Adaptive Fitness

Wheelchair Ring Dips

An exercise that is quickly becoming my favorite is Ring Dips. These are so much more difficult than doing dips from parallel bars, which I have been doing for years. With Ring Dips there is no cheating, you get no momentum boost like you do on the bars. You must lower yourself slowly and under control. At the bottom you need to pause to keep your body in proper alignment which eliminates the rubber band effect of momentum. With bar dips you can fly up and down and begin to lose a little of the magic that dips can provide. That all comes back with Ring Dips.

Benefits of Ring Dips

  • Adds variety to your program.

  • Engages the core more than bar dips.

  • Eliminates momentum from doing the work.

  • Engages muscles all over the upper body.

The best comparison I can give is if you have ever done a bench press, incline press or military press from a Smith Machine. Compare doing the exact same weight from a smith machine and then do it from a completely free weight barbell press. Those movements are completely different animals. With the smith machine you really only need to focus on just pushing up the weight with as much force as possible. But with the barbell, you must also balance the bar and pay attention to a bunch of different things throughout the movement. Same thing when comparing Ring Dips with Parallel Bar Dips as you have so much more to focus on with Ring Dips to perform the movement.

In this video I am adding some weight via chains.

Wheelchair Close Grip Bench Press

Here is a video from Instagram of me doing a Close Grip Bench Press.

Amazing for the Triceps and Chest. You do NOT need to go any more narrow than Shoulder WIdth. Way too many people go WAY too close with their hands. This doesn’t engage the triceps and better, it only hurts your wrists.

I am doing 3 sets at 235lbs. With Double Progression, when I hit my total rep goal, I add weight the next time.

With any bench press movement, close grip or incline, I typically do warmup sets at 135, then go right into my work sets. All the work sets will be at the same weight as I am not going to waste valuable time transferring on and off the bench between every set to change plates. Its a waste of time and eats up our most productive lifting window.