12 benefits of rope jumping that will amaze you

Why were Muhammad Ali or Bruce Lee big fans of rope jumping? Why do many other famous people who are not professional athletes rope jump almost daily?… Scarlett Johanson, Madonna or Halle Berry, amongst others. What are the benefits of rope jumping?

SEE ALSO: How to adjust your rope for double unders. All you need to know

Kate Perry confesses she is a fan of rope jumping, and stated: “I hate to train but I love to rope jump (…) it is like dancing, it is something rhythmic, and I am good at it”. She also said that she pictures herself like Rocky when she is rope jumping. 😉


Double unders benefits

But if it is not enough for you that the people who better take care of their image (artists, singers, athletes, and celebrities) adopted this exercise without hesitating, in this article we will give you 12 more reasons to introduce you to rope jumping.

You will see that it is much more than a simple exercise or a child’s game…

SEE ALSO: Choose your skipping rope for crossfit, fitness or martial arts

Twelve benefits of rope jumping that you cannot ignore

We all know aerobic exercises, such as swimming, running, or cycling. But if you really want your heart to reach “the red line”, rope jumping is your exercise, it will humble you (especially at the beginning), and I am convinced it will hook you up at the end.

I will give you my reasons to do this star exercise. 

Rope jumping helps you lose weight

It is one of the most renowned benefits for those who start rope jumping. As you know, losing weight is a matter of numbers: to burn more calories than the ones we ingest. So simple, and yet so complicated.

According to a study from Whats Cooking America, we burn about 13 calories per minute when rope jumping at a 120 rpm pace/rhythm. That means we burn 130 calories in 10 minutes.

If you want to know what that means, I created a table from the original Whats Cooking America one with a few examples:

If you wish to perform your own calculations, you may download the complete table in Excel format with formulas here.

If you are more than a rookie in this sport, and double unders are no challenge for you, in this infographic you may also see how many calories we burn while performing double unders.

Cardiovascular exercise

In an article on webmd.com, Peter Schuman, MD, associate teacher of Cardiology and Pulmonary Medicine at the Connecticut Health Center University states that:

“Rope jumping is truly good for the heart”

It is an exercise that will improve your endurance because it optimizes your cardiovascular performance, optimizing your aerobic capacity. This will allow you to better oxygenate, and, most of all, it prolongs the time it takes for you to feel fatigued when performing other sports.

A study by Temple University revealed that men have great benefits in their cardiovascular health, because it helps in reducing heart rate and blood pressure, and it increases oxygen consumption.

They recommend 10 to 20 minutes training sessions, five times per week, to observe rapid improvements.

SEE ALSO: 10 Functional rope workouts

Rope jumping engages every muscle in your body

If you need an exercise that engages your entire body, then rope jumping is your exercise. Athletes and sportsmen and women do this sport because it is a very entertaining means for exercising both the upper and the lower body.

The muscles of your core, your abdominals and lumbar muscles, are fully engaged, particularly in the jumps that require more skill. With routines where, for example, you have to perform crossing jumps or double unders, you will work, above all, the upper region – chest, shoulders and arms.


Rope Jumping Benefits

Improves your coordination

If you are a rookie, you have noticed it.

To watch experts rope jump is very different from what you do the first few times. It seems as if the rope has a life of its own, and it does not obey your brain… this is something normal.

The rope will bring you extra coordination, which you will, of course, gain gradually. To improve on this aspect, there are countless different jumps you may try. Few exercises will allow you to improve the coordination between your arms and legs in such an effective way.

Rope jump training improves your endurance

Very much in line with the previous points, rope jumping will help you improve on your endurance and on your aerobic capacity, and it will enable to better endure prolonged efforts.

Do you remember Rocky Balboa or Kate Perry? 😉

Rope jumping allows you to gradually build up intensity, increase the rhythm, the duration, or vary the complexity of the jumps, allowing your endurance to progressively improve.

Increase your agility and speed

Rope jumping enables you to develop the muscle fibers that allow you to be faster. These are the type of fibers that are present in explosive movements, where the muscle contraction is very fast and sudden.

In a 1998 study for the “Journal of Applied Physiology”, the researcher Leena Paavolainen showed that explosive training, as in rope jumping, enables significant improvements in the running times of 5K runners. See the study here.

Rope jumping stimulates your brain activity and eliminates stress

Rope jumping helps you develop both the hemispheres in your brain, which allows you to increase different skills, such as spatial awareness, or memory.

There is no record that we know of, but, when someone begins rope jumping, it is likely that the task of achieving the required coordination to do it generates new neural connections.

It is proven beyond any doubt that our brain is plastic, i.e., it evolves, changes, adapts, and generates new connections daily. Learning new things helps generating new neural connections.

Furthermore, the exercise we do when jumping, it releases endorphins, which reduces your stress and relaxes you. Did you noticed it when you finished your exercises? If it was not the case, I leave you here a routine that will surely relax you, or will, at least, leave you so tired that it will eliminate all worries in your mind.

SEE ALSO: 5 Ways to measure your progress in workouts

Improve your breathing

In line with what we have seen, rope jumping helps you improve your cardiac capacity, renders you faster, more agile and more coordinated, while you move all the muscles in your body. For that, an immediate consequence is the improvement of your breathing efficiency.

Rope jumping is an excellent aerobic exercise, and it is enough for you to see how many elite athletes perform this type of exercises daily.

Rope jumping is not shape-dependent

One of the great advantages of rope jumping is that you do not have to be in top shape to do it. Basically any person, regardless of his or her level of fitness, is able to jump and slowly progress.

Unlike other sports, like running or cycling, for which you are required a certain level of muscle tone for you not to die while trying, the rope allows you to slowly improve in your confidence and level of fitness.

A better time-benefit ratio than running

Based on the previous point, rope jumping will bring you more benefits than any other sport when considering the time spent working-out. If we observe, particularly, the case of running, rope jumping is a far more efficient sport.

If we talk about finances, we would say that the return on investment (ROI) is much higher the rope than for running. Therefore, it is an ideal sport for people with little free time, who live in places with bad weather, or who do not have where to run or where to do other sports.

It is a cheap sport

We have already seen in other posts that rope jumping is one of the cheapest sports, and one of the most beneficial ones. If we go back to the concept of ROI from the previous point, very few sports will give you such a big return for such a little investment.

When compared with other sports like skiing or cycling, for instance, rope jumping is a real bargain.

You may get yourself an authentic VRope Earth for training , or the Ferrari of ropes, the new competition VRope Fire 2.0.

Injury prevention

Once you have correctly practiced and mastered the rope jumping technique, and you have a rope with the correct dimensions, the exercise you perform will damage less your joints than others with less intensity.

SEE ALSO: Definitive guide to mobility and strenght in your ankles and feet

The secret for a good rope jump is to perform it on the tips of your toes, that way movement impact will be absorbed right from the feet until your hips, spreading the effort, and taking advantage of our natural shock absorbers…

A well-performed exercise will strengthen your muscles, tendons, and fibers, while avoiding injury and pain.

Dr. Daniel W. Barry, a medicine teacher at the University of Colorado, in Denver, and also a researcher who studied the bones of adults and of athletes, stated that:

“The best exercise to improve our bone density is to jump up and down”, does it sound familiar to you?

In summary, very few sports give you so much for so less.

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If you want to know in more detail the secrets of the new VRope Fire 2.0, watch this video:

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