by When practicing for the one arm chin-up (OAC) , I purchased a pair of gymnastic rings to prevent elbow strain from practicing on the bar. However, I tried various other exercises on the rings such as the dip. Although I can do dips on the bar with 120lbs attached to me, on the rings I was barely able to do them with just my bodyweight. Furthermore, I was shaking immensely when doing them, meaning that a lot of my energy was going into stabilization. This was a humbling experience but also a very important one. It taught me that my stabilizers were weak since I was only practicing dips on the bars. Since swimming is done in an unstable environment (unlike land sports where the athlete is grounded), I believe stabilization work is vital. It is important to practice many exercises such as the rows, front-lever pull downs and dips on the rings.
“Everything new is a well-forgotten old” – Russian proverb
Although the TRX is good and is used by many swimming programs to work the stabilizers I believe the TRX is just a big marketing scam. It is just a copy of the original gymnastic rings. Furthermore, the TRX costs over $200 compared to the rings that cost less then $20 (because people are silly enough to pay $200 for nylon straps). Lastly, the TRX doesn’t allow for movements such as muscle-ups, dips and rows. You can do pretty much all the TRX exercises using the rings, but you can’t do all the rings exercises on the TRX.
Conclusion: Invest $20 on a pair of gymnastic rings to work on your reactive stability.
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