Basic Ring Strength Development Below are several areas of interest which I feel will help you to more effectively train on the rings. As one forum member mentioned, "I know stabilizer muscles blah blah blah", having heard it before however does not make it less true. The rings will move anywhere & anytime within 360 degrees. And the direction they will move will always be toward your weakest area. For those experiencing trouble with dips (in this category I would place anyone who cannot perform a dip and turn the hands out as described below), I would back up and first work on static support holds or at least be sure to work on them concurrently. Unless you can come close to achieving a correct static hold, you are pretty much spinning your wheels working on the harder variations. Basically a support hold is simply holding yourself up on the rings with straight arms. Eventually, to perform these in the most productive manner, they should be done with elbows straight (almost straight is still bent) and the hands turned out to 45 degrees. To visualize this, simply put your hands overhead in a chinup grip and, keeping that grip position, lower your hands to your side and then let them turn in slightly. For beginning ring strength development I would focus on support holds, front levers, and back levers. Once reasonable proficiency is achieved in support holds, then add dips which in turn progress to muscle ups which progress to handstand pushups which progress to reverse muscle ups (basically a bodyweight curl followed by a handstand pushup). Regarding form, a perfect muscle up should have no movement forward or backward of the upper body, simply a pulling & straightening of the arms. To make a muscle up harder (outside of adding weight), you can adjust the arm position used during the pull/push. Easiest is pulling the hands into the center of the chest, medium is keeping the hands in front of the shoulder, hardest is keeping the hands wide outside of the shoulder and not using a false grip. By the way, the record for muscle ups in our gym is 13 (they actually did 15-17, but only perfect repetitions were counted), and that is with no swinging, pulling up with no piking of the hips and no leaning forward of the chest, and finishing with elbows locked and rings turned out at the top for the repetition to count. This was just for fun one day. Outside of a few specific conditioning sequences designed to build event specific strength-endurance, I generally focus on power development. Usually we only do 3-5 reps and add weight where appropriate. Be sure to also include the basic bodyweight conditioning exercises mentioned in my article. These will develop the shoulder girdle and core strength that will allow you to progress to harder ring strength variations later. This short discussion is by no means comprehensive. I will go into extensive detail on ring strength development in the second of my upcoming books. Exercises, progressions, workout structure, equipment needed (including some specialized equipment that I have developed for my athletes) will all be discussed. FYI, the cross is much closer in nature to a pullup than a dip. The lats, shoulder girdle and biceps work extremely hard during a cross. The pecs are also working, but I feel they are secondary to the lats. The cross is essentially a combination of a straight arm dip with a straight arm pullup. Some world class gymnasts are actually able to pull up into a cross from a dead hang with straight arms. Some can also hold a cross with substantial weight hanging on their feet (one of my old college teammates could hold a cross with an extra 60lbs, while Brad Johnson mentions that Jasper Benincasa could hold a cross with 90lbs. extra weight!) Yours in Fitness, Coach Sommer