How do you grab the rings?

[Deft-Mastery]

How do you grab the rings/bars when you hang (FL, BL, chinups, etc.)?

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

The highlighted area is what you'll be hanging with, obviously.

Personally I use figure 2, the fingers. Does it make any difference?

[Alexander Moreen]

I mostly try to use a false grip all the time these days, since it shortens the lever arm and I need the practice anyways. Like the red in this:

[Tarun Suri]

Elite MS Paint skills in this thread.

[Joshua Naterman]

First of all, I am a HUGE sucker for any kind of graphical work. I love photoshop and photo editing. This is hilariously simple and efffective to me!

I thought I would illustrate how I hold the rings, bars, etc. The black is where most people put the grip. The green is where I grip if I am not using the false grip. I absolutely practice all of my holds, pull ups, etc this way. This is a large part of why I A) have a strong grip and B) why my wrists are extremely strong.

As I build my flexibility I will be switching around 1/3 of my work to the false grip.

[Leandro]

I use figure 1 for everything except false grip stuff.

Slizzardman, how is that, the grip with fingers gets the wrists stronger?

Even if that is true, that grip can't be used to ring skills, like, swings, uprises, inlocates....also swings on high bar....

I personaly use that figure 1 grip, with those gymnastic leather hand protectors, that I dont know the name in english, for all the strength work, except for pullups, that goes with the same grip with bare hands.

[Joshua Naterman]

I haven't tried any real rings skills that way, but I can do my plyo pull ups with that grip so I can't imagine that little stuff would be hard. I probably wouldn't swing like that, but then again I deadlift like that too. Well, when I used to deadlift lol! I can still do 450 for certain. Just fingers.

The finger grip strengthens your wrists because your wrist flexors are actually running up to your fingers. Look at your wrist as you move your fingers. You'll see. Those muscles become extremely strong when you just use finger grips for most of your work, and that makes you stronger in any movement involving wrist flexion.

Using the leather grips will make it impossible to use the grip I like, at least it looks like it. I've never used them.

[Leandro]

Hum, maybe I will alternate with this grip then. I feel the grip itself is stronger if I hold with knucles, bad for caluses lol...

[Deft-Mastery]

Originally I used to use the figure 1 grip, but I quickly noticed that I was getting too much calluses and stuff like that, because my hands moved a lot and many times I couldn't even finish my sets of chins/pulls because of the pain in my hands rather than getting tired, so one day when I was going to do my sets, the pain wouldn't let me so I started to use the fingers and haven't looked back since. It felt more steady and my hands didn't move and I don't get those friking calluses.

But yesterday it occured to me if you use your muscles more with one grip or the other, to consider whether I change grips or not.

[Coach Sommer]

For some exercises hanging by the fingers is fine, however if you do not learn to use both regular and false grips you will later be unable to progress onward to more advanced ring strength elements.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer