Is exercise not really your forte? Well, we got you! We know exercising with a full cardio routine can sometimes seem intimidating. We’ve all been through the phase where we commit to doing a whole workout routine every two days. But after a while, that initial motivation you had can get lost. You start putting it off and say you’ll do it tomorrow. But when the time comes, you postpone it again. Slowly, you’ve completely neglected your workout routine and gained back those initial calories you decided to lose. Sometimes, your busy work-life schedule can get in the way of you maintaining a healthy body and diet as well. Some of us just don’t have the time to be working out three times a week! So, what’s an easy and quick way to help with your weight loss journey? Start rope jumping!
Get your hands on a jump rope and do it whenever you want! This is an easy and effective exercise that can help with burning away all those calories. Furthermore, you can do this exercise almost anytime and anywhere. A few quickies when you wake up in your bedroom, or a whole hour worth of jump roping in the evening! It’s up to you how you want to schedule it. But the glitz and glamour part of it all, is the benefits of jump roping.
What is Rope Jumping
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We’re sure that you’ve all done your fair share of jump roping back when you were kids. Somehow, this was the best fun we could ever have! Not just alone, but with friends as well. The endless amounts of tricks that we could do and come up with were up to our imagination. Most of the time, we even loved showing off tricks that others can’t do! Even at school, PE lessons used to have us use equipment such as jump ropes to exercise and play games. Remember when you used to battle against your friends to see who could do the most jumps? Good old days.
Nonetheless, rope jumping is a form of exercise that requires you to swing a rope around your body and jump over it. Ensuring that you don’t trip as the rope passes under your feet. What’s more, is that this is also a form of cardiovascular training as the constant movement elevates your heart rate. There are many ways you can use jump roping to train. There is also no right way. Some, even incorporate the arts of rope jumping into dance!
Benefits of Rope Jumping
1. Great Cardio
Tired of all the different cardio workouts you’ve been following? Maybe you can’t really remember all the steps and exercises packed into it. Jump roping, is an efficient cardio training as well and we guarantee that you won’t forget to jump over the rope! Jump roping actually helps elevate your heart rate quickly and involves several different muscles working together. That’s right, it’s not just your leg muscles that are straining! Depending on how fast you do rope jumping, it can be a high-intensity workout that helps with weight loss and burning calories.
2. Building Body Strength
Despite rope jumping being an enjoyable activity for kids, it can also help with building body strength. During rope jumping, you tend to exert your calves, legs and hamstrings more as they are the target area of this exercise. Furthermore, it also works on your core, shoulders and biceps. The best part about rope jumping is that you don’t even need to think about engaging your core. It just sort of happens naturally as you jump rope! No need to worry about forgetting to engage your core while exercising anymore.
3. Build Bone Density
Aside from assisting in building body strength, losing weight and burning calories, rope jumping is also great at helping to build your bone density. As your bone density tends to decrease with age, rope jumping is a great and easy activity to help increase that. By building up your bone density, you are also reducing the risks of conditions such as osteomalacia, osteoporosis, and the fracturing of bones. For the ladies, rope jumping helps improve the hip bone mineral density as well.
4. Increases Agility
If you’ve got the gist of rope jumping and are now doing tricks to impress, you know that jump roping can also help increase your agility. Since jump roping requires you to be quick on your feet, it also calls for a good hand, feet coordination. If you swing the wrong way or aren’t quick enough, you’ll trip over the rope. Thus, jump roping is a great way to develop both your agility and footwork. Jump roping can also be a benefit if you play sports that require you to change directions quickly.
5. Improves Coordination
As we said, you need a good hand, feet coordination to make sure you don’t trip over the rope. Or yourself. Simple rope jumping usually only needs you to coordinate your feet and hands. But for more extreme jumps and tricks, you sometimes need your eyes as well. When starting out, this may feel challenging for those that don’t have much coordination, to begin with. But with practice, you’ll soon get the hang of it and be able to keep a steady pace and pattern. Thus, you can create your own rope jumping routines to keep the activity feeling fresh! That way, you’ll never get bored.
6. Trains Power
After mastering basic rope jumping, you’ll be able to do tricks such as the double under. The double under is a jump-roping technique that asks for a higher and powerful jump. By practising this move, you can actually train to increase your power as well. If you are a volleyball player, this skill and increase in power can really help you up your game.
7. Better Balance
When jump roping, balance is another thing you need to be wary of. Since you are constantly jumping up and down or left and right during rope jumping, you need to re-establish your balance each time you land. So, by practising the art of jump roping often, you can also boost your balance! Don’t underestimate jump roping, because you also need that balance to jump up again. Or, you’ll be landing flat on your face!
8. Rope Jumping can Be Meditative
Some people, actually use rope jumping to better their mental health. So, not only can jump roping help burn calories and help with weight loss, but it can also improve your mental wellbeing. Although rope jumping seems pretty intense, some people can get lost in the rhythm and beat. Which, can be calming for them as they only need to focus on not tripping over and nothing else.
9. Improves Your Spatial Awareness
If you practice rope jumping on the regular, it can also improve your spatial awareness. This is due to the fact that when you are jump roping, you need to be aware of what is in front, behind and the sides of you at all times. Especially if you are jump roping in a small space, you need to be aware so that you don’t accidentally hit something with the rope or bump into things yourself.
10. Rope Jumping is Extremely Fun
Although it seems like a tough workout routine to help lose calories, rope jumping is just a lot of fun! As we mentioned, we used to do this activity as kids and we loved it! The best part was always when we started out not knowing how to jump rope, and slowly getting the hang of it. With consistency, you’ll be able to improve your skills and come up with your own unique and fun tricks.
