Two accessories to increase your weight

Bar and your body. What else do you really need? Fitness minimalists and purists with body weight have long been saying "absolutely nothing", it may be shocking to hear anything else.

But in recent years, the two main subjects of gymnastics training, rings and paralets, slowly crawled out of the Olympic training centers into ordinary gyms and boxes. The point is that they have a fun way to perceive things that you think you have good, such as pull-ups, dips or leg lifts, and instantly complicate them. A good thing? They are very easy to integrate into your home gym, and you can often find versions of them on most playgrounds. Become stronger on them, and you will also create the type of power and bodily awareness that can be firmly carried to the bar – and everything else.

To understand why everyone should consider adding rings and a parallet to their training arsenal, I turned to the long-standing authors of Bodybuilding.com Alu and Danny Cavadlo, the authors of a new guide to these tools called “Next Level Strength: End Rings and Parallel Program” .

You guys are known as inflexible minimalists: barbell, earth, body. Why bother with rings, not just a bar?

It's no secret that we are big fans of the pull-up bar! You can do a lot more with a simple straight bar than many people realize. And although many of the exercises in our new book can also be performed on a lifting bar, there are many subtleties that make them completely different on the rings.

For example, rings require additional recruitment. Unlike fixed traction, rings float freely and are unstable. They can swing back and forth, swing from side to side and even rotate. It makes your body more stabilize itself.

Training with rings can also be more sparing for joints, especially on the wrists, shoulders and elbows. By allowing your hands to spin, your joints can move more individually.

The pull-ups on the rings seem … tougher. The number of representatives is definitely declining. The same goes for failures and all types of leverage. Does it get easier over time?

When you are new to training in the ring, this can be a real shock to the system! However, with practice, your body will adapt and become stronger. But this is true in almost everything: we are getting better at what we are used to doing.

However, dips and pull-ups will almost always be more difficult for rings than when performed on a stable machine.

Looking at the paralets, most people think: "L-sits." And then they run screaming. What else is a good newsletter for?

People really hate L-sits that

Seriously, raising hands with paralysis makes many exercises more accessible than when they are done on the ground. Often beginners lack the flexibility and / or strength of the core. Having extra clearance under your body can help change your first L-sit.

And yes, there are many other exercises that you can do with paralysis besides L-sit. Our new book, The Power of the Next Level, contains many movements that most people have never encountered elsewhere, not to mention the many variations and adaptations of some classic art exercises.

How can these two tools help people get more out of weight training? What special skills or strengths do they help develop?

Using exercise rings, such as pull-ups and dips, makes you slow down and focus on better control over your movements. It's easier for people to plop around a stable bar and rely on momentum to carry them through representatives, but you can't do it in the rings.

As for parallet, wrist pain is one of the most common problems associated with floor exercises such as boards, L-sitting, and handstand. Because paralets allow your wrists to remain neutral during these and other exercises, they offer a great way to get around – and possibly help fix – any problems that might interfere with your wrists.

In addition, squeezing parallettes during these exercises creates more tension in the upper part of your body, which can contribute to a closer connection of muscles and muscles. This will help increase strength, especially with regard to your grip, core and shoulders.

Crossfit and gymnastics workouts have made these two instruments more popular in recent years. But where do people make mistakes when they start training them?

CrossFit gets a bad rap from many trainers, but we think it has done far more good for the fitness community than harm. One of the best things CrossFit has done is to train more people to train with their own weight, especially with rings.

As for where people go wrong, the key is to use the right progressions and slowly master the basics before moving on to more complex exercises. This is part of why “Next Level Strength” includes a detailed progressive program, warm-ups, “grabbing tips” and much more.

For someone who has done some serious training, but not with these tools, what good purpose should you strive for?

Tight muscles are a great long-term goal for a beginner in the rings. It will take time, but the returns can be huge. And push-ups on a handstand with a full range of motion is an excellent goal to aim for parallets.

However, there are many goals to strive for, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Check out “Next Level Strength” for much more.