How to Use a Pilates Ring

The short answer

Put the ring between your knees or ankles, lie on your back, and squeeze it to about a third of your strength while you do any ordinary mat exercise. That is the use, and it works immediately. Everything else is a variation on where you put it.

The ring — properly a magic circle, and also sold as a fitness circle or pilates circle — is a padded hoop with two handles that flexes when you press it. It is used between the knees, between the ankles, between the palms, or pressed against a wall, and it adds resistance to movements you are already doing rather than creating new ones.

Resistance is not the point

This is the thing that makes the ring worth owning, and it is almost never explained on the packaging.

A pilates ring provides very little resistance in absolute terms. You are not going to build strength by squeezing a padded hoop. What it provides is feedback: something to press into so you can feel whether the muscle you are supposed to be using is actually doing the work.

In a bridge, for example, almost everyone lets their knees drift apart and takes the work into the outer hips. Put a ring between the knees and the drift becomes impossible, so the glutes and inner thighs have to do their share. Nothing about the exercise changed except that you can now tell what is happening. That is the entire value proposition, and it is why the ring sits so well next to the ball, which does the opposite job by removing stability instead of adding feedback.

It also means the squeeze should be moderate. Pressing as hard as you can turns the ring into a grip exercise and recruits everything in your body, which is the opposite of useful.

Eight placements

1. Between the knees, lying on your back. The default. Add it to bridges, pelvic tilts, dead bugs, hundreds. Squeeze gently and hold throughout.

2. Between the ankles, lying on your back. Moves the work further down the inner thigh and adds a light hamstring involvement. Harder than it sounds.

3. Between the knees, seated. Sitting upright on the floor or a chair, squeeze and release slowly. The inner thigh work with the core holding you up.

4. Between the palms, in front of the chest. Press inward. This is the chest and front shoulder placement, and the one where keeping the shoulders down takes real attention.

5. Overhead, between the palms. Same press, arms extended above. Shoulders and upper back, and a good check on whether you can raise your arms without shrugging.

6. Behind the back, between the palms. Harder to set up, excellent for the back of the shoulders. Press lightly here.

7. Against a wall, one hand. Stand side-on, ring between the wall and one palm, press. A single-arm chest and shoulder placement that needs no partner and no floor space.

8. Under one foot, standing. Ring on the floor, one foot on the upper pad, press down gently. A balance and standing-leg placement, and the hardest to control — do this one last.

In every placement the pads go against skin or clothing with the handles clear of your body, and you keep pressure on throughout the movement rather than pulsing it unless the exercise specifically asks for pulses.

Which placement does what