Workout Description

Why This Workout Is Medium

While ring dips are a challenging bodyweight movement requiring upper body strength and stability, the tempo prescription (5-second negative, 3-second pause, explosive up, 3-second pause) significantly reduces the volume an average athlete can achieve. The controlled tempo prevents muscular failure from high reps and provides built-in recovery between reps. Most CrossFitters can perform some ring dips with this tempo, making it accessible yet challenging.

Training Focus

This workout develops the following fitness attributes:

• Stamina (8/10): High muscular endurance demand on triceps, chest, and shoulders due to max rep format with controlled tempo.
• Strength (6/10): Significant upper body strength requirement for ring dips, especially maintaining control through the prescribed tempo.
• Flexibility (4/10): Requires good shoulder mobility and range of motion for proper ring dip depth and lockout position.
• Endurance (3/10): Moderate cardiovascular demand as the workout progresses and fatigue accumulates, but not primarily aerobic in nature.
• Speed (2/10): Very low speed demand due to strict tempo requirements that prevent fast cycling between repetitions.
• Power (1/10): Minimal power component due to controlled tempo (5 second negative, 3 second pause) eliminating explosive movement.

Movements

• Ring Dip

Benchmark Notes

This workout is a max rep tempo ring dip test with a 5-second eccentric, 3-second pause at bottom, explosive concentric, and 3-second pause at top. This creates an extremely demanding time-under-tension protocol that severely limits rep capacity compared to regular ring dips. The closest anchor is Elizabeth (21-15-9 squat clean + ring dip), but that uses regular ring dips in a couplet format. For tempo ring dips as a standalone max effort test, I'm analyzing the movement demands: Each rep takes approximately 11+ seconds (5 down + 3 pause + 1 up + 3 pause), making this primarily a strength endurance test rather than a power output test. Elite athletes might sustain 15-20 reps before form breakdown, while advanced athletes hit 10-15 reps, and intermediate athletes manage 5-10 quality reps. The tempo prescription makes this exponentially harder than regular ring dips - where an elite athlete might do 50+ regular ring dips, the same athlete would struggle to maintain proper tempo beyond 15-20 reps. Factoring in the cumulative fatigue from the eccentric loading and isometric holds, I'm setting benchmarks that reflect the extreme difficulty of maintaining perfect tempo throughout. L10 represents elite gymnastic strength (95+ reps), L5 represents solid intermediate capacity (55 reps), and L1 represents basic ability to perform several quality tempo reps (15 reps).

Modality Profile

Ring Dip is a bodyweight gymnastics movement performed on rings, requiring no external load or cyclical cardio component.