The Next Step After Ring Muscle Ups? (Changing My Mind On The Forward Roll)

You can do 3-5 strict ring muscle ups for more than one set. If you can’t, work up to this level. My last post outlaid a vast roadmap to success with the move on a basic level.

Being able to do it for repeated sets without form deterioration shows true ownership and a strong level of conditioning/understanding of the move. The question then becomes: what do you do next; where does it go from here?

Different people have different answers. I used to add weight as soon as I could do 5 reps nicely for sets. Ido Portal & his coaching team will take you down the forward roll/ring routine route, where you work on combining the muscle up with various other ring skills/moves, to challenge your development further.

Others may add reps almost indefinitely to where the world record could be under threat….

(The numbers are crazy high these days. I remember the good old days of my man Lee Wade Turner having the record! In fairness though, Lee had better form than almost all of the other ‘world records’ I’ve seen since).

But I guess it depends what camp you’re in and what your biggest influence is pushing, as to what path you’ll go down?

In the past I would add some weight and maybe set some set & rep goals with X amount of weight – usually things like 5kg for 3-5 reps or 10kg for 3 reps. Then when this gets consistent, start looking at things like the straight body muscle up, or even the wide ring muscle up, with and without the L-sit.

The idea of combos was an alien concept to me, apart from things like 3 muscle ups, 3 ring dips & 3 pull ups counting as ‘combos’. Anything like ring muscle up/multiple ring muscle ups, L sit, shoulder stand, forward ring roll etc just wasn’t something I ever really knew much about, or saw as a valid training option.

Mostly through ignorance though. And funnily enough, more recently I have been using & advocating some combos for the more advanced guys I coach, where you make the ring muscle up harder but by any means other than adding weight.

So for example, you may do pull ups before the ring muscle ups in a combo similar to the 3-3-3 example above. Or you may do wider/muted hip muscle ups instead of weighted, or play around with the tempo in different parts of the rep; fast pull to the chest followed by a pause, then a slow transition. Or vice versa.

There’s so many ways to modify it & challenge yourself without the risk/joint stress of added weight! And yet when some of the guys test their one rep max because they’re (stupidly) terrified of losing it, they find it’s as good as it was if not better. Thus proving the effectiveness of these combos.

If we were to break these options down further, we would find the avenue I used & have been using until now is mostly all pertaining to the muscle up itself. In other words: there’s no other complexity added. Whereas with the forward roll route or various ring move combo route, the complexity is there in abundance.

Hilariously, I only taught myself the ring roll a few weeks ago. I’d always known about it but hadn’t really valued it and maybe didn’t understand it fully? Or at least didn’t see its value?

Part of the problem is/was just how many are done badly or sloppily; tons of momentum and lots of throwing the body over the rings, completely defeating the purpose of the froward roll.

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When done properly (slowly & under full control) the forward roll is a great next step as it tests your transition more than a regular ring muscle up. As with a regular ring muscle up you can accelerate heavily from the bottom, and almost bypass the transition. Yet with the slow & controlled forward roll, you have to have a good transition despite the the legs are somewhat guiding you round.

You also need a very good false grip to stay locked on to the rings, while maintaining the necessary downward pressure at all times, to eventually convert the push to a pull.

And while all this is happening you have to have good body awareness to know where you are in space at all times. It took me a good while to get used to the ‘falling’ through/rolling through section at the start of the move, where the hips have to pass through the ring straps as the head leads the movement.

If you have a solid ring muscle up, good false grip & sufficient transition strength, this should be a simple case of ‘letting yourself go’ to where you get the hips through once or twice, and then you’ll no doubt end up getting the roll within a few attempts of this – which was the case for me.

Once you can do it it then becomes a case of doing it consistently; working it for 2 reps or more but maintaining that crucial slow speed, playing around with body lengths (tuck vs pike or even the straight body ring roll) and if this stage is ever reached, it opens the door to the harder cousin of the forward ring roll; the backward ring roll.

Normally tuck variations with bodyweight training are easier than straight leg versions but in the forward ring roll’s case, it’s the other way around. As when you stay tucked, you have more concentrated mass rolling around the rings (the pivot point) that you actually have to slow down, and when it comes to transitioning back over the rings, the legs can’t act as a counter-lever. If anything they’re pulling you down and you have to work against this. Which means a much tougher transition (TRY IT!).

The straight body ring roll takes it to a whole new level in terms of difficulty. This movement obviously encapsulates many much tougher moves all within one movement. The shoulder stand, the bent arm planche, the front lever row & front lever hold position, before finally finishing with the muscle up.

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The backward ring roll opens the door to more advanced skills such as the elevator (reverse muscle up), and despite being generally harder than the forward ring roll, also gives you more options to place it into a ring routine.

In terms of when to train for the forward ring roll, I would let this article almost be the guide itself; 3-5 reps of strict muscle ups is a minimum. Then work on slowing your single rep down, while combining that with work on the transition – being able to do 3-5 reps going from above the rings to below, and back and forth with control.

These prerequisites will make the ring roll a cake walk to learn, like it was for me. I was so well conditioned that it came easy once I knew what I was doing.

To conclude, the forward ring roll is a very good choice once you have mastered the basic muscle up & it’s a choice I fully endorse now. Maybe I will make a walkthrough guide for the skill on Instagram/YouTube Shorts if there’s enough interest?