Ring Rows: How to Do Them, Muscles Worked and Progressions

Ring rows are a bodyweight pulling exercise where you hang underneath a pair of gymnastic rings, keep your body in a straight line from heels to head, and pull your chest up to the rings. They train your upper back, rear delts and biceps, and the big selling point is how easily you can scale them: stand almost upright and they're gentle enough for a complete beginner, get your body horizontal with your feet up on a box and they'll challenge someone who already does pull-ups. All you need is a set of rings and somewhere to hang them.

How to set up for ring rows

Hang your rings from a pull-up bar, a sturdy beam, a garage joist or a solid tree branch. The rings should hang about shoulder-width apart, and you want enough space behind you to lean back without hitting anything.

Strap height and foot position are your two difficulty dials. A study on suspension straps found that as the strap length increased (so the handles sat lower), the body got closer to horizontal and less of your bodyweight went through your feet (Giancotti et al., 2021). Less weight on your feet means more on your arms and back. In practice:

• Easiest: rings at around chest height, feet set back so your body is at roughly 45 degrees or more upright.
• Middle ground: rings at about waist height, feet walked forward so you're leaning back at a steep angle.
• Hardest (feet on the floor): rings low enough that your body is close to horizontal at the bottom, with your arms straight and your back just clear of the floor.

Start somewhere you can manage 8 clean reps. You can always move your feet between sets, which is far quicker than readjusting the straps.

How to do a ring row

1. Grip the rings. Hold one ring in each hand with a full grip, thumbs wrapped around. Start with your palms facing each other (a neutral grip), which is how most people's wrists settle naturally.
2. Set your body. Walk your feet forward until you're leaning back at the angle you picked, arms straight. Squeeze your glutes and brace your abs so your body forms a straight plank from your heels to the top of your head.
3. Start with the shoulder blades. Before you bend your elbows, pull your shoulder blades back and slightly down. Think about tucking them into your back pockets.
4. Pull. Drive your elbows back and close to your sides, pulling your chest up towards the rings. Let the rings turn as you pull; most people find their palms rotate slightly up towards the ceiling at the top.
5. Finish the rep. Stop when the rings touch the sides of your chest, around the bottom of your ribcage. Pause for a beat and squeeze your shoulder blades together.
6. Lower under control. Take about 2 seconds to straighten your arms fully, keeping the plank. Let your shoulder blades spread a little at the bottom, then start the next rep.

Muscles worked

The ring row is an upper-back exercise first, with a lot of help from your arms and a steady core demand on top.

• Upper back (main movers): the latissimus dorsi, middle and lower trapezius and rhomboids pull your shoulder blades together and your arms back.
• Rear delts: the back of your shoulders works hard, especially if you let your elbows flare out a little.
• Biceps and forearms: they bend your elbows and hold onto the rings, so your grip gets a decent workout too.
• Core and glutes: your abs, lower back and glutes keep your body straight. Sagging hips are a sign they've switched off.

The research backs this up. In one electromyography (EMG) study, 28 people did rows on suspension straps, and the high row and wide "horizontal abduction" row recruited the upper, middle and lower trapezius and posterior deltoid at more than 60% of their maximum voluntary contraction, a level the authors considered enough for strengthening (Youdas et al., 2021). A similar study on inverted rows under a portable bar found very high activation (above 61%) in the lats, biceps, lower trapezius and rear delts (Youdas et al., 2016).

Benefits of ring rows

You can scale them to any level. Very few exercises cover the gap between "can't do a pull-up" and "can do 10 pull-ups" as neatly. Every step your feet take forward makes the row a little harder, so progress is smooth rather than a big jump.

They're kind to shoulders. Because each ring hangs from its own strap and spins freely, your hands find their own path. You aren't locked into one grip the way you are on a straight bar, and that freedom suits plenty of people with fussy shoulders or elbows.

They balance out all the pushing. Most home workouts lean heavily on push-ups and dips. Adding horizontal rows evens out the work around your shoulder blades, which helps your posture and keeps the front of your shoulders from doing all the work.

They build towards pull-ups. Ring rows train the same pulling muscles and teach shoulder blade control. If a pull-up is your goal, they belong in the plan along with assisted pull-ups.

The kit is cheap and portable. A pair of rings costs a lot less than a cable machine, packs into a small bag and hangs from a door frame bar, a beam or a tree in the park. Our guide to the best gymnastic rings in the UK covers the options.

Common mistakes

Letting the hips sag. When your hips drop, you're no longer rowing in a straight line and the rep gets easier than it should be. Squeeze your glutes hard and keep them squeezed. If you can't hold the plank, stand a little more upright.

Shrugging up to your ears. If your shoulders rise as you pull, your upper traps are taking over. Set your shoulder blades back and down before each rep, and keep your neck long.

Cutting the range short. Stopping a few inches from the rings, or not straightening your arms at the bottom, robs you of the hardest part of the movement. Touch the rings to your chest and get to full lockout each rep, even if that means changing your angle to hit the target reps.

Flaring the elbows straight out. A wide elbow position shifts more work to the rear delts and can irritate the front of the shoulder if you overdo it. Keep your elbows around 30 to 45 degrees from your sides for the standard version.

Gripping the rings dead still. Holding the rings fixed in a palms-down position fights the natural rotation that makes rings worth using. Relax your wrists slightly and let the rings turn as you pull.

Rushing the lowering. Dropping back down in half a second wastes half the rep. Count 2 seconds on the way down.

Variations and progressions

Once you can do 3 sets of 12 to 15 good reps with your body close to horizontal, try these. They're roughly in order of difficulty.

• Feet-elevated ring row. Put your heels on a box, bench or step so your feet sit level with or above your hands. This puts more of your bodyweight through your arms. In one study, the feet-elevated suspension row worked out at about 73% of the 1-rep max intensity measured on the straps (Vural et al., 2023), and the authors found feet-elevated versions tended to produce higher muscle activation than feet-on-the-ground versions.
• Tempo ring row. Take 3 to 4 seconds to lower and hold the top for 2 seconds. It's a simple way to make the same angle feel much harder without changing the setup.
• Wide ring row. Turn your palms to face your feet and pull with your elbows flared to about 90 degrees. This is a better choice if you want to bias the rear delts and middle traps.
• Archer ring row. Pull with one arm while the other arm stays straight and slides out to the side. The straight arm helps a little, so this is the stepping stone between two-arm and single-arm rows.
• Single-arm ring row. Hold one ring, let the other hang free, set a more upright angle than you'd use for the two-arm version, and pull without letting your torso twist. Your core works overtime to stop you rotating.
• Weighted ring row. Once feet-elevated rows are easy, a vest or a loaded backpack adds load in small, steady steps.

How ring rows compare with inverted rows and TRX rows

All three are horizontal bodyweight pulls, and they scale the same way: the more horizontal your body, the harder the rep. The differences come down to what you hold.

	Ring row	Inverted row (bar)	TRX row
What you hold	Two free rings on separate straps	A fixed bar	Two handles on a single anchor
Grip freedom	Rings rotate and width is adjustable	Fixed width and grip	Handles rotate, width set by the anchor
Stability	Least stable, so more work holding position	Most stable	In between
Easiest way to scale	Move your feet or lower the straps	Raise or lower the bar, or move your feet	Walk your feet forward or back
Best for	Shoulder-friendly pulling at any level	Loading up and tracking progress	Quick setup over a door

The inverted row on a bar is the easiest to load and the simplest to standardise, which helps if you like tracking exact progress. A TRX or similar sling trainer is the quickest to set up, since you just loop it over a door and adjust one strap. Rings sit between the two: a little fiddlier to set up, but the free rotation and independent straps make them the friendliest option for wrists and shoulders. If you don't own any of these yet, our inverted row alternatives guide covers swaps you can do with a table or a resistance band, and the best suspension trainers in the UK roundup compares the TRX against cheaper sling trainers.

If you're choosing between rings and a suspension trainer, rings win if you also want dips, support holds and eventually muscle-ups. A good place to start is a wooden set such as the GORNATION rings.

Check GORNATION wooden rings on Amazon

Sets and reps

Pick an angle that lets you hit the rep range below with clean form, then make it harder once you reach the top of the range on every set.

• Beginners: 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps at a fairly upright angle, 2 to 3 times a week. Rest 60 seconds.
• Strength and muscle: 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps at the steepest angle you can manage, or feet elevated. Rest 60 to 90 seconds.
• Pull-up prep: 3 sets of 6 to 8 slow tempo reps, paired with scapular pull-ups and a few negative pull-ups.
• Circuits: 2 to 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps with 30 to 45 seconds rest, alternating with push-ups.

Ring rows pair naturally with a push exercise. Superset them with push-ups or dips and you've got a balanced upper-body session in about 20 minutes. If you want a full weekly structure, our calisthenics workout plan slots ring rows in alongside the rest of your bodyweight work.

When feet-elevated rows feel easy for 3 sets of 12, it's a good time to start working on pull-ups properly, if you aren't already. A pull-up bar doubles as an anchor for your rings, so the two pieces of kit work well together.

Recommended reads

1. The best gymnastic rings in the UK
2. The best suspension trainers in the UK
3. Inverted row: how to do it and muscles worked
4. Pull-ups: technique, muscles and progressions
5. The best pull-up bars in the UK