated by rings as a 115 lbs woman is by a 300 lbs barbell. Being big is a strength advantage when you're lying down. But when you have to carry your own engine, the tables are turned. In most real life situations, you have to carry your engine, so this is the way we should train. If you read books from the old school days of physical culture and WWII-era military fitness manuals, you will see that most men exercised while wearing a leopard skin speedo or maybe just a fig leaf. You will also notice they all did some ring training, hand balancing, Olympic lifts and other feats of strength. But then the self-esteem movement kicked in and ring training was removed from PE classes. For the past several decades, this style of hard, functional training fell out of style. Thanks to Nautilus machines, strength training became a seated activity. In recent years, small pockets of rebels were able to connect with each other online and

revive the lost art of strength training. Now, ring training and other brutally effective methods of training are coming back into the mainstream. And people are training for strength while standing up! Gymnasts are widely respected for having one of the highest strength to bodyweight ratios of any athlete and the most flexibility. The rings are the event best known for developing this unbelievable level of strength. In competition, they perform a routine consisting of several strength, swing and combination moves performed in a smooth sequence. It ends with a dismount and hopefully a stuck landing. Over the years, the routines have become so ridiculously hard that the average person can't even comprehend the difficulty. The muscle-up, which is one of the best ring exercises out there and challenges almost everyone, is no longer counted as a skill. It's been demoted out of the code of points! Even the iron cross, which is the most famous ring move, is only worth a B (and A is the easiest). Professional gymnastics is not what "Ring Training for Elite Fitness" is all about. Unless you want to be surgically altered to become 5'4 and 140 lbs, then your chances of Olympic glory are slim. And dismounts and swinging elements are too dangerous without safety mats and qualified coaching. But don't worry, the bigger you are, the more challenging the basics will be. So, you won't ever need to get into that crazy stuff to get a good workout. And you can train at home, without requiring safety mats, spotters, coaches, etc. The real point of ring training is to make world class fitness accessible to everyone. The origin of gymnastics was preparation for war. The pommel horse originally looked like an actual horse and was used to train mounted infantry. As a system of exercise, nothing else beats gymnastics for teaching body awareness and movement. Gymnasts develop a "movement vocabulary" larger than athletes in any other sport. Because of this they are able to learn new sports and new movements faster than other athletes. You can't turn a gymnast into a linebacker, but you can bet a gymnast could learn how to surf, ride a skateboard, learn a martial art or pick up an unfamiliar sport quicker than a linebacker. Tumbling was originally used to teach soldiers how to fall without getting hurt and developing the agility to get back up quickly and without losing spatial awareness. Unfortunately, the military discontinued this type of training. At a gymnastics seminar a few years ago, two members of a military unit left the room after just 10 minutes of cartwheels and basic rolls. They went to the bathroom to vomit and subsequently disappeared. To be completely devastated and disoriented by a few minutes of rolling around exposes a deficit that could become a potential liability in combat. A small amount of gymnastics practice would correct this.

The sport of gymnastics has evolved to the point that it is so extreme that it is irrelevant the average person. A double-twisting double back flip is truly incredible to watch, but don't try that at home! For the average person, learning some basic ring skills and a little bit of tumbling will enhance your athleticism and quality of movement. It's fun, safe and does not require tons of equipment. Ringtraining.com is famous for bringing gymnastics "into the wild". It's been stuck in private gymnastics gyms for too long. As an outsider, I had long admired the strength and quality of movement demonstrated by gymnasts. My interest was to get an edge in my training for tennis. I already lifted kettlebells, was learning the Olympic Lifts and ran sprints. After seeing the gymnastics world championships on TV and the incredible strength and athleticism on display, I wanted to get some of that. So, I designed the Power Rings (that's the name of our original model). They were a little rough around the edges, but nearly everyone who tried them said they were the best piece of fitness equipment they had ever used. As a tennis player, I found they improved my strength in a way that I could feel while I played. Over the years, I have received numerous thank you letters from people for fixing bad shoulders, improving athletic performance or just for adding more fun to their workouts. Ring training is unique because it allows you to train movements in a "frictionless plane". Greg Glassman, founder of CrossFit, and I came up with this term while discussing rings several years ago. What this means is that the rings are free to move in any direction with only the slightest force causing movement. Any weakness or misfire in your brain manifests itself as shaking of the rings. I actually like to put a beginner on the rings and then attach a cocktail shaker. This is a great way to make martinis if you like them shaken, not stirred. Over time, as you get stronger and more comfortable on the rings, the shaking will start to go away. This is a real strength gain, because your central nervous system now has an improved signal to noise ratio. The small misfires in your brain are gone now, so you are exerting pure strength. This is when the real fun begins, which is mobility in the frictionless plane. Because the rings are mobile, you can unlock a huge variety of movement patterns that aren't possible with static equipment. The rings are free to twist, move side to side, front to back and your body can move up and down. A huge variety of movements are possible. And the main innovation that we created several years ago, in order to bring the rings into the wild, was portability and adjustable height. This allows for tons of new stuff and makes them accessible for beginners. Our new design took ring training out of gymnastics clubs and into garages, gyms, parks and battle fields.

The application of gymnastics rings to fitness has been primarily to enhance traditional calisthenics, or bodyweight exercises. By performing these exercises in a frictionless plane, you are now able to increase the challenge and try new variations. The four basic exercises are the pushup, ring row, dip and pullup. These four train the shoulder joint in every direction, although I recommend adding a vertical press, such as the military press or handstand pushup on the floor. The handstand pushup on rings is too hard for most people. These four are also very basic, functional movements that actually resemble real world physical tasks. The Elite Rings are also great for preventing injuries and correcting muscle imbalances. Because they are free to move in any direction, the rings will always move towards where you are weakest. As a result, you are automatically strengthening your weaknesses. The greater muscle recruitment also means that your joints will be more protected. Lastly, the mobility of the rings allows you to move through the most comfortable, natural range of motion for your body type. People who experience pops and clicks in their joints with standard equipment often find greater comfort on rings. As ring training gets more advanced, the movements become more obscure, but you can still see how they are derived from these basic movements. The athletes you see competing at the Olympics weren't born that way (okay, maybe short). They all started with the basics and gradually embarked on a series of progressions towards world class levels of strength. If you have ever seen a commercial on TV for fitness equipment, you can probably guess that the models have never used that equipment until the day of the shoot. But with gymnasts, the opposite is true. Using rings is the ONLY way they could get there. Ring training is time-tested and proven. It has built thousands of people into strong athletes. So, there's no doubt that enhancing standard calisthenics with the rings will yield superior results. And by combining them with other time-tested and proven equipment, such as barbells, dumbbells and kettlebells, you can create an all-around fitness program. You're joining good company. Since we launched in 2003, ring training has been adopted by pro sports teams, Olympic athletes in a variety of sports (including one very fast swimmer), elite military units on the front lines of every combat zone, Cirque du Soleil performers and a lot of everyday people just wanting to look good naked. And I know that for a fact, because there is a hidden camera in every ring... Okay, not really.

Basic Exercises The basic exercises, or the "Core Four", as I will call them and possibly trademark, are the pushup, body row, dip and pullup. These exercises form the foundation for everything that follows later. No matter how far along you get in your training, they will always be valuable for at least doing some functional, metabolic conditioning. I recommend doing at least two of these in every workout. A push and pull. And you also want to have a balance between horizontal- pushups and rows; and verticaldips and pullups. By doing balancing horizontal and vertical movements, you will have balanced upper body strength, which is key for preventing injuries. A lot of people have written to me over the years to let me know that ring training has restored pain-free mobility and strength in their shoulders. Most of their problems were caused by muscle imbalances. After introducing the basic movements, I will show you how they can be scaled to decrease or increase the difficulty. Variable resistance is one of the things that makes ring training so effective. We can also make these movements easier, which is absolutely necessary in order to make ring training accessible to everyone.

The Support

Even before you start on the Core Four, it's important to introduce the support position. The support is the foundation of all advanced ring work. In this position,

you hold yourself above the rings with straight arms. It can be thought of as the top position of a dip or pushup. It is important to be able to hold this position before progressing onto more advanced exercises like dips and muscle-ups. It's really the area where you will feel the most instability in the rings, because your center of gravity is high above the rings. With pullups and other hanging exercises, you feel the mobility, but not much instability. In this position, your arms should be completely straight and should not be resting against the straps. By bracing yourself against the straps, you are using friction to stabilize the rings instead of your muscles. Our goal is to maximize the effect of the frictionless plane, so you will get stronger much more quickly by keeping your arms free of the straps. It also helps to turn the rings slightly outwards. You want to actively push down on the rings, so your shoulders do not shrug up at all towards your ears. Proper posture is also important. Keep your chest up and look forward. It's like locking out a deadlift. If you stay hunched over, then you're not really completing the movement. Gymnasts are famous for having high levels of strength, even in extreme ranges of motion, and the reason is that the judging criteria in their sport requires them to complete every movement. The wrong way to hold a support position is with your elbows bent and pressing into the straps. I call this a "chicken arm support". It's not just ugly, but it robs you of a lot of the potential strength gains. If you can't hold a support with perfect form, I would recommend starting with the pushup support until you get comfortable there. Sacrificing form is not the best path to excellence.

The Ring Pushup

This is quite possibly my favorite movement on the rings. I like it because there are so many different possibilities. It's possible to move the rings side to side and front to back, so the number of possible variations feels limitless. Plus, you can easily adjust the resistance by elevating the rings and changing your body angle. Pushups give you a good taste of the frictionless plane and what ring training is all about.. To do the ring pushup, you want to start off by lowering the rings down to a few inches over the ground. You still want plenty of room to clear your knuckles over the floor, so 8-12" of clearance is good. Start off just like a normal pushup with your arms straight and a tight, straight body as well. You will probably feel more activity in your abs and chest than usual. From here, descend down to the floor slowly. The ring pushup is a bit deeper than a standard pushup, since the floor does not get in the way. Now, push back up to a support. As you go through the range of motion, it's natural for the rings to rotate and move sideways a bit. Do whatever feels natural. Once you get comfortable on the rings, you can do these at a quick pace, but never as fast as the floor, because you have to maintain perfect control through the entire movement. Make sure that your arms are not coming into contact with the straps, because if you "ride the straps", you will lose out on the strength building benefits of the rings. Letting your body sag is a normal flaw a lot of people make in normal pushups, because you don't really get punished for it. On rings, this causes your hands to fly forward, which takes more effort from your lats and abs to counteract. If your abs and lats are weak, then you will face plant! The frictionless plane forces you to do perfect pushups. Adjusting the resistance is easy. You can either walk forward and/or elevate the rings. If possible, you want the straps to run parallel to the direction of your applied force. The straps should run at the same angle as your straight arms. Pushups can also be performed from the knees. You can make the pushup tougher by elevating your fee on a box. This shifts your center of gravity forward, so more weight is resting on your hands. You can verify this with a bathroom scale. Get into a pushup position with your hands on the scale. Sadly, you will notice that your are supporting less weight than you think. Usually it's in the neighborhood of 50-65%. Now, try the same with your feet elevated. You will see a bigger number on the scale, which explains why this is more difficult.

The Body Row

The Body Row, aka Ring Row, is the equal and opposite of the pushup. As a result, this exercise is one of the best for correcting muscle imbalances. If you're one of those guys that only trains muscles that you can see in the mirror, then you will probably want to add this one to your routine. Pretty much all of the tips on form that go with the pushup apply here as well. You want to keep your body straight and tight. The range of motion should be as deep as possible. You want to pull up till your chest passes through the rings. At the bottom, it is okay for your scapulae to extend. As your perform the body row, the scapulae will then be pulled back together, as if you're trying to crack a walnut between your shoulder blades. Keep your body tight and do not leg your butt sag at all. Some people start letting their butt sag and then thrust their hips forward in order to complete the movement. "Humping Rows" are fine for metcon, but for strength and for developing the pushup, we do Body Rows with strict form. Once again, you can modify the resistance by walking backwards and/or elevating the rings. When you are at an incline, you are now pulling your body weight at an angle, so the resistance is lower. Bending your knees makes them a bit easier and performing them from a seated position is even easier. It actually becomes a combination of a situp and a row. You can make them harder by elevating your feet on a box.

The Dip

Once you have gotten comfortable with pushups, the dip is the next logical step. Gym rats who like to train one muscle at a time hate this exercise because it actually brings in more muscles than a standard dip. Prior to the steroid era, a lot of bodybuilders did ring dips because they can pack on a lot of muscle. Jordan Jovtchev and other high level gymnasts actually avoid dips and pullups for this reason. They want to maximize their strength to weight ratio, so they are very concerned about carrying extra muscle. For the rest of us, it is an essential movement. Some people call the dip, the "squat of the upper body". It's that

effective as a strength builder. To start off, you need to have a solid support. You should be able to hold that for at least 10-15 seconds in good form before trying the ring dip. You want to set the rings at a height where your toes will barely touch the ground at the bottom of the dip. If the rings are lower, it's okay to bend your knees and cross your ankles in the back. Starting from the support position, lower yourself slowly and under control. Keep your body tight from start to finish. The range of motion should be as deep as you can go comfortably. It's okay to start out a bit shallow, but if you hope to achieve a muscle-up, then you will need to work your way to a deep range of motion. One great tip is to actively, but slowly, pull yourself down into the hole. This helps to pre-stretch the antagonist muscles which will help you back up on the ascent. People do the same thing with squatting. They don't just passively drop down under the weight of the barbell. They perform an active role in pulling themselves down into the hole. This technique works just as well for dips. The dip is by far the most cheated move on rings. Almost every time I see it done, the person rides the straps the whole way up and down. At the end of the set, they have nice red marks on the outside of their arms, aka "Strap Burn". If you're getting strap burn, then you're not really doing ring dips. I have identified a few causes. First, people are going too fast to maintain control, so they have to stabilize themselves against the straps. Slow down and pay attention to the movement. Second is that people who are not yet ready for dips rush into them and aren't strong enough to stabilize the rings via muscle control. If this is the case, go back to pushups and work on holding supports. Lastly, some people do not set the rings far enough apart, so there is really nowhere for them to go, except into the straps. If this is the case, try re-setting the rings just slightly outside of shoulder width. The standard is 50 cm, but since we're not competing, it's best to go with what is most comfortable. I measure from my elbow to my finger tip, plus a few inches. The standard distance works fine for most people when you hang the rings from a tower and the straps are long. But the shorter the straps are, the more this becomes a problem, so I don't recommend going by gymnastics standards for fitness training.

The Pullup

This is by far one of the most popular bodyweight exercises. It's legendary for producing high levels of upper body strength. Rock climbers are famous for doing high numbers and even one arm pullups! Some rock climbers even do one arm pullups from just one or two fingers! The amount of strength you can build is incredible. Jordan Jovtchev told me about a milk delivery man in Bulgaria who can do 16 consecutive one arm pullups at the age of 60. The rings bring some unique benefits for the pullup. First, you can rotate the handles, which makes them more ergonomic. Having to decide between pullups, chinups or neutral is a thing of the

past, because a single rep can combine all three. Start out with the rings just barely within reach. A small jump up to the rings is fine. If the rings are lower, it's okay to bend your knees at the bottom. The pullup should start with locked arms and end with your chest up and pulling down as far as possible. As you perform the rep, your hands should rotate naturally. Most people don't really go down all the way at the bottom. This is probably the hardest part of the range of motion, even though it's pretty subtle. Your elbows should lock out at the bottom and your shoulders should be extended upwards (shoulders in your ears). I like my pullups on the rings to be strict. Kipping pullups are definitely possible, but a lot of the energy of the kip is dissipated by the free movement of the rings. A fixed bar allows you to apply force horizontally with no penalty. It makes your body move faster horizontally and you can use this to accelerate yourself to the top of a pullup. On rings, when you push horizontally, a portion of your energy goes into moving the rings, so you get less acceleration from your effort. If the straps are very short, then this is not so much of an issue, but the longer the straps are, the less help you will get from your kip.

The L-Sit

The L-sit is a great abdominal exercise. It can be done on the ground, on bars, rings and virtually anywhere else you can think of. On rings, it is more difficult, because the support position is more challenging. The L-Sit involves holding a support position with your legs bent 90 degrees at the hip joint. When in this position, you should be able to hold a wooden dowel on your legs without it rolling off. Also, take your shoes off it you are struggling. They might not be heavy, but when you put any weight onto a lever as long as your legs, it adds up quickly.

To learn the L-Sit, you can start out with tucked legs and then extend one leg and then eventually you will get both legs out. A lot of beginners get muscle crams in their quads when they start training the L-Sit. For most people, this will go away over time. When you are in the L-Sit position, you want to actively push down on the rings. Your butt should be above your hands. You should be able to hold this position with the rings only an inch or two off the ground. In fact, try holding an L-Sit on the ground, with your palms on the floor. You really have to push down hard to keep yourself off the floor. Now, remember that feeling and take it to the rings. Flexibility is a big part of the L-Sit. If you have tight hamstrings, you might as well be pulling your feet down with a rubber band. When you see a beautiful, professional quality L hold, you will see no rounding of the back (unlike mine, which is not quite perfect). You the hips fold, but otherwise, no change in posture from a normal support position.

The L-Pullup

The combination of the L-Sit and the Pullup becomes a potent exercise in its own right. To do an L-Pullup, you start in a hang and lift your legs up to horizontal. Your legs should remain straight for the whole movement. The range of motion is essentially the same as a normal pullup, but you will notice that your body shifts somewhat behind the rings to counteract the weight of your legs in front of you. This is the strictest kind of pullup you can do and a great total body exercise. This is also a fun way to do rope climbs.

Additional Exercises This book is only scratching the surface of potential exercises you can do on rings. There are literally hundreds. With some imagination, you can take the basic exercises and manipulate the leverage, torque, body angle and more variables to create new variations. And you have the sport of Olympic gymnastics, which provides limitless challenges. We will post more exercises at ringtraining.com on the blog and in the articles section. I also recommend checking out the following sites: Beast Skills by Jim Bathurst www.beastskills.com Jim has become famous for writing excellent, in-depth tutorials on a variety of bodyweight and gymnastic exercises. He is very thorough and has had excellent success in combining gymnastics and fitness training. If you are interested in bodyweight exercise as a method of training for high-level strength, then his site is a must-see. Drills and Skills by Roger Harrell www.drillsandskills.com Roger is a gymnastics coach and now a CrossFit affiliate. His site covers the movements of gymnastics for all of the events and has some great tips on conditioning. It does cover a lot of gymnastics-only movements, which you should not try at home. Dismounts and swinging skills are great for gymnasts, but not worth the risk for fitness training. But you can get a great sense of what "real" gymnastics is all about on his site. CrossFit www.crossfit.com CrossFit is the fastest growing fitness movement in the world right now. Why? Because it works. I've been a member of the CrossFit community since 2002 and it's amazing to see how much it has grown. They combine weightlifting and other modalities with some bodyweight exercises and basic gymnastics. Their emphasis in

on increasing power output, not complexity or technical difficulty, which is the opposite of what gymnasts strive for. CrossFit will not turn you into a gymnast, but it can turn you into one of the fittest people on the planet, as it has proven countless times. The CrossFit Journal does contain many articles on gymnastics, written by myself, Roger Harrell, Jeff Tucker and others.

Scaling Basic Exercises It is possible to modify these basic exercises in several ways in order to make them easier or harder. Scaling means to change the size of something without distorting its meaning. In exercise terms, it means increasing or decreasing the resistance, while maintaining the integrity of the stimulus. These methods are what gymnasts use in order to progressively make their training more difficult and to reach their goals. Weightlifters have it easy, because they can simply add more weight to the bar. The progression from Point A to Point B is relatively simple. With bodyweight exercise, you don't have this luxury, unless you can change your bodyweight faster than Oprah. But this aspect also makes the training fun and uniquely challenging. The path from Point A to Point B looks more like a Jackson Pollock painting, since you have to branch out in different directions and manipulate several different variables. I will go over a few methods of scaling bodyweight exercises.

Fulcrum Principle A fulcrum is a pivot point. In a pushup, the fulcrum is your feet. The resistance to your working muscles is provided by your body, which is a long lever that rotates from your feet. If you shorten the distance to the fulcrum, you can make the pushup easier. You can do them on your knees or straddle your legs. With body rows, you can perform them seated, bend your knees or straddle your legs. In each case, you are moving the point of rotation closer to the rings, thereby reducing the leverage you are working against. This principle applies mostly to horizontal exercises, but you can see it at work in the L-Pullup. And some of the techniques that make the muscle-up easier (see later on), work by creating a shorter lever or changing the point of rotation.

Torque Principle

Somewhat similar to the fulcrum principle is the Torque Principle. Torque is a rotational force about a joint. It is increased by leverage, so as you increase the length of a lever, you are increasing the torque. Practical examples of this are several variations of pushup. The standard pushup has optimal torque, because your are applying force from your hands directly along a vector underneath your shoulder joint. The next more difficult step is the wide grip pushup. You are now adding additional leverage to make it more difficult. Next is the archer pushup, which has more extreme leverage, because you have one arm straight. And then there is the flye, which is the most extreme, since both arms are straight. All four of the basic exercises can be done with these variations, but some of them are pretty tough! When you think about it, the iron cross is just a really wide dip.

Body Angle

With horizontal exercises, such as pushups and rows, changing your body angle

can be used as a resistance modifier. You can make these easier by increasing the height of your hands relative to your feet. Likewise, you can make them more difficult by elevating your feet relative to your hands. At Westside Barbell, a club legendary for producing top powerlifters and influencing the way people train for that sport, they used this method to help their powerlifters perform handstand pushups on the rings. They started with normal pushups and gradually elevated their feet until they were in a handstand. This method makes the changes in resistance very measurable and allows for accurate progressions from one step to the next. The measured webbing the EXF straps makes the process much easier.

The Muscle-Up

This is one of the most functional movements that can be performed on rings. It has a very long range of motion and it's a very efficient movement when done right. It just feels like a very natural thing to do. When you're below the rings, getting on top just makes sense. It's also one of the most challenging moves for beginners. I think part of it is psychological. People are often told how hard the transition is. And then they go out and do everything possible to make it hard. I'll be honest, once you get the technique mastered, the transition is pretty easy. In fact, when I fail, it's usually locking out the dip on the last rep that gets me. In this section, I will go over a ton of different tips and techniques to make learning the muscle-up as easy as possible. The movement on its surface is pretty simple. It's a pullup that transitions into a dip and ends in a support. Being able to do a dip and a pullup is necessary but not sufficient, because of the pesky transition. This is where things get tricky, because it's a somewhat unusual range of motion. It requires you to pass through a range where the leverage is pretty bad and most people have never trained before. Plus, you will be using a false grip, which seriously drains your strength when you are not used to it. But once you get it, you'll be false-gripping everything in sight. Picking up your cat? Use a false grip. Throwing a jiu-jitsu move? Try a false grip. Even when arm wrestling you can use the false grip. With just a bit of training, you can turn this awkward grip into a powerful one.

The False Grip

The false grip is one of the keys to learning the muscle-up for several reason. First, it shortens your forearm, so you are reducing the torque about the elbow joint (see Torque Principle). Second, it places your weight on the base of your palm, which is right where you want it when you start the dip. And lastly, it creates a pivot point for transitioning from below to above the rings on the base of your palm. An important tip is to apply chalk not just to your hands, but down your wrist as well. This makes a huge difference in holding onto your false grip. Slippery rings can be a culprit as well. We designed the new multi-textured rings for this very

reason. The rough and rubberized non-slip portions are ideal for holding onto the rings with a false grip.

To hold a false grip, grab the rings in a normal grip and then shift your wrists forward. Some people think at first that it is a thumbless grip (pictured above). Do NOT do this. It would be very dangerous to attempt muscle-ups with a thumbless grip. The base of your palm will rest on lowest point on the ring and your wrist will

be run down the side the ring. You might feel some friction on your wrist and this is normal. You will know you're doing it right if you get friction burns on the inside of your wrist an inch or two below your palm.

A common beginner mistake is to grab the side of the ring. This is bad news, because if you were to actually maintain a grip on the side of the ring, you will now be facing an uphill battle as you transition into the dip. The curvature of the ring

will literally push you away. If you trace a line from your pinky finger to the base of your palm, you will find the point that should be at the bottom of the ring. This point is ideal for transmitting force, because it is right in line with the ulna (outer bone in the forearm). If you have your weight resting too close to your fingers, you will be damping your force application, because you are applying force through the muscles, tendons and ligaments of your wrist, instead of through bone. If you have ever seen a Karate master break a pile of bricks, you will notice that they are using the same power point on the hand that we will be using here. If they tried to use the base of the fingers, they would probably break their wrists and not the bricks. Transmitting force from bone to bone is always the strongest structure. Can you imagine trying a max effort squat from the balls of your feet?

As you transition from the pullup to the dip, you naturally lose the false grip, but the pressure is still being applied from that point on the base of your palm. After you lock out and come back down, getting back into the false grip can be a bit tricky. At first, just go slow and try to reverse the movement that got you there. Rather than going straight down, try leaning back a little and keep the rings in front of you. Also read the Corkscrew Technique further ahead. It's easier to maintain the false grip this way. When you are strong on the rings, you can go the side a bit more instead, but for beginners it is best to keep the rings in close.

Center Your Bodyweight

Many people try to approach the transition like a triceps extension. This isn't 24 Hour Fitness, so get that out of your head! In functional movements, anything you do on a Nautilus machine will get you nowhere. The ideal way to do a muscle-up is to keep your weight evenly distributed in front of and behind the rings. If you were to imagine that the line of the straps formed a plane, then half of your weight should be on each side of this plane at all times. Some people keep their shoulders too far behind the rings and try to push down using their triceps. Instead, what you want to do is thrust your shoulders forward and your hips slightly back. The 24 Hour Fitness guys are doing things the hard way. If it seems like the transition is impossible, there is a good chance that too much of your bodyweight is behind the rings.

Keep Your Friends Close and the Rings Closer

Watching a person struggle to get their first muscle-up is exciting, but it can be maddening at the same time. People have a tendency to try every possible path

except the path of least resistance. And the stronger people are, the uglier their first muscle-up is. I saw a member of Delta Force nearly do an iron cross on the way to his first muscle-up. It was impressive as hell, but this is much harder! So, make sure that you keep the rings in close to your body. As you pull up, the rings should naturally turn inwards, so the backs of your hands are facing each other. Then, as you push your shoulders through during the transition, the rings will quickly turn out. At this point, it's crucial that the rings stay close to your lats. Another technique some people use is to stick one arm out and transition above the ring, while the other arm stays below and then try to pry their way up. This can actually work, but it's much easier doing both arms at the same time. It's also quite a bit safer.

the Shoulder Roll

Many people think that the most important thing during the transition is to press down on the rings. This would be wrong! Some people will call me crazy for saying this. But the most important thing is getting your elbows above your hands. Pressing down as hard as you can on the rings can actually push you away from the rings. What you want to do, instead of pressing down, is to just roll your shoulders forward. This movement will cause your elbows to retreat back behind you, brushing against your ribcage as they pass by. During the shoulder roll, you should try to quickly shrug your shoulders upwards towards your ears. Our goal is to get as much elevation as possible when it's cheap. Now that your shoulders are higher than your hands, it is now just a matter of getting them directly above or slightly in front of your hands. We do this by rolling our shoulders, not lifting our whole body. Completing the shoulder roll will get you to where you want to be. If you don't have a very high pull to work with, then the shoulder roll will leave you with a very deep dip. This is okay, as long as you've practiced your deep dips. On high rep muscle-ups, your last few will no doubt look like this. On your first few reps, you might not even need much a shoulder roll, but it will get more

pronounced as your pull gets weaker. I think this is really the best tip out there for achieving the muscle-up, but if you're not getting a lot of mileage out of it, then there is a good chance that you have tight shoulders. Do the recommended shoulder stretches from later on in this book and then give this tip another try. Once you master the shoulder roll, the transition will no longer be the failure point in high rep sets of muscle-ups. On number 15, you'll probably not be able to lock out or pull yourself out of the hole. But you will no longer get stuck in the transition.

Suck Your Chest In and UP

This tip may sound arcane, but it's actually pretty useful. The muscle-up is a three-dimensional movement and to master it, we must think in three dimensions.

To suck your chest in and up, imagine you are getting punched right below the sternum. It's an uppercut and the punch knocks you off your feet. Your chest caves in and your shoulders lurch forward. We will try and cultivate the same sensation during the transition, but without the pain, of course. Remember, our goal is to generate as much elevation as possible with the least amount of effort. As you perform the pullup phase of the movement, you will stick your chest out and pull your shoulder blades together. At this point, imagine there is a rope tied around your torso, just below the sternum. This rope goes up the to ceiling and through a pulley and then back down to your training partner. When you reach the transition point, imagine the training partner pulling on the rope. This will literally suck your chest up and back. Your chest will cave in and your shoulders and head will fall forward. But guess what? Your shoulders are now above the rings! Don't actually do this, but use this as a visualization for how your body should move. For this to work, you have to be quick in the transition. It's not for beginners. Experts do this intuitively. I learned this trick when I was taught how to do a standing front flip. Because of the direction of rotation, it's nothing like a standing back flip. You get almost no power from your legs, so you really need to learn how to pivot around your sternum. If you try to pivot around your hips, you will hit the ground before you even know it. On the muscle-up, the pivot point is your sternum. Learning how to pivot from here takes practice, but it is worth the effort.

A Slow, Steady Pull A lot of tutorials on the muscle-up tell people to pull as explosively as possible to get over the rings. And a lot of tutorials are dead wrong. For beginners, this is actually the opposite of what you want to do. If you aren't experienced in the technique of the transition, this will backfire on you. "What goes up, must come down." This expression is all too familiar to anyone that has ever failed in a muscle-up. And this includes a lot of strong guys. What happens is that they pull hard and get above the rings, but can't maintain this hard pull during the transition. When the leverage changes, the pull stalls. They start to drop and then have to transition while carrying the extra weight of their falling body. A slow, steady pull allows you begin the transition while you are still on the way up. And if you incorporate the shoulder roll and the chest suck, it's pretty easy to transition, even if you are only applying enough force to hold steady. Remember, it doesn't matter if your head is dropping, as long as your shoulders are rising. This can't last forever, but luckily, the transition only needs to last fractions of a second. Keeping steady pressure on the rings is much better than applying max force and then losing it when you need it most. Be smooth and deliberate. Once you have mastered the transition, you will be able to execute it in a split second. It becomes just a quick flick of the rings. At this point, a powerful pull can work in your favor, because even if your tension drops momentarily, the speed of your transition will get you over the rings without any trouble. The drop will be barely noticeable.

Corkscrew Your Hands Many people get stuck right before the transition point because they fail to rotate their hands. I almost didn't include this tip, because it is something that happens naturally when you do the shoulder roll. But if you find you are getting stuck, give it a try. Right before the transition, your hands should be right by your arm pits. The rings

should be turned in, so that the backs of your hands are facing each other. During the transition, as your shoulders roll forward and your elbows fly back, the rings will naturally turn out. This position will be maintained through the dip. As you drop back down, this process will reverse itself. The rings will stay turned in as long as you have a bend in your elbows. But something interesting happens when you straighten your arms at the bottom. The rings now must be turned out again. This makes it much easier to maintain the false grip, because you can push out against the rings, which will help maintain pressure between your wrists and the rings. Going all the way down is much, much harder than going almost all the way down. But the strength it develops is well worth the effort.

Muscle-Up Progression Exercises The following section goes over some of my favorite (and my least favorite) ways of building up to the muscle-up. I wish I had known of these progressions when I first got started. When I learned the muscle-up, I had very little to study, so I pieced together what I could find. One of my training partners, Robb Wolf, was able to get his muscle-up after several weeks of attempts. He was by far the strongest in our group, so when he struggled, we all assumed we had a lot of work ahead of us. When we learned the muscle-up, we literally muscled it up! We didn't know anything about technique, so we just pushed harder and harder until we got it. All of us experienced severe elbow pain for 2-3 days after our first muscle-up. Not a big surprise, considering the route we took. Since then, I've learned a lot more about the muscle-up from working with high level coaches, Olympians and collegiate gymnasts. But I learned the most from experimenting on myself and others who struggled along the way. You can learn the most about muscle-ups from someone who accomplishes it with the least amount of strength. Over the years, I've tried various methods and removed what I found to be ineffective. What has remained is what I will now share with you.

The Support

You can't do a muscle-up or really anything worthwhile on the rings unless you can hold a support. I like to get people holding it for 20 seconds in good form before moving on to anything else. Good form means that the arms are straight, you're maintaining good posture, looking straight ahead and clear of the straps. If you are riding the straps, then you're wasting your time. If support holds are too tough, then do them in the pushup position and on your knees, if necessary. I'm not a fan of using a spotter to assist a client with support holds. It's actually sort of dangerous for the spotter and getting into a pushup position instead allows the client to work entirely under his own power. You might as well just hold the support on static bars. In the video I have seen of this technique, the coach almost gets kicked in a very sensitive place every time his client jumps into the support.

Deep Dips The dip is probably harder than the pullup for most people. This is because it is the deepest dip you have ever done in your life. Try this. Do a few dips and make a video recording of yourself. Go as low as you can. You will probably be surprised at how much room you have to go further.

the Tactical Dip

Another option that helps is to start dips from the bottom position. This variation is called the Tactical Dip. With your feet on the ground and making sure the rings are set at the height of your arm pits, get in position to do a dip and press to the top. Don't jump at all. Each rep starts with your feet on the ground and with no momentum. You need to come to a complete stop between each rep. This is good training for when you have to dig your way out of a low transition during your muscle-up. This variation eliminates the pre-stretch in your muscles, just like you experience in after the transition.

False Grip Row

Learning the false grip is one of the keys to muscle-up success. But if you have never done a false grip, your pulling strength will be weaker than Paris Hilton! After some training, you will get more comfortable. The first place to start is the row. In this position, you can support some of your bodyweight with your feet, so you can build strength in this position in smaller increments.

False Grip Pullup

The false grip pullup is the next logical step. Simply perform pullups with the same grip you learned in the row. It's a little bit harder to maintain the grip with

your arms overhead. If you find this to be the case, then work on your shoulder and wrist flexibility. When you do these pullups, pull high! Don't stop when your chin passes the rings. Keep going as high as you can. Eventually, you will know when you're ready to pull off a muscle-up. If you can't even pull yourself up, just hang in the bottom position with a false grip.

Reverse Muscle-Up Reverse engineering the muscle-up is an interesting and effective approach that works for many other skills as well. To do these, get up and over the rings in whatever way you feel most comfortable- jump, get a spotter, etc. Now, start to slowly descend downwards. Go SLOW. Once you hit the bottom of the dip position, start to lean back and keep pressure on the rings. SLOW. Keep going down and let the rings turn inward (corkscrew). As the rings come around to the front of your body, try your best to maintain a deep false grip. Keep this false grip all the way down to the bottom. Try and go down till your arms are straight and the rings are turned out. You honestly can't go slow enough in this exercise. Another cool variation is to pause at various portions of the range of motion. And another variation is to go down, pause and then push back up out of it. See how low you can go and still push back out.

Rowing Muscle-Up

This is one of my favorite muscle-up progressions and I learned it from world champion Jordan Jovtchev. To do it, you want to have your feet supported at around the same height of the rings. From here, you will be in the same position as a body row. As you pull towards the transition point, your body will fold in half and you will go through the transition just like you learned before. The dip is a little different, because of the position of your feet, but it really just means the rings will stay slightly behind your torso. To adjust the difficulty, you can change the position of your feet relative to the rings. The lower your feet are, the more support you will get, which makes it easier. I show a second, easier variation with my feet on a chair and my knees bent. Bending your knees allows you to spot yourself much more than staight legs. But it is not a squatting muscle-up, where your feet would be directly underneath you. Those are another option, but I find it is too easy to

get away with sloppy technique when doing the squat-assisted muscle-up. One thing that trips a lot of people up on this movement is being too far forward. Don't start under the rings and then prop your feet up in front of you. If you do this, the rings will move forward and you will have to perform the transition at an angle. This means you are performing the transition uphill! So, you want to start out with your body behind the suspension point and the rings should pulled back at an angle. Your feet will be slightly in front of the suspension point. At the transition, the straps should be close to vertical and stay that way during the dip. It is also easier the further you walk back, because of this ramp effect.

The Jumping Muscle-Up I HATE THIS EXERCISE. Everyone teaches it this way and I can't stand it. You can do a thousand of these and learn absolutely nothing about the muscle-up. The problem is that is gives you the illusion of a super powerful pull. Remember what I said earlier about slow and steady? And because of this, you can get away with anything. It doesn't matter if you roll your shoulders at the wrong time or if you aren't keeping the rings in tight. Anything works. And if it doesn't, then you will just jump harder the next time. When I use this movement with clients, I call it a "jump to support". And sometimes they keep their arms straight, so it's more like a jumping iron cross. Either way, I use it as a metabolic move to drive heart rate and it works well for this. But as a teaching aid for the muscle-up, it's a complete waste of time.

Kipping Muscle-Up This is probably the most common method of performing the muscle-up, even though it is not really a muscle-up by the strictest definition. "Muscle-up" in gymnastics means that you are not using swing or kip to generate power. In gymnastics, there are skills called uprises. The front and back uprises are the two

variations and they use pure swing to get up above the rings. There is also the Kip to Support, which uses power from a hip thrust to get over the rings. In this variation, you completely fold in half at the hips and then powerfully thrust your body upwards by explosively unfolding at the hip joint. The kipping muscle-up is kind of a hybrid between a muscle-up and a front uprise. I do consider it legitimate in most workout situations, unless specifically told to perform them strict. Th kipping muscle-up involves using a forward swing and an upward thrust of the knees in order to generate greater elevation of the shoulders. Once the shoulders are up, the legs fall back down during the transition. Pretend you are jumping during this phase, even though your feet aren't on the ground. While your legs are falling, the lower half of your body is essentially weightless, so you are able to get through the transition with much less effort. If you mis-time the kipping action, you will actually make the transition much harder, because you will be fighting against the deceleration of your lower body. That "weightless moment" is very quick and at the other end, you have to catch your body, which has now gathered some momentum, so you better be ready for that. This is one reason why I don't like the kipping muscle-up for beginners. You need to be strong and comfortable in a support position, otherwise you can get hurt. This is a vulnerable position for your elbows and mistimed kipping exposes them to extra shock loads. The advantage of the kipping muscle-up is that you can crank out more reps in a shorter amount of time. The disadvantage is that you develop less strength. If you want to do muscle-ups and develop almost no strength at all, then perform a strong kip and then slam into the straps with your forearms in the "chicken arm support" position. And then ride the straps 3/4 of the way up, just shy of locking out. If you watch enough muscle-up videos on YouTube, you will see that this is how 80-90% of people are doing it. Sadly, it's robbing them of most of the benefits of training on the rings.

Can I Join the Muscle-Up Club? I'm going to be a mean coach and tell a lot of people that their first muscle-up didn't count. Sorry, but someone has to do it. To join the muscle-up club, I think it has a to be a strict one for it to count. In the same vein, when someone gets their first pullup, I like to see a strict one. Flailing away until your chin gets over the bar just isn't the same. And to someone outside of the CrossFit community, you have

some explaining to do. "Isn't that cheating?" "Well, I'm kipping because incorporating a hip drive maximizes power output over broad time and modal domains." "Okay..." The same goes for the muscle-up. Kipping muscle-ups are fine for getting a faster time on the WOD, but it doesn't get you a membership into the muscle-up club. And for safety, I like to see a strict one first. Can you image a coach telling a beginner: "Alright, you don't have much experience on the rings, so you might be a little bit out of control. To compensate for this, we will just do the movement WAY faster." "Sure thing, Coach!" Splat! If you are not comfortable in the support position, the last thing you need to do is launch yourself up there with a powerful kip and no real certainty where you will end up. The one thing you don't want to do is lose the muscle-up and fall forward. If you hang onto the rings for too long, you can really tear up your shoulders. Falling backwards is almost never a problem.

Substitutions for the Muscle-Up If you are doing a workout that calls for muscle-ups, I recommend choosing a substitution from somewhere in this progression. The CrossFit standard is 4 pullups and 4 dips for every 1 muscle-up. I think this is completely wrong for a variety of reasons. For one, this is training for endurance, but most people need to develop strength for the muscle-up, not more endurance. Second, the muscle-up really isn't that hard. If you aren't strong enough for it, then trading 30 muscle-ups for 120 pullups and 120 dips is insane! For a beginner, that's way too much for one workout. Third, it doesn't develop any of the important skills you need for a muscle-up, such as the false grip or the transition technique. Personally, I love the

fact that the 4-to-1 substitution sells a lot of rings! But it's not my favorite approach. Instead, do 30 rowing muscle-ups or 30 very slow reverse muscle-ups. Or even just do 30 false grip pullups and 30 tactical dips. Practicing these progressions is a faster way to accomplish the muscle-up.

Flexibility Training Shoulder Flexibility Flexibility in the shoulders is extremely important for muscle-ups. Whenever I do a high rep set, I feel like the last three wouldn't be possible without good shoulder flexibility. If your shoulders are flexible enough, you can turn even a weak pullup into something transitionable. Many people say the goal of the transition is to get your shoulders above the rings. All you really have to do is get your elbows above your hands. How high your shoulders are is determined by how high you are able to pull. But the minimum height required for a successful transition is determined by your shoulder flexibility. So, increased shoulder mobility allows you to get away with a weaker pull. If you have tight shoulders, you will need to pull much higher and the transition will be tougher. If you can pull really high and have flexible shoulders, then your sets will end at the point where your pull has fatigued and you have reached the limit of your flexibility. That convergence point sets the limit on how many muscle-ups you can perform in one set.

Skinning the Cat

To do this stretch, you simply pull yourself upside down and then keep rolling backwards. You want to roll as far as possible without extreme discomfort.

Generally, it is okay to let go of the rings in an emergency, since your feet will be pointing at the ground. But it's a bad habit to get into. Letting go while you are in a full stretch or under high tension is like dry firing a bow and arrow. Your muscles prefer to go back to resting tension/length naturally. But, if you are losing control, let go! Don't tear your shoulders out. In fact, when you are starting out, keep your feet on the ground as a spotter. Then squat down till you have a good stretch on your shoulders and then squat back up. Keep landing mats beneath you if there is a risk of falling from a great height when doing the suspended version. The full version involves going all the way back, while hanging on the rings and then pulling yourself back up to inverted. To do this, you will use core strength and hamstring/lower back flexibility. You want to pull yourself into a tight pike position, while applying pressure on the rings to pull your hips back up. It's a great exercise for stretching and strengthening your shoulders. It gives you exactly the kind of flexibility you need for the muscle-up.

Stick Stretch For this stretch, you take a stick in your hands and rotate your arms backwards till they touch your back and then repeat going forwards. Over time, your goal is to bring your hands closer and closer together. Using a rubber band is a great option as well.

Wall Stretch

This is another great stretch for the shoulders and thoracic region. Get in front of a wall and place your hands on the wall at shoulder height. Now fold at the hips and try to keep your arms level, but sink your chest down as low as possible. Actively push away from the wall as well, as if you are trying to extend the length from your shoulders to your tail bone. This also stretches out the wrists a little bit. I'm showing the same stretch on rings. Either one works fine.

Reverse Wrist Stretch

If you are having trouble holding a false grip, it might not be that your wrists are weak, but inflexible. To fix this, I like the reverse wrist stretch. Get on all fours and

place the backs of your hands on the ground. Now while keeping your arms straight, stretch out the wrists. You can also do pushups from this position. It can be a little painful at first, so start from your knees, then go to a wide stance before finally taking on the full "fin pushups". Keep your fingertips pointing towards eachother when doing these pushups.

Training The majority of people using rings today are doing the CrossFit program. By one estimate, I heard there are only 500 male gymnasts in the United States over the age of 18! For the workout portion of this guide, we will not be covering how to train like a gymnast. Nor will we go over how to design CrossFit-style workouts, since that has been covered in a lot of other places. But, we will talk about how to incorporate more ring work into CrossFit. We will also cover how to design a ring strength program, the EXF pullup program and some fun ring workouts. Before I start, I want to mention that I hate "Muscle and Fiction" magazines. Every month they have a new 3 week plan that promises a 5% reduction in bodyfat. The people who write these plans are liars. Most of them never even test these programs on anyone and rarely on more than a handful. And oftentimes, their claims of a 13% strength increase (or whatever their claim might be) is based on a result from an obscure study. The study might have been using leg extensions and untrained subjects. And the Muscle and Fiction routine might apply a principle derived from that study. But that doesn't mean you can extrapolate that the routine will have the same effect on different movements and in a trained subject, or even that the routine will have any results at all! Even honest writers get sucked in by this, because they want to get published. The magazine doesn't want you to learn enough to train on your own. They want to tell you what to do for just long enough to need the next issue and the next "miracle plan". I am not going to offer any training plans or quick-fix routines in this book. To me, any attempt to do so is voodoo. Plans that are designed to offer specific workouts and deliver a specific adaption on a given date are completely bogus. Investment bankers can't do it and neither can trainers or exercise physiologists. Instead of plans, I will offer strategies. These don't give you day by day prescriptions or promise results by a certain date. But they do offer a logical progression from point A to point B. In this way, you can proceed at a pace that is optimal for you. From these strategies, you should have no trouble designing your own custom workout program. I provide a few templates and examples, but you still have to fill in the details for yourself.

Strength Program Design The 3 to 5 Rule Rule Rule Rule Rule Rule

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5

Pick 3 to 5 exercises covering your whole body. Perform 3 to 5 reps of each exercise. Perform 3 to 5 sets of each exercise. Train 3 to 5 times per week. Switch programs every 3 to 5 weeks.

Strength training does not need to be any more complicated than that. But there is a lot of flexibility and room for growth within these rules. Let's take a look at each principle.

Rule #1 It's possible to train all of the major movement patterns of your body using just a small number of exercises. At minimum, you should have a lower body exercise, an upper body pull and an upper body push. You can also break the upper body movements into horizontal and vertical motions, which will add up to 5 total exercises. Here are some examples:

Lower Body: Squat, Deadlift, Olympic Lifts, Sprinting, Jumping, Lunges, Step Ups Upper Body Horizontal Pulls: Body Row, Front Lever, Barbell Rows, Renegade Rows Upper Body Horizontal Pushes: Push Ups, Planche, Bench Press Upper Body Vertical Pulls: Pullups, Iron Cross Upper Body Vertical Pushes: Military Press, Dips, Handstand Pushups, Inverted Cross I didn't even list the many variations that exist in each of those exercises. There are too many to count. But you always want 1 or 2 lower body. And an upper body push and pull. Over time, you will want to make sure that you balance out

horizontal and vertical motions, as this will lead to balanced development in the shoulders.

Rule #2 Many great strength coaches have said that anything over 5 reps is not strength training. And many also advise to train with sets of 3-5 reps most of the time, so that you're not constantly training at your absolute limits. It's interesting that Kevin Mazeika, two-time head coach of the US Olympic Men's Gymnastics team, recommends sets of 6 for his athletes. He arrived at this completely independent of the weight training community. Keep in mind that a gymnastics routine is not the same as a max effort on a barbell lift. A routine is a sequence of several moves, so you need strength that lasts for 30 seconds or more. Even so, 6 reps is pretty close to the same number that barbell coaches have recommended. The reason for sticking with relatively low reps is that this type of training makes you strong without adding too much bulk. For a gymnast, this is particularly important, because you don't want to carry around extra muscle that is not being used efficiently. High load, low rep training helps to develop greater neurological efficiency, or "strength as a skill". World champion ringman Jordan Jovtchev typically trains at a very low volume. His maintenance program is to perform his ring routine three times a day after a thorough warm-up. At age 36, he is still competing at the top of his sport. High volume can be effective, but it's tough on the body. If you are training for the long haul, this is another reason why less is more. But taking another lesson from Jordan, you must treat this training with laser-like focus. Make every rep count!

Rule #3 The number of sets you perform is directly related to how many exercises and how many reps you are doing. The total volume of your training can be manipulated by changing any of these variables. During a training cycle, I generally like to add sets before I start to add reps. So, in the first week, I might do 3x3. Once I can comfortably train at that load, I add a set. And then another. Once I am at 5x3 (5 sets of 3), I go back to 3x4. Now I climb back up to 5 sets using 4 reps per set. And then I repeat the same with 5 reps. This is a great way to train, but there are plenty of variations to choose from. See the Brice Strength Program

and Density Training for a different approach.

Rule #4 Recovery is one of the most important aspects of training. Your muscles don't grow during the workout. They grow between workouts. That pump you feel is not permanent! And if you are training too hard and not recovering enough, you will not make as much progress and you are more likely to get injured. With low volume, high load training you can train more frequently than with other systems. Because you are always leaving plenty of reps in the tank and staying fresh, you can train more often. If your goal is not to get bigger, but rather to get stronger (strength as skill), then frequent practice is the way to go. Higher volume training is better for stimulating growth hormone production and muscle capillarization, but requires more rest between workouts. Some bodybuilders have even been known to train only once or twice a week. But they tended to perform pretty brutal workouts and took advantage of "special vitamins". If you are not going the chemically-enhanced route, then stick to 3 to 5 smaller workouts. Do 3 higher volume workouts if size is your priority. Or 5 practices if strength is your priority. Either way, how much you eat is always the biggest factor, but hormone production does influence your appetite.

Rule #5 Strength coach Dan John has often said that for an untrained client, any program will work for the first six weeks. I call this the "Untrained Idiot Effect". Most studies conducted by exercise physiologists are done using untrained college students. Their relevance to a high caliber athlete is debatable. But in the trenches, experienced coaches know that athletes hit a plateau after repeating the same workout too many times. I will say 3 to 5 weeks, but it could be 2, 6, 8 or more. It will depend on how specific the training is, how intense and the person's training history. Many people attack CrossFit based on the SAID principle. I don't think it applies, though, because the CrossFit program is pretty well randomized and the goal is general fitness, not a specific adaptation. The more specific and narrow a goal is, the sooner you reach the plateau. Because CrossFit is so broad, it can often take years before you hit a noticeable plateau in your general fitness.

Quite a few people are now adding a rotating program of structured strength training on top of CrossFit. A hybrid of randomized and planned training seems to be working well for a lot of people. They add this extra strength work before the WOD, because you always want to do heavy strength work when you're fresh and focused. After a 3 to 5 week cycle ends, switch exercises or at minimum change the sets, reps or frequency of workouts.

Density Training Ethan Reeve of Wake Forest University is a proponent of this excellent method for rapidly gaining strength, endurance or both. You pick a target goal of reps you wish to achieve and then double it. You will perform this number of reps, divided into multiple sets, in each workout. Over time, the goal is to do this amount of work in fewer and fewer sets. Thus, you are increasing the density. Keep your eye on a clock and perform one set at the start of every minute. In this example, your goal is to get 30 consecutive pullups: Step Step Step Step

1: 3: 5: 7:

6 reps every minute for 10 minutes (60 total reps) 8 reps every minute for 8 minutes (64 total reps) 10 reps every minute for 6 minutes (60 total reps) 12 reps every minute for 5 minutes (60 total reps)

You can fill in the blanks. Keep progressing like this until you reach your target. You do not necessarily have to progress this quickly. You can repeat a workout if you are unable to perform all of the sets unbroken. Keep increasing the density until you reach your goal. When you reach 35-45% of your target in each set, then you are probably ready to test yourself to see how close you are to your goal. Once you have reached your goal, you can add weight to your body, add more reps, or switch to a harder exercise or variation.

Isometric Density Training Since a lot of skills in gymnastics are isometric in nature, the above scheme of counting reps will not apply. But Density Training can easily be modified to allow for progression in isometrics. If your goal is a 30 second L-Sit, then try this: Step 1: 15 holds of 4 seconds

Step Step Step Step

3: 5: 7: 9:

10 holds of 6 seconds 8 holds of 8 seconds 6 holds of 10 seconds 5 holds of 12 seconds

Like before, you will keep doing fewer holds until you get 35-45% of your target in each set. Then test yourself and either keep going or change to a new target.

Brice Strength Program The Brice Strength Program was developed by powerlifter Jason Brice. He used this for his bench press, but it can work for just about any strength exercise. In 4 months, his bench went from 335 to 420 lbs. He trained 5 days per week doing 1 set of 5 reps. He added 5 lbs to the bar every workout. When things got tough, he switched to ladders. When you do ladders, you start with a set of 1 and then after a short rest you do another set with 1 more rep than the previous set. You continue on taking rests as if you had a ghost training partner sharing the bar (or rings) with you. So, you do a set, then your ghost partner does an equivalent set, then you do your next set, etc. Once you reach a set where you struggle to complete it (but not failing), then drop back to 1 rep and climb back up. A ladder might look like this: 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,1,2,1,1 He would train with ladders for 2 weeks and then drop 10 lbs off the bar and start doing 1 set of 5 and adding 5 lbs to the bar every workout. His results from this simple program speak for themselves. For pullups, it is more appropriate to add 2.5 lbs per set, since the potential max loads are much lower than with the bench press. This training method is simple, effective and very low in volume. This is the type of strength training that I recommend if you already have a complete fitness program, such as CrossFit, but want some supplemental strength work.

Greasing the Groove This is a training method designed by Pavel Tsatsouline. The idea is to train as often as possible in mini-workouts spread throughout the day. You might do a set of pullups once every hour and do about 40-60% of your max reps each time. This training method is effective because it improves your neurological efficiency, or skill, in the movement. Every human movement is the sum of muscle activation and relaxation. To move a joint, you have to contract one muscle, while its opposite relaxes. If they are both equally tense, then no movement will occur. Part of getting stronger is not just being able to contract harder, but also relaxing the right muscles at the right time. In complex movements, the tensing and relaxing sequence becomes a complex symphony. It all happens without consciously thinking about it (for the most part). In simple movements, it's of course possible to "think into the muscle", as bodybuilders are fond of saying. But when you get into more complex movements, you have to "think into the movement". Which muscles are firing and when is secondary, not a primary focus. Sometimes thinking about a specific muscle during a movement can throw you off and cause "analysis paralysis". Your body is an adaptive organism and always moves towards increasing efficiency. When you first learn a movement, not all of the neurological connections are in place.It's like driving a car. You have the accelerator and the brakes, but thousands of wires connect them to the engine and some of the wires connect in the wrong place. What training for neurological efficiency does is take these wires and re-connect them in the right places. You are literally re-wiring your central nervous system. In a given movement, when you had been stepping on the accelerator and the brakes at the same time, you are now getting pure acceleration. Instead of building bigger muscles, you are building smarter muscles. Since a gymnast has to "carry his own engine", any type of training that improves his strength to bodyweight ratio is beneficial. Generally, Grease the Groove has been applied to a very narrow focus, such as a single exercise. I have experimented in the past with doing more complete miniworkouts spread throughout the day. For example, I would do one round of a multi-round CrossFit workout several times a day. I might end up totalling double or even triple the actual number of rounds called for by the workout. This type of

training worked great for 2-3 weeks, but then I lost "wind". My efficiency had definitely improved, but my ability to sustain exertion started to decline. If you try this approach, I would recommend not doing it more than twice a week. If you are doing it for a specific skill, then you can do it 3-4 times a week stacked on top of your normal workout program. You can read more about Grease the Groove training in this article by Clarence Bass.

The EXF Pullup Program This is a program for improving your pullups and getting more reps. There are a few different principles involved here. These concepts are derived from studying the world's best strength and fitness coaches. And these concepts work just as well with any other exercise. We are just using the pullup as a platform to demonstrate the concepts. Most programs you find for pullup training basically work by getting you to do a lot of pullups. Some of them break up the workload into mini-workouts spread throughout the day. This isn't too bad and you can apply that line of thinking with the EXF Pullup Program. Other programs involve doing long workouts. The one commonality is that they all involve doing a lot of pullups. This makes logical sense and it does work. However, you hit a point of diminishing returns, where more work leads to smaller and smaller gains. For this reason, we approach the problem of developing gains in pullups from multiple directions. If you attack your target head on with a singular approach, you will hit the point of diminishing returns much sooner. Before getting into the program itself, I will explain some of the concepts that make this program work. And yes, it does work for other exercises.

Bracketing This is the strategy of approaching a problem from multiple directions. It basically means that you will train sometimes above and sometimes below your goal. You will jump back and forth, with your target in the middle. If your goal is to run a mile in 6 minutes, then sometimes you should run as far as possible within 6 minutes. And other times you should run the mile as fast as possible. And at other times, you should try to run at a 6-minute-mile pace for as long as you can sustain that speed. In this way, you are approaching the problem from three different directions. For pullups, this means you will sometimes perform the target reps at lower loads, fewer reps at higher loads or as many reps as you can manage at the

target load. In this case, the target load is bodyweight. As you can see, there are strong similarities between the running program and the pullup program. Bracketing is a powerful strategy for reaching any goal.

Overstrength Strength is the foundation of all physical qualities. If you cannot perform a single rep of an exercise, then your endurance in that exercise is also zero. With overstrength training, your goal is to train a movement at higher intensity than your target load. As a result, when you are actually doing the targeted load, it will feel lighter and easier. The cool thing about overstrength is that the benefits kick in with your very first rep. If you train for a 10 minute fight, but the other guy knocks you out after 2 minutes, then you never got to use your endurance. Strength always comes into play first! For overstrength, there are a lot of potential options. One is to add weight. Weighted pullups are an excellent way to gain strength. You can use a weight vest, weight belt or even hold a dumbbell or kettlebell with your feet. Another option is to train using gymnastics progressions for the front lever and iron cross. By doing this, you are training movements that are above and beyond the pullup in terms of strength required, but use the same muscle groups. Another option is using a more explosive movement. You can do kipping muscle-ups, clapping pullups or flying pullups (jumping up to a higher bar). These are all great options. For your overstrength training, you can use 3 to 5, Density Training with low reps or Brice Strength as your workout progression.

Extended Set Training If you have aspirations of getting high numbers of pullups, you need to develop endurance, in addition to strength. Since the key principle in the EXF Pullup

Program is bracketing, we need to have "understrength" to go along with overstrength training. Extended Set Training is pairing two related exercises to reach a specific number of reps. One exercise will be harder than the other. And the easier exercise will be used to extend the set. Extended Set Training will give you the most realistic simulation of actually doing your targeted number of reps. For example, the first thing you need to do to get a big number on pullups is hold on to the bar long enough. If your hands aren't on the bar, you're not in the game. If your goal is 20 pullups, then you need to be able to stay on the bar for the amount of time it takes to do 20 pullups. This means at least 40 seconds. So, after a set of pullups, you will hang onto the bar until 40 seconds have elapsed since you started the set. Another example of this would be to pair kipping pullups with kip swings. If your goal is 50 kipping pullups in a row, then first you need to be able to do 50 kip swings in a row. This is a good intermediate goal to set. Once you get this, then start adding a few kipping pullups to the start of the set. Start with 5 kipping pullups followed by 45 swings. Then you do 10 pullups followed by 40 swings, etc. Keep replacing swings with pullups and eventually you will close in on 50. Here is a chart of a progression from zero pullups towards 20 consecutive strict pullups with 20 lbs of weight added. At each step, the previously hard exercise will become the extender and a new hard exercise will take its place. The more intermediate steps you design, the quicker you will progress towards your goal. Step Step Step Step Step Step

1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6:

Bar Hang for 40 Seconds Kip Swings plus Bar Hang. (start at 5 kip swings and work up to 20, every set lasts 40 seconds) Kipping Pullups plus Kip Swings (start at 5 kipping pullups and extend the set to 20 with kip swings) Strict Pullups plus Kipping Pullups Weighted Pullups plus Strict Pullups (hold a 20 lbs dumbbell in your feet, drop it after 5 reps and then extend the set) You reach your goal of 20 weighted pullups!

At each step, you gradually add more reps and take away from the "extender exercise". So, at Step 3, you will start at 5 kipping pullups and 15 kip swings. You will work your way up to 6,7,8,9,10, etc, kipping pullups and extend the set with kip swings for a total of 20. Once you reach 20 consecuitive kipping pullups, then you are ready for the next step. This is a powerful method of training! And it doesn't require a ton of volume, so you can safely add a set of Extended Set Training before your main workout and

not burn out. Pairing this with some overstrength work is a simple method of bracketing your way to pullup excellence.

Variety If you are training for higher reps, you need variety, otherwise it is easy to burn out. Bracketing is by definition a form of structured variance around a specific target. There is a common saying in strength training that "specificity rules". And they even give it a scientific sounding name, the SAID Principle (specific adaption to imposed demands). Let's throw it out the window! The evidence coming out of CrossFit and other programs is showing that non-specific training can create sports specific adaptations. Several distance runners and Olympic lifters have tried incorporating some CrossFit training and subsequently hit new personal records. The problem with the SAID principle is that some people take it too far. Training outside of your comfort zone or the specific demands of your sport can yield insight into weaknesses you might have. You might discover a lack of flexibility in your shoulders or weakness in your hips. Just the hormonal response of fitness training can stimulate performance gains in other areas. In any case, variety is an important component of any program, even one that is oriented towards a specific goal such as pullups. What is the correct way to incorporate variety into your training? That's a difficult question to answer. But in general, when you are doing overstrength and extended sets, you will progress through a series of different exercises by design. It's also okay to do overstrength with weighted pullups one day and front lever progressions in the next session. Or you can switch according to the 3 to 5 Rule. Almost all of the training methods in this book are based on the concept of gymnastics progressions, which is a form of structured variance. Unlike barbell strength progressions, where the path between 300lbs and 400lbs is a straight line (although some powerlifting coaches are more creative and less linear than others), you have to take a more branched approach with bodyweight exercises. The path between two points might alternate between using leverage as a progression, loading or de-loading or even switching surfaces as a progression. Switching from bar to rings is one example of that. You will sometimes veer away from your target in two different directions at the same time, but ultimately, you will keeping moving

towards your goal. Variety just for the sake of variety is okay, but gymnasts use variety in a very purposeful manner. I think this book is unique in teaching variety as a tool for progression. It is a thinking man's approach, so you need to think hard about creating intermediate steps when you design a progression. My goal is to give you the tools, but you have to supply your own goals and create your own plan of action for reaching those goals.

Measurement and Testing Accountability is one of the biggest keys to success in all aspects of life. Physical training is nice in that it is generally easy to measure and test. You should test your max at least every 5-10 sessions. Some people suggest following a Fibonacci sequence. If you're into rocket science, give this a try. Read the wikipedia article on "Fibonacci Sequence" for more info on how these numbers came about, but basically it means testing yourself on days 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34... The use of Fibonacci sequences for physical training has been written about in the book "Consistent Winning". It's NOT necessary, but some people find this stuff fascinating. If you are not one of them, then just test yourself once every week or two with a max set of pullups. One implication of the Fibonacci sequence is that your testing will be less frequently over time. This makes sense, because for a top athlete, a max effort is far more taxing than for a beginner. However you choose to test yourself, when you find your progress starting to stall, then it's a good time to change your training approach.

Programming The actual program depends on what other activities your are doing. Don't add too much volume if you are already doing a fitness program that includes a lot of pullups. Here is an example of someone who follows a 3-1 format (3 workouts for every 1 rest day). Day 1 Overstrength WOD Day 2 WOD Day 3 Extended Set WOD Day 4 Rest In this example, you are having one overstrength day and one extended set day in your 3 day cycle. If your fitness program is already very pullup intensive, then you can try this template. Day 1 Overstrength WOD Day 2 Overstrenght WOD Day 3 WOD Day 4 Rest You can do some overstrength work on your rest day if you feel you are well recovered from the previous cycle. If not, do some recovery work or just take it easy. I like to hit strength two days in a row and then take two days off, but you can try alternating days of overstrength work. It might also depend on your

recovering level and what workouts you have to do in that cycle. If you are not doing a full fitness program, then here is a more comprehensive pullup program. Day 1 3 to 5 Strength Day 2 Density Training Day 3 3 to 5 Strength Day 4 Rest Day 5 Density Training Day 6 3 to 5 Strength Day 7 Density Training Day 8 Rest Repeat

Selecting a Method How do you choose between all these great methods of training? Here is a comparison chart to help you decide. Program

Volume

3 to 5 Strength Brice Strength Extended Set Training Density Training Grease the Groove CrossFit

3-5x target 1x target 1x target 2x target >60% Target High

Loads High High Low Medium/High High Medium

Frequency Medium High High Medium Extremely High Medium/High

Committment Level Medium Low Low/Medium Medium/High Medium High

Unstructured Training Sometimes it's fun and productive just to play around and experiment. When you first get your rings, here are some fun workouts for getting familiar with the feel of the rings in a variety of exercises. Even though the whole point of this book is progressions, structured variance and measurement and testing, unstructured training can often yield new insights or spark a new interest. It's okay to train just because you love to do it. Beginner 3x3 Skin the Cats tucked 3x5 Jackknives from Knees 2x10 Pushups 2x10 Hanging Knee Raises 1x10 Body Rows 3x20 second L-Sit with knees bent 5 Muscle-Ups (can be rowing or reverse muscle-ups) 2x10 Dips 2x10 Pullups Intermediate 3x3 Skin the Cats Piked 3x5 Jackknives from Feet with rings elevated 3x(5 Ring Flyes, 5 Reverse Grip Pushups) 2x10 Hanging Leg Raises 2x5 left x 5 right One-Arm emphasis Body Rows-alternating arms 3x20 second L-sit 10 Muslce-ups in smallest number of sets possible 2x15 dips 2x10 L-Hang Pullups Advanced 1 set of each (5 Crescent Pushups, 5 Ring Flyes, 5 Reverse Grip Pushups) with no rest in between. 3x5 Jackknives from feet 3 Back Levers with 5 second holds 2x5 Front Lever Pull-Throughs 10 One-Arm Body Rows each arm alternated

1 minute L-sit 20 Muslce-Ups in as few sets as possible 2x25 dips 2x10 Inverted Pullups

10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of your EXF Rings 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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Take them with you. They are designed to be light and portable. Take them with you to the park, on vacations, etc. Create your own exercises. The exercises shown in this guide are just a starting point. You can create your own exercises by changing your body position, the height of the rings, your hand placement and other variables. Attend an adult gymnastics class. Call your local gymnastics gyms and see what they have to offer. Master the basics. Learning something as simple as a support pays big dividends later. If something seems easy, you might be doing it wrong. Design progressions. In weightlifting, the path from point A to point B is very clear. You just add more weight. In gymnastics, you are stuck with the weight of your body, so you must be creative. If you are struggling to learn a skill, break it down into several intermediary skills and progressively learn those in order to build up to the harder skill. Adjust the height. One of the ways to vary the difficulty of an exercise is to adjust the height of the rings. For pushups, you can raise the height to make them easier, or you can even elevate your feet to make them harder. This is just one possible progression. Regularly visit www.ringtraining.com for new articles and participate in the online discussion forum. Do not train the same exercises or the same workout every day. Mix things up and train a variety of exercises. Design yourself a ring routine. This is what competitive gymnasts do and it is largely responsible for their incredible strength. A routine should be 5-10+ connected movements. You should not repeat a movement unless it has a different transition to or from another movement. Use the rings with your other favorite training tools. Mixing barbell, Kettlebell, running, rowing, calisthenics and other forms of exercise with ring training can lead to a very challenging whole-body workout. Visit crossfit.com for one great example of how this is done. Bonus! Tension is everything. I met Powerlifting champion Garry Frank shortly after he broke the world record. He was the size of a refrigerator, but soft-spoken

and friendly. We talked for a while about strength training and he said the key is body tension. And this is equally true in the gymnastics world. Coaches constantly tell their athletes to maintain tight abs and squeeze their glutes. Watch the Ring Strength DVD and you will hear Jordan Jovtchev mention this several times. You can't go wrong taking the advice of two of the strongest men on the planet!

In Conclusion I hope the EXF Rings and this book revolutionize your training program, or at least makes a positive impact. Ring Training is now being used by pro athletes, elite military units and the fittest men and women on the planet. You are joining good company every time you step up to the rings. No matter where you start, there is always a logical and efficient path to where you want to go. It takes curiosity and a problem-solving approach to get there, plus the tenacity to keep pushing when things get tough. But no matter where you are or where you're going, there are others right there with you. Please join the ring training community and share your experiences with us. Good luck with your training! Tyler Hass