Ring Dips: Owning the Bottom Position
Updated: 23 hours ago
Growing up swimming in the Philippines, I learned early that the fastest part of a stroke is built in its quietest moment. Swimmers call it the catch: the instant your hand sets its position in the water before the pull. Rush it and the pull slips. Own it and everything after it has something to push against.
Ring dips have their own catch, and it sits at the bottom of the rep. That's where the rings want to drift, your shoulders want to roll forward and most athletes stop controlling the movement and start just surviving it. Own the bottom, and the press takes care of itself. Lose it, and the rep becomes a shaky negotiation with unstable rings.
Let's take one ring dip apart, moment by moment, and look at what should happen in each.
IN THIS ARTICLE
Moment One: The Support You Start From
Every ring dip starts and ends in a support hold, and a weak support means every rep begins from an unstable place. At the top, your arms are straight and locked, the rings are close to your body beside your hips, your shoulders are pushed down away from your ears and your body is in a gentle hollow with legs together.
Many coaches teach a slight turn-out at the top, rotating the rings so your palms face forward a little. It adds shoulder stability and is part of good ring support. If you can't hold a steady support for 30 seconds with the rings still, that's your starting point, before any dips at all. I know that's not the exciting answer. When I put athletes on support holds first, a few look at me like I've forgotten what they came to do. A few weeks later, their dips look completely different.
Moment Two: The Descent
From the support, you lower yourself by bending your elbows, and the rings should stay close to your body the whole way. As you go down, lean your chest slightly forward and let your elbows travel back, not out to the sides. Your forearms stay roughly vertical, with the rings brushing past your ribs.
Speed matters here. A controlled descent of two to three seconds lets you feel where the rings want to go. Dropping fast into the bottom means you arrive there with momentum and have to fight to stabilize, which is exactly when shoulders get irritated. I used to drop into my ring dips like I was trying to get them over with. My shoulders let me know about it the next morning, and slowing down the descent was the first real fix I made.
Watch the angle of your torso as well. Staying perfectly upright pushes your shoulders forward at depth and makes the bottom feel cramped. Leaning too far, on the other hand, turns the dip into something closer to a push-up and lets the rings slide behind you. A moderate forward lean, with your chest over the rings and your elbows tracking back, is the position most athletes find strongest and most comfortable.
Coach's cue: Stable rings, strong shoulders: own the bottom before you press out of it.
Moment Three: The Bottom
This is the moment the whole rep depends on. In most CrossFit movement standards, a ring dip reaches depth when the shoulders drop below the elbows. That's a deep position, and it puts real stretch on the front of the shoulder and chest.
Owning it means three things. The rings are still close to your body, touching or nearly touching your sides. Your elbows point back rather than flaring wide. And your shoulders are active, not collapsed forward and sagging toward the rings. A useful check: you should be able to pause at the bottom for two seconds without the rings shaking apart or your shoulders rolling in.
If you can't reach full depth comfortably, don't force it. Work to the depth you can control and build from there. Discomfort from stretch and effort is normal. Sharp or pinching pain at the front of the shoulder is a reason to stop, reduce depth, and see a physio if it continues.
Moment Four: The Turnaround and Press
The turnaround is the switch from lowering to pressing, and a good one is calm rather than bouncy. Push the rings down and slightly toward your body as you straighten your arms, driving your chest back up and forward. The rings stay close. If they drift out, the press gets harder with every inch.
Finish the rep by locking out fully and returning to the support you started with, with a small turn-out if you use one. A rep that ends with bent arms and wandering rings starts the next one from a poor position.
Kipping ring dips use a hip drive to help from the bottom, and they have their place in workouts. But they only work well for athletes who already own the strict bottom position. The kip adds speed to a position you need to control first.
Building a Bottom You Can Trust
This is the progression I use when an athlete's ring dips break down at the bottom. Two short sessions a week, alongside regular classes, is a good guideline.
Ring support holds: 3 to 4 sets of 20 to 30 seconds, rings close, shoulders down.
Bar or parallette dips with a bottom pause: 3 sets of 5, pausing 2 seconds at depth.
Ring dip negatives: 3 to 4 sets of 3, lowering for 3 to 5 seconds, then stepping back up to the top.
Banded ring dips: 3 sets of 5 to 8 with a band across the rings for assistance, keeping full depth.
Paused strict ring dips: 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 with a 2-second bottom hold.
Move to the next stage when the current one feels controlled at full depth. For most athletes, the negatives and bottom pauses do the most work, because they spend time exactly where the rep is weakest. The first time an athlete holds that two-second pause without the rings wobbling, you can see the confidence change in their face.
Ring height and setup matter too. Set the rings high enough that your feet clear the floor at the bottom, and keep them at a width that lets them hang close to your sides. Rings that are too wide pull your arms apart before you even begin.
Stable Rings, Strong Shoulders
Ring dips reward patience. The athletes who build a controlled bottom position end up with stronger presses, steadier ring muscle-ups and shoulders that handle ring volume well. Respect the details of each moment in the rep, and keep showing up to the boring holds and negatives. Like the catch in the water, the quiet part is where the speed comes from.
If you want this kind of focused gymnastics work built into your training week in the right order, Sphere Programming includes short gymnastics development sessions designed to complement your regular classes.
Your turn. Tried this? Tell me how it went in the comments below. I read every one, and your questions help shape what I write next. If it helped, tap the heart so it reaches more athletes.
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Coach Fritz Bautista · Head Coach, ATHLETESPHERE
CrossFit Level 2 Trainer (CF-L2) ✓ · CrossFit Programming Certificate · MBA · Digital Marketing Certified · Coaching athletes from all walks of life online
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