Jumping Rope Burns Mega Calories

Jumping rope is an excellent cardio activity and fat burner. If you don’t have a jump rope in your arsenal of gym stuff, you really should get one. You can get a weighted one at Walmart for like 10 bucks. Be sure you get a rope that fits you. To make sure the rope will work for you, stand on the center of it and lift the handles up to your sides and they should come up to your chest. If they go higher than your armpits, then it’s too long and you’ll need to either shorten it (if it’s adjustable), cut it to make it fit (if you can without completely damaging it) or just look for a shorter rope.

Jumping rope burns up to 750 calories per hour. Granted you probably can’t jumprope for an hour straight, but if you’re jumping rope for just 10 minutes as a warmup, you’ll burn about 125 calories in those 10 minutes! Not bad for a warm up.

Another thing you can do instead of jumping rope for 10 minutes in a row, is to jump rope for 5 minutes in between each exercise that you normally do during your workout program. This will really kick your body into fat-burning gear.

There are a number of different jumps that you can do so you aren’t doing the same thing every time, here they are:

• Double Bounce Jump – Your feet do a double bounce per rotation of the jump rope
• Single Bounce Jump – Your feet do a single bounce per rotation of the jump rope
• Slalom – Instead of jumping vertically, you jump from side-to-side
• Slow Jump – Cut your repetitions in half, elongating the motion
• Figure 8 – If you get tired while you’re jumping, simply keep your feet planted on the ground, but swing the rope at your sides – you’ll still get a great cardiovascular workout

Jumping rope is fairly easy, but it is an intense, high impact exercise – especially for a beginner – so be sure to speak with your doctor prior to beginning.