There are few modes of training that offer the wide spectrum of training effects that rope jumping does. In addition, a good, high quality rope costs less than $40, will last a lifetime if taken care of properly and is highly portable, which means you can easily take it on the road with you.

I believe rope jumping should be a basic physical education skill that you learn as a kid but unfortunately (and sadly) that is simply not the case anymore. The beauty of learning to rope jump is that with a few practice sessions you can quickly regain skills that you may not have used in years much like learning to ride a bike.

Here are just a few of the training benefits you can get from jumping rope that readily come to mind:

• Dynamic balance
• Agility
• Power/plyometric training
• Conditioning work
• Bone strengthening
• Postural integrity

What to look for in a good rope? First of all, you have to get a good fit as a rope that is too long or too short will not give you optimal training effects. A properly sized rope will come up to your armpits or shoulders when you stand on the middle of the rope.

You also want your rope to have freely spinning, ball bearing handles as this will allow you to maximize the speed of the rope when your proficiency improves to that point. Cheaper ropes don’t spin as well and will thus always be less efficient than better made ropes.

There are a number of good places to get quality jump ropes. Here a few that I have used personally and have been very satisfied with the products:

• Perform Better (www.performbetter.com) has a variety of types and price points of jump rope.
• Rogue Fitness (www.roguefitness.com) has good variety as well as ropes you can customize to your own specs.
• CrossRope (www.crossrope.com) makes a system of both speed and heavy ropes and has very good rope training information on its website.

Basic technique: Rope jumping is a self-limiting form of exercise. If your technique isn’t spot on, the rope will get tangled in your feet and you will get a graphic reminder that something was off the mark. Here are some fundamental tips/cues to get started on the right foot--pun intended!

• There should be minimal ground clearance of your feet. Leaving just enough room for the rope to pass under your feet is the most efficient.
• Your hands should be near hip/waist height, and you should merely flick your wrists minimally to get the rope to spin. This is yet another reason to get a high quality, ball bearing handle in your rope.
• Tall, upright posture is most efficient and least tiring. It’s hard enough to jump rope without adding unnecessary challenges!
• Start by practicing turning the rope while simultaneously jumping to get the timing down.
• When you feel ready, add the rope to your jumping. Practice and patience is of paramount importance as it may take a while to perfect the technique.

Good technique is remarkably efficient, smooth and balanced. From that platform there are amazing things that one can do with rope jumping. Following are a few of them.

Power Training

In true power training, the emphasis is on max speed of effort with sets being short and sweet: generally, 10 to 15 seconds maximum. This means that your power training jump rope sets should involve various movement/footwork patterns. It is also critical that there be full recovery between sets. Otherwise the central nervous system will not be truly recovered and you will be compromising the development of your maximum power. By full recovery we are talking two and a half to four minutes, so do a few sets well rather than a lot of sets poorly…for example, five sets of 15 seconds with two and a half minutes of recovery time between sets.

Metabolic work (anaerobic conditioning)

Here the opposite is true as our goal is to give longer efforts, up to two minutes, with less than full recovery between sets. While a jump rope can certainly be used for aerobic work (i.e., just jumping for longer durations), I think it is an ideal tool for the interval work that is foundational to anaerobic conditioning. So think of 90 second sets with 90 second recovery, what we would call a 1:1 work to rest ratio. The variations are limitless.

So there you have a quick primer on rope jumping: what to look for in a good rope, basic technique and several ways/methods to incorporate it into your training program. This is just the tip of the iceberg. For more good information on rope jumping, check out www.jumprope.com, and Buddy Lee’s videos on YouTube—they will inspire and amaze you.