Fitness Training: Skipping

People think that skipping is easy. So did I. I mean it didn’t look so tough, just jumping over the rope.
I was so so wrong.

I play Basketball and I’m a very terrible jumper and that’s the field I needed to improve to increase my skills in Basketball. So I got advised to start skipping. So I went down to a sports store and got a jump rope.
At first I was skeptical on how hard it was going to be and soon, my doubts were erased, but not with the answers I speculated.

The training works out your wrist movement, hand and especially your calve muscles. If you haven’t skipped before it is really hard at the beginning, but as you get used to it, your movements become more flexible. The trick I used to get my co-ordination by noticing the movement of the rope. When it passed over my head and was at a good speed, then would I jump. It might get frustrating sometimes but you cannot not get better at it. Keep practicing.

After you have mastered the normal skips then try to do a 150 skips very fast non-stop. This brings out the real workout because you can’t slow down and have to keep that constant rate of jumping which will put you to your limits. Then you cant increase to 160 and so on. Keep skipping about 200 fast skips for about 3 times a day. Keep a 10 miunte break between each. I would definetely advise you to warm up before skipping otherwise you would be left sore for the rest of the day and can seriously cause some strains on your muscles. DO NOT OVER DO IT! If you feel that you can’t do it, then start with a smaller amount of skips. Eat well for this because it will turn your energy into building up your body. Stuff that, you HAVE to eat well for this.

This is a very effective way to improve jumping and co-ordination and most of all, agility.

Hope this helps.

Mark