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When you’re hoping to increase the speed of your jump roping, it can feel difficult to know what to work on to make meaningful change happen. Don’t worry—we have some ideas! From lowering your jumps to perfecting your overall technique, read on to learn four tips for gaining speed when jump roping.
Lower Your Jumps
When you jump higher than you need to, it takes your body more time to reach the ground and expends more energy than necessary. If you work on lowering your jumps (and if necessary, shortening your rope), you’ll be able to make contact with the surface more frequently and reduce the amount of energy you use on your jumps. Ideally you should be jumping less than 1 off the surface. This allows you to extend your workout time as well as improve your speed!
Practice Arm Swings
If your rope is too long you will also extend your arms too far out, affecting your form and your swing speed. Additionally, we recommend to stationary practice swinging rope around to form a nice even arc that you can later jump through to build up your muscle memory and facilitate a faster swinging speed. Make sure to work on multiple types of arm swings, including forward and backward motions, crossovers, helicopters, and inward and outward circles. You can also add jumping movement, while swinging the rope to the side of the body to practice your rhythm and timing. Make sure to make small circular motions with your wrists, the size of a quarter, no bigger than that. I coined the term shadow jumping for this practice technique.
Perfect Your Technique
Jump roping is an incredibly intricate skill, which is why it’s so critical to get your technique down to a science. What’s the best way to perfect your technique? Practice! Work on all the fundamentals and get better at everything. This is a great way to boost your overall jump roping skills and improve your speed.
Use the Right Ropes
Naturally, the best ropes to use to stay quick are speed jump ropes. If you’re stuck working with a basic jump rope, you may be sacrificing quite a bit in the speed department. Luckily, speed jump ropes aren’t expensive and are easily accessible, so pick one up and add it to your workout space!
Now that you know these four tips for gaining speed when jump roping, you can work on your form and prepare yourself to become a speed machine. Get those jumps low to the ground, and make sure you’re using the right ropes. You’ll see results in no time!
