Hey guys! I hope you are all doing well. Today I want to talk to you about one of my favorite warm up and cardio exercises: Rope skipping. All you need for that is a rope. That’s it. A rope.
Why is it so useful?
Rope skipping trains strength endurance, because the bouncing in place is very intense. It also promotes the coordination of different muscle groups than those you would use while running, for example. In addition to that, rope skipping supports the interconnectedness of the two hemispheres of the brain. As soon as a movement goes beyond the centre of the body, like crossing the arms in front of the body, the two halves of the brain have to communicate. It strengthens your skeleton as well and protects you from injuries. Enough good reasons? Let’s go!
How to do it correctly
- First, adjust the length of the rope a little bit higher than your hips. Then start with normal rope skips. Be sure to use both legs, one time under per jump.
- When you are comfortable with that, start a bit of a variation, for example only use one leg while jumping.
- Again, when you feel comfortable, switch to changing legs per jump.
- Of course you can always increase the intensity, if you want, You can do that by skipping. Simply pull up your knees while changing legs.
- If you are a more advanced ropeskipper, try doing a double under, by draggy the rope two times under per jump. This requires advanced coordination and also increases the intensity a lot.
- You are even more advanced? Great! Try implementing side swings in you ropeskipping routine. Here the interconnectedness of your brain comes into play. While doing normal rope jumps, swing the rope alternately on each side of your body. Then try to come back to normal rope jumps. It’s not as easy as it looks.
- Speaking of easy, why not do cross swings? While doing normal jumps, cross the rope with your arms. This requires a big deal of coordination and strengthens your arms as well. But be careful not to get tangled up.
- You mastered the previous exercises with ease? Or … you mastered them? Very good, now try forward and backward jumps. One leg always stays up front, while the other stays back. Now jump back and forth between the two.
- Almost done! The last exercise is the scissors jump. It is quite similar to the forward and backwards jumps, but instead of jumping back and forth between them, we are using both legs, only switching their positions. So with each jump, the other leg gets to be up front.
Nice, you did it! I hope you had fun with that exercise, I certainly did. You can’t get enough of my workouts? Just go to my YouTube-Channel, for each muscle group there is a fitting workout.
See you soon!
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