Jumping rope, not something you read about everyday now is it?
I used to be really bad at jumping rope growing up, I just lacked the coordination. I also always thought it was for girls (just something ingrained into my head at a young age). Well I noticed my junior of high school that most of the faster guys on the football team were frequently jumping rope out on the blacktop.
I decided that spring to work at it, chip away at the skill until I improved ten fold. Sure enough every day after football workouts I went out and jumped rope for a solid ~20 minutes (this was a lot then).
After about a month I got the hang of it and even learned how to pick up speed. My 40 yard dash time dropped half a second in 2 months of jumping rope.
Once in college though I found out there was an entire aerobics class for jumping rope, trainer and all for it. That’s when I really became skilled at jump rope, with the help of a coach.
I’ve been consistently jumping rope for at least 2-3 days per week for a minimum of 30 mins, and it shows. My calves are bigger than ever, my coordination has gone through the roof (something I lacked most of my life), my forearms have become noticeably stronger, I’ve learned how to control my breathing, it has helped me drop some body fat, and it’s taught me a lot of mental discipline. On top of all that it has also helped me become a leader since most who attend that class follow my lead and ask for advice on jumping rope etc. The trainer also lets me sub the class when he’s not available.
In that video are some cool tricks, and I actually know one of the guys in it. He’s a junior at UCF and his 14 year old sister is the world champion of jump rope (ya crazy huh? This was on ESPN a few months ago actually). He only started coming to that class towards the end of the year but nevertheless he helped me get to the next level and start doing really crazy tricks as seen there (although I’m not anywhere near that good), instead of just concentrating on the anaerobic/fitness/speed version of jumping rope which can become dull and boring.
Jumping rope is a great anaerobic exercise, and burns calories like crazy (since its anaerobic though your burning off glycogen way before fat, something Ill touch on later). I would recommend it for just about everyone as it’s cheap (you can spend 5 dollars at wal-mart or sears for a nice speed rope) and fairly easy to learn. Obviously this is barring physical disabilities or problems.
I myself have a shallow left femur, which doesn’t hold in my kneecap very well. On top of that the cartilage there is all torn up from dislocating my kneecap in high school many times. This doesn’t stop me from jumping though, and if anything it helps by strengthening my quadriceps-which have the most direct control over your kneecaps.
One of the few downsides to jumping rope though is the knee/back stress you’re creating. This is why it’s important to learn the proper technique for jumping rope, and double/triple jumping sparingly (the added height to the jump puts a lot of stress on your lower back and knees, however this is unrelated to my condition). I would recommend finding a class like I did to learn or starting off slow and doing your own research via google/wikepedia/youtube and maybe even a few books.
All in all though jumping rope is awesome, fun, challenging, shit all of the above. Get out and try it sometime, you just might like it and the benefits never stop coming.
See ya jumpin ;)
-Dream
