What came first, the ring dip or the pull-up?

Yesterday, we did "Wilmont" at Santa Monica Muscle Beach.  A six round couplet of air squats and ring dips.  The 300 air squats I don't recognize as being a huge problem for any of our athletes.  Now the 150 ring dips, that is a huge order of volume!  I knew before we decided on doing this workout that many of us would struggle on the rings.  Weather it was lack of arm/shoulder strength, the ability to be stable and balanced on the rings, not being able to lock out at the top or touch your armpit to the ring. The large volume would surely identify a weakness.

If the solution to crappy ring dips was to do more ring dips, then this post would be over.  The reality is that the problem is actually your push-ups.  If you struggle with ring dips, pull-ups, handstand push-ups, overhead press or bench press, then I will confidently bet that your push-up game is weak as well.

The push-up is as fundamental of a movement as it comes, but it is often underrated and overlooked.   Developing your push-up will come with a huge strength carry over to many other movements.  You may have heard me say this before, it is the foundation of all things press related.  Consider the list of movements again:  ring dips, pull-ups, handstand push-ups, overhead press, bench press.  Imagine yourself doing each movement.  You would absolutely benefit from developing the anterior shoulder, delts, pecs, and triceps.  It's as easy as the push-up.  Weak push-ups = weak ______ (fill in the blank).

Make it your immediate goal to improve your push-ups, today.  Modifying the push-up is a great way to teach the proper mechanic and range of motion.  We must progress through the modifications rather than rely on them to get us through the workout.

You often hear, "You have to crawl before you learn to walk.".   Well in this case, you need to be able to push yourself off the floor, in order to do anything else.