Jumping rope

Although weight training is my current passion, cardiovascular exercise is still very important to me. I've done many different types: running outside, walking outside, walking on a treadmill, running on a treadmill, interval training on a treadmill, interval training outside, elliptical, stationary bike, and the one I tried last month for a short period:  jumping rope.

It all started when I read in Maximum Fitness that you can burn nearly 900 calories an hour by jumping rope. I thought it sounded easy. Even when I was fat I was actually pretty good at jumping rope. So the first thing I did was head out and buy a speed jump rope. I wasn’t about to use one of those thick, 70’s-style, heavy pieces of cable that most people think of when they hear “jump rope”. A speed jump rope is thinner and, of course, fast. You can actually concentrate on the jump rather than worrying about the three pound piece of coil that’s sailing over your head repeatedly.

My next problem was where to jump rope. The gym certainly wasn't going to work. It was too crowded and too small. The ceilings were too low inside both my house and garage. I could have done it in my driveway, but I wasn't about to let my neighbors have the satisfaction. The best option I could come up with was the warehouse at work.

So one day when the office had closed and everyone else had left the building, I confiscated a large clock with a seconds hand from a wall and went into the warehouse. My plan was to use a program that Maximum Fitness had laid out. It simply required jumping rope as fast as you can for 30 seconds, resting for 30 seconds, jumping rope for 30 seconds, resting for 30 seconds, and so on. MaxFit suggested doing this for 15 minutes, but I was wise enough to know I’d have to work my way up to that much time, so I started with 10 minutes.

I still remember the first 30 seconds like it just happened. To put it mildly, every single part of my body was jolted like never before. I even had pain in areas I’d rather not talk about here at The Magic Pill. When I was done with the first leg, I contemplated quitting. But when you've worked out as much as I have over the last 15 years you understand that sometimes the first couple of attempts at a new exercise can be the most difficult. I hoped and prayed things would get easier as I progressed through the 30 second segments. And for once in my life I was, to an extent, correct.

After completing the 10 minutes, I was definitely winded. But I also noticed over the next day or two how sore my legs were…my knees and thighs, and especially my calves and ankles. And even worse, I discovered I have a bad habit of keeping my knees together while jumping.  I think this comes from my “fat guy days”. More than likely when I learned to jump rope back then I was concerned that if I didn't keep my legs close together, the rope would hit my legs as it came around - because my legs were so fat. It just goes to show how a fat person looks at themselves. Because of this bad habit, the insides of both my knees were killing me for the next couple of days. They had been banging against each other for ten 30 second sessions of jumping rope. Ouch. Needless to say, I broke myself of that habit rather quickly.

I ended up jumping rope only two times a week, but worked my way up to 14 minutes. Unfortunately, during that period I realized some of my soreness was coming not necessarily from the exercise itself, but from the hard concrete floor in our warehouse. The pounding was still jarring my body, but now it was affecting me in a different way: my ankles and feet were swelling. This wouldn't happen during or even immediately after jumping rope, but I would instead discover it the next day when running on the treadmill. There's more to this story but it didn't take me long to realize I needed to stop jumping rope on a rock solid concrete floor unless I wanted to end up in a wheelchair before I turned forty.

I still think jumping rope is a fantastic form of cardiovascular exercise. I really want to do it again in the near future. It's not near as easy as it sounds or looks. It's a challenge. A huge challenge. Aside from the obvious, the reason I want to try again is to push myself even harder because I don't feel I pushed myself hard enough on my first go-around. So hopefully in the near future I’ll figure out a way to continue jumping rope on a weekly basis in a manner that does not involve such a hard floor.

I do have one more form of cardiovascular exercise on my mind, but I'll save it for another entry. This particular type of exercise, like jumping rope, is one from everyone’s childhood. More details down the road when (if) it actually happens.