How to use the Traveling Rings

Before you begin, WARM UP!

If you’re on the rings and you hear pop­ping, snap­ping, creak­ing, then you need to stop and warm up and stretch your arms more.  I don’t mean sta­tic stretches, I mean ballistic/dynamic stretches that involve move­ment.  So start with slow and con­trolled arm cir­cles, shoul­der rolls, move your wrists around, do some neck rolls, you get the idea.  I often do stretches on the grass area and many other exer­cises before tack­ling the trav­el­ing rings.

How to travel from one ring to another…

Put some chalk on and remem­ber, if it’s your third round or more, you’re run­ning into dan­ger of rip­ping and you should prob­a­bly stop until your hand repairs itself (this may take 2–5 days depend­ing on how tough your hands are to begin with; mechanic hands vs mas­sage therapist).

1) Grab the first ring firmly with your dom­i­nant hand and RUN to the next ring.  It’s impor­tant you start with a lot of speed because the more speed you have, the eas­ier it is to main­tain that momen­tum.  For even more speed, hold ring #1 and run back and forth, kick­ing the sand each time so you get faster and faster so when you grab ring #2 you are start­ing with a lot of speed.

Here’s my rings tuto­r­ial video for start­ing with lots of speed:

2) Once you grab the next ring, PULL your back arm down (ring #1), RELEASE and you will fly to the next ring.

If you’re los­ing a lot of speed even though you’re pulling, it’s very likely that you’re pulling both arms.  Remem­ber, you’re only pulling the back arm down.  When you grab the ring, your arm stays straight.  So in other words, one arm is pulling and the other stays straight.

3) Now all you need to do is add a KICK to the pull so your legs don’t hang like dead weight.  So it’s ulti­mately a PULL AND KICK motion that gets you flying.

For some­one just start­ing out, kick­ing your legs straight out may be dif­fi­cult and not intu­itive right off the bat.  So when you pull, it’s eas­i­est to sim­ply bring both knees up to the chest like you’re doing a mas­sive ab crunch.  This way, the legs come up as well to help you swing even higher. Most peo­ple have the core-strength to do that.  How­ever, once you get this basic motion down, you can do way more than just bring­ing your knees up: You can prac­tic­ing kick­ing your legs or using your hips.

Tip #1: What you’re try­ing to do is lift your­self up so grav­ity will help you swing to the next one.  You could do this by pulling up your arm, kick­ing your feet, lift­ing your hips up or all three! The point is, don’t let your legs just hang idly like dead weight.  The more you throw your legs or hips up, the greater you’ll fly and lighten the load on your arm.

Tip #2: Look Through The Back Ring.  When you’re pulling the back ring, look back, make your palm face you (and not to the side which begin­ners com­monly do) and look through the ring.  This will force you to…

• Pull hard enough that you could at least be able to bring that ring in front of your face.
• Face your palm toward you, to help engage not only your biceps but your lats and other large muscles.
• Even­tu­ally, pull that back ring down even fur­ther, all the way to your hips to gain even greater speed!

Here’s a video of how peo­ple com­monly look when they first start! Let’s ana­lyze it a lit­tle bit!

You see she’s swing­ing from ring to ring by pulling the back arm and lift­ing her knee up.  Over­all she’s doing great and this is how most peo­ple start out (doing a ham­mer pull/side pull).  She could fly even higher if she lifts both knees up instead of just one.  The other lit­tle thing is that she’s not look­ing through the back ring.  If she tried to look back and look through the ring, it would nat­u­rally make the palm face her and she would have a stronger pull.

 

Tip #4: The Cross Pull. The cross pull opens up a whole new world as it changes the way you swing.  In regards to health, it alle­vi­ates a ton of pres­sure off your shoul­ders.  In regards to swing­ing form, it changes a lot.

When you grab the ring in front of you, imme­di­ately bring the ring across your chest.  Or anothre way of say­ing this is, bring the rings closer together.  Or another way to say this is, when you grab the ring in front of you, don’t just grab it and leave it there, bring it closer to the back ring.

• What doe sthis do?
• You’ll notice that expe­ri­enced swingers, when they do the pull, their chest isn’t fac­ing the side.  It’s always fac­ing the direc­tion they’re com­ing from.  So if we’re in santa mon­ica, on the big rings.  You’ll notice that when peo­ple pull their arm, their chest is fac­ing the bike rental shop and not to the side.

Tip #3: Prac­tice Fig­ure 8′s.  Here’s an exer­cise to get you to twist your hips and get your legs involved.  (NOTE: We’re NOT going to travel down the rings for this exercise.)

Hold a ring in each hand and hang.  Now kick your left leg to the right, twist­ing your hips and entire body.  As you come back to cen­ter, kick your right leg to the left.  Keep twist­ing your hips and scis­sor­ing your legs like this.  You may notice that you could kick or twist one side with much more force than the other.  Keep doing this and twist deeper every time.

Think about what’s going on and play around with this lib­er­ally!  The next time you travel down the rings, try to make these figure-8′s.  This too will open a new world of pos­si­bil­i­ties once you get your legs and hips involved.

Here’s a magic trick I learned from other videos: If you sim­ply look up, and fol­low the cen­ter pole that the rings are hang­ing from, you will be very smooth and it’s a very inter­est­ing effect because it cuts out all the think­ing.  Your legs and body will auto­mat­i­cally do what they need to do, to go that way.  So try look­ing UP, glanc­ing straight ahead only to catch the next ring.

Now let’s review some of the tips while watch­ing a video of some­one incor­po­rat­ing them!

Notice he gets a very fast run­ning start.

nd uses his abs and legs to help him swing (tip #1).
Notice when he grabs the sec­ond ring, his chest is not fac­ing the side but fac­ing the bike shop (where he’s com­ing from) (tip #4).
At exactly 27 sec­onds in, he’s twist­ing hips/scissoring legs (tip #3; try this sta­tion­ary first!).

In con­clu­sion…

What I told you is just some­thing to get you going.  What­ever vari­a­tions or mod­i­fi­ca­tions you want to do after­wards is totally up to you, so just PLAY PLAY PLAY!  Just like danc­ing, every­body does this UNIQUELY and there is no right or wrong way as long as you’re not hurt­ing your­self.  If you see some­one doing some­thing awe­some, just ask them after­wards how they built-up to that move and they are more often than not VERY happy to help.

I’ll leave you with this video that is an absolute amaz­ing show of creativity!