Are jumping ropes only for athletes or for little kids? Absolutely not. No, it is for anyone who wants to add a fun cardio exercise to their routine. You can shed more calories by using the jumping rope than spending the same amount of time going to jog. Check out some of the benefits of jumping rope to know why you should do this exercise more often.
Jumping rope or skipping rope is easily available and easy to carry either in the backpack or just in your regular handbag. You can take it anywhere, even when you are traveling.
Work should not come between your fitness. Travel with your jumping rope to take care of your health even when you are on a holiday trip and jump in the open air of natural beauty. It must be your go-to fitness tool that you can use in your living room or even bedroom too while you listen to your favorite songs or watch your favorite shows.
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Where to buy a jumping rope?
There are a lot of options available in jumping rope. Just collect your suitable skipping rope from a sports shop near you. You can get jumping rope in kid’s toy shops, but those lightweight ropes are not of good quality usually. But if that is the only option you have, then go for it as you can start with it then get a better one later.
You can always order gym jumping ropes online. These are usually easy to use and very super friendly with speed. After getting your jumping rope, adjust according to your comfortable range. The ropes are generally 8-10 feet long. You can shorten it or longer it by standing in the middle of the rope, see that it does not strangle your legs too much.
Benefits of Jumping Rope
At first, you need to choose a smooth and flat surface to do the exercise. A floor made of concrete or a yoga mat would be a nice option. If you plan to jump in a park, make sure you wear comfortable training shoes and avoid rocks, long grassy surfaces, or sticks where you’re jumping.
Let us now check out the various benefits of jumping rope, to know why you should do this exercise:
Improves Body Coordination
One of the key benefits of jumping rope is improving body coordination. The focus stays on the feet while you jump with a skipping rope.
The subconscious mind automatically gets the training on when to move or not without being much conscious about your leg movement. One of the other benefits of jumping rope every day is that you get to have light feet. Boxers use jumping rope in their training to make their move coordinated and make their feet much lighter while moving.
Decreases the chances of Injuries in Foot and Ankle
Jumping rope provides benefits to athletes and other people involved in sports like football, basketball, cricket, and many more. Athletes often get foot injuries losing control, and other sports players have injuries while suddenly stopping and starting their movement. Jumping rope increases the leg’s strength and works on your whole body muscles, especially the ankles and feet’ muscles. Increasing the coordination and the muscles strength one gets decreases the chances of getting injuries in the foot and ankle.
A jumping rope helps one to stay on the ball of the foot. Flat feet or being on the heels of the feet can hurt the ankle or foot. The movement eventually helps in sports like tennis and boxing.
Benefits of skipping rope for weight loss:
Jumping rope can be a better option to shed some calories than jogging for 30 minutes. You can burn 200 to 300 calories by jumping for 30 minutes. Although people to whom jumping rope is new might find it difficult to jump for 30 minutes continuously. Gradually, practice will increase stamina.
Jumping ropes can be fun and mobile
One can take the jumping rope anywhere without disturbing the fitness routine. It will help you maintain your fitness goal even when you travel for work or in school or go on a holiday.
Motivate your kids and lazy family members with tricks and double Dutch. Start competing with each other about how long, how high, how many jumps, how low or different tricks with jumping rope anyone can do. There are a lot of tricks which you can opt for with the jumping rope.
Strengthens Bone Density:
There are many studies and researches which have found jumping can strengthen bone density. According to research with athletes, doctors have found bone density is improves when one does skipping regularly.
Jumping rope can save you from the hassles of going to the gym or running, or buying expensive fitness machines. Although if you have any history of bone diseases or fractures, you must consult your doctor before opting for jumping rope.
Improves Cardiovascular/Heart Health
The American College of Sports Medicine said that jumping rope is very beneficial to improve aerobic conditioning. One of the best ways to take care of your cardiovascular health is to exercise with the jumping rope for 10-20 minutes. However, you need to know your limits as well. Do not push yourself too much as it can lead to disadvantages as well.
Jumping rope can improve your lung health. However, if you have a weak heart, you must consult a doctor.
Improve Efficiency of pulmonary/Breathing function
Skipping rope exercise improves stamina, cardiovascular health, and efficiency of the pulmonary and breathing functions. You will feel more energetic and less out of breath after a long good run or swim.
Improves mental health and boost the smart version
Jumping rope can aid in increasing the efficiency of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This helps in developing alertness, fast reading skills and makes you more aware. Although there is not much research to support these claims, it is believed that as your body coordination, muscular strength, bone strength, and reflexes improve, your brain would work much faster, making you smarter. Jumping also can refresh the mind while exhausting the body and reduce anxiety and depression by increasing blood circulation.
Helps to Stay Calm
The brain and bodywork at the same time while jumping with a rope. It is found that sportspersons like boxers and athletes are much calmer in regular life than others. If you see jumping rope exercise as a biomechanical approach, you would know that jumping rope combines angular momentum and circular motion. The body and mind also synchronizing is a vital benefit of jumping rope.
Accelerates the release of endorphins
Jumping rope accelerates the release of the hormone Endorphins. This hormone comes from the pituitary gland and central nervous system. The hormone cures the pain and the mood swings. Exercise generally accelerates the endorphins release but can be sometimes boring and intensive. Hence, jumping rope is a fun way to boost up the release of endorphins and light up your mood.
Let’s jump anywhere with the jumping rope
You can jump or skip with rope anywhere. Just find flat surfaces and start your exercise with a skipping rope. Enjoy the benefits of jumping rope anytime and anywhere.
Boosts up stamina and eliminate fatigue
In today’s day and age, one has to work round the clock. Sometimes fitness takes a backseat as everything is now at our finger by automatics machines. People lose stamina and find it difficult to allot time for fitness. Jumping rope is a great option as it can make you shed fat, calories and increase stamina. If you keep up jumping, then chances of fatigue also decrease.
Disadvantages of skipping rope
There are few disadvantages you might face while you do jumping rope exercise. It puts quite a stress on metatarsals, tarsals, and knees. If one has any history of Arthritis, knee injury, or fractures, one should not opt for jumping rope. It can cause severe pain or crucial injuries.
Patients with heart issues also should avoid jumping rope. Skipping rope workouts increases pressure in cardiovascular functions. It can cause fatal conditions for such patients.
Women must not opt for skipping during the menstrual period and pregnancy. In these cases, jumping rope could result in dangerous situations such as increased pain due to menstruation and even abortion during pregnancy.
Ground impact
There is a saying that nothing too much is good, and it applies to skipping exercise too. It makes you stand on the ground for a long time and in such an intensive way. Some researchers said that with each jump, the ground’s impact is approximately 140 kilograms or 300 pounds. So if one jumps 1000 times, then the impact pressure comes to the multiplication of 300 and 1000 i.e., 30000, which is very intensive pressure on the types and leg muscle. Sometimes it can cause you fatal results.
Although this is especially relevant for new people who want to explore this exercise, not for the athletes, they are very knowledgeable and get the right training before jumping with rope.
Initially jumping can be difficult
Beginners can find jumping rope difficult to handle initially. You might experience frustration and get annoyed as a beginner; you find it difficult to jump at a stretch difficult to continue. It takes some time of practice as nothing comes instant. Give time and be at it. You will find yourself jumping first 10, then 30, then 100, and many more.
Jumping rope provides limited conditioning benefits
Although jumping rope exercise provides quite a conditioning level, you do not have to do it excessively. Conditioning depends on other things also. There is no doubt the skipping rope can make you push the horizon with conditioning, but the benefit gets saturated at one point. It would help if you did other conditioning improvement exercises, too, with jumping rope workout.
The speed of jump can go maybe 200 jumps per minute, but more than that is unrealistic. But after that, what? The conditioning will stop.
You should take a heavier jumping rope or difficult ways to jump with the rope, such as kettlebell swings and short-distance sprints.
To get the best result, your body should not get comfortable while doing work out. The conditioning will improve when it receives surprise while working.
Final thoughts
The benefits of jumping rope are too many, and the disadvantages of skipping rope are too few. So get yourself a good quality jumping rope/skipping rope and enjoy the benefits of jumping rope. You can put it in your bag while traveling and never miss your fitness regime, or you can do just 10 minutes of jump in the bedroom, living room, in the gym, or at the park anywhere.
Just be alert and get amazing results: heart health improvement, muscle strengthening, sound mental health, and increased stamina. These are the benefits of jumping rope, to name a few. Try to learn different tricks and skills to improve your jump. Target the speed, a number of the jump. You must listen to your body, too; if it is not acclimating with your body, you should avoid it or get specialist advice. Keep your techniques right and jump and jump. See the fittest version of yourself soon!
