skipping rope....or (jump rope for the americans)

Ok, I'll come clean. This post is a bit contrived. I recently saw a couple of videos that I wanted to put up which featured two amazing athletes skipping rope (or jump rope as the yanks say). To justify that I thought I'd better find some science about jumping rope.

So, I'll put one video here...and another in the next post.

As we've mentioned a bit recently explosive movements - such as jumps - are really effective at developing power and for fat loss. This is where skipping comes in - it is an explosive movement that also - allegedly - develops great coordination and athleticism.

There is a nice study below which amuses me in that it basically says that skipping a rope is hard!

Average MET values at the different rates ranged from 11.7 to 12.5, which supported findings from other studies that rope skipping is very strenuous exercise.

As an example of this "strenuous" exercise look at this:



This is the great Ross Enamait and he has written his own - very good - article about this exercise here .

Here is the obligatory scientific article:

The effect of rope skipping rate on energy expenditure of males and females.


The purpose was to study the effects of skipping rate on energy expenditure and sex differences in response to rope skipping. Responses of 19 males and 11 females were measured while skipping for 5 min at 125, 135 and 145 skips . min-1. Expired air was routed through a hollow handle to collection bags to provide uninterrupted exercise. Values at the respective rates for the total sample were: VO2 (l . min-1) 2.79, 2.83, 2.85; VO2 (ml . kg-1 . min-1) 41.1, 42.0 42.5; HR (beats . min-1) 176, 177, 177; VE (l . min) 102.2, 103.5, 106.3; R 1.09, 1.07, 1.05; energy expenditure (kj . min-1) 58.6, 59.4, 60.3. Sex differences were found in that females had significantly lower VO2 both in l . min-1 and ml . kg-1 . min-1 but higher HR values than males. Comparison of VO2 values of the females to VO2max values reported for females in the literature suggested that they may have been exercising close to their maximum. There were no differences in any of the values due to skipping rate nor was there interaction between sex and rate. Retrospective cinematographic analysis on two subjects suggested that the failure to find significant differences due to rate may be due to a decrease in vertical displacement resulting in a relatively constant work output as skipping rate increased. Average MET values at the different rates ranged from 11.7 to 12.5, which supported findings from other studies that rope skipping is very strenuous exercise.