11 Benefits of Jumping Rope That Will Have You Skipping With Joy

Have you ever walked by a gym or a boxing club and saw people jumping rope? You probably thought that it looked kind of goofy and maybe you even wondered why exactly people would jump rope. Well, you might be surprised to know that jumping rope is actually really good for you.

The benefits of jumping rope are better than you know and they can go a very long way in keeping you healthy. Jumping rope is good for your legs and muscles, it helps you lose weight, it’s good for your heart and lungs, plus it’s good for your mind too. If you haven’t tried jumping rope yet, maybe our little low down on all of the benefits it has will have you running out for a jump rope ASAP.

Benefit #1: Some Serious Calorie Burning Weight Loss

Jumping rope is perhaps one of the very best things that you can do in terms of burning calories and shedding some serious pounds. Jumping rope actually burns more calories than jogging and even running, plus cycling and other such forms of exercise too.

Studies show that 1 hour of jumping rope can help you burn as many as 1300 calories. That is more than half of the calories that an average male needs during a whole day. To put that in perspective, jumping rope for 10 minutes is the equivalent of running 8 miles. Of course, this also leads you to shedding some serious pounds because chances are that you don’t have enough calories in your system to be turned into enough energy to jump rope for an hour straight.

Not having enough calories in your system forces your body to turn your fat reserves, aka those love handles, into energy to keep you going. Jumping rope, since it is an aerobic cardiovascular exercise, also helps to rev your metabolism to burn more calories in general, not to mention that it boosts your EPOC too.

Your EPOC is your exercise post energy consumption, or in other words, the increased rate at which your body consumes calories after having exercised. All of these things contribute to helping you shed that weight that has been plaguing you for all of these years.

Benefit #2: Fewer Injuries To Your Feet, Ankles, And Lower Legs

Something that you will really appreciate about jumping rope is that it can help to decrease the chances of suffering from foot and ankle related injuries. This is especially beneficial if you are an athlete or team sports player where the chances of injuring your ankles or feet are pretty higher. This is also good if you have suffered from previous ankle or foot injuries.

The reason jumping rope is so good for dealing with these kinds of injuries is because doing it often enough will go a very long way in strengthening the muscles in your feet, the muscles around your ankles, and your lower leg muscles too.

Jumping rope is really good at strengthening those muscles because it forces you to be on the balls of your feet instead of your heels, also something which makes you lighter on your feet and helps you avoid injury in general.

There is also the fact that jumping rope improves foot coordination, as will be discussed below, something that helps you avoid making a bad step that could lead to a rolled or even broken ankle. That is why jumping rope is a good type of training for people who play sports such as soccer, football, basketball, tennis, and anything else where you make split second movements from one direction to another.

Benefit #3: Strengthening Your Bones

The next thing that is fantastic about jumping rope is that it is a weight bearing exercise. If you weren’t sure, a weight bearing exercise is any type of movement that puts a load on your bones or joints such as running or jumping, and of course skipping rope too. Every time you jump to skip over the rope, when you land, you put an increased load on your bones.

Now you may think that this is a bad thing because of the stress it can put on your joints, but that is not actually so. Weight bearing exercises are healthy for your bones and joints. This is because your bones grow in much the same way as your muscles grow.

The more you train your bones through weight bearing exercises, the more bone mass your bones create. Therefore, the more you jump rope, the thicker and denser your bones get. This is very important for your health, especially in your old age when you risk breaking bones from little falls, plus it can help prevent degenerative bone diseases such as osteoporosis too.

Benefit #4: Better Coordination

One benefit that you get from jumping rope on a regular basis is that it will slowly improve your coordination over time. Jumping rope is a pretty complex process for your brain to process, it might not seem like it, but it does involve doing more than one thing at once.

This exercise involves quite a bit of hand-eye coordination because you have to spin the rope with your hands and you have to keep track of the rope with your eyes so that you know when to jump, not to mention having the right timing to make precise jumps.

Jumping rope forces your brain to process multiple movements at once and coordinate them to work in harmony. You might not be that good at jumping rope in the beginning, but you will quickly notice yourself getting the hang of it.

When you notice that you’re not tripping over the rope every few passes it makes, as opposed to the beginning where you could barely get over the thing once, that is your hand-eye coordination improving. On an interesting side note, if you do tricks like cross overs, your hand-eye coordination will get even better due to the complex nature of the task which your mind and body have to process.

This does also have to do with muscle memory because it is a repetitive motion, but it definitely doesn’t hurt your hand-eye coordination either. If you jump rope enough, eventually you get quite a bit lighter on your feet and have that noticeable spring, which is actually a reason as to why boxers jump rope as a form of training. Jumping rope is also good training for other sports where you have to make quick turnarounds and split second movements such as tennis.

Benefit #5: Breathing & Stamina

Another thing which jumping rope can help you with is your breathing abilities as well as your overall endurance. As we’ll talk about later, jumping rope is a fantastic form of cardiovascular exercise, and that means that it works out your lungs too.

Just like your heart, your bones, and your other muscles, your lungs can be trained to work more efficiently. Jumping rope definitely makes you breathe hard, and when you breathe hard and heavy for a prolonged period of time, your lungs slowly increase their ability to intake oxygen and process it. Simply put, just like lifting dumbbells makes your biceps bigger, breathing really fast and hard increases your lung’s oxygen capacity.

The more oxygen your lungs can process the longer you can exercise for because you aren’t going to get winded and run out of breath nearly as fast. There is also the fact that your muscles need oxygen to function and the more oxygen your lungs can put in your blood stream the longer your muscles will be able to work for.

Benefit #6: You Can Do It Anywhere

Another thing that you are going to appreciate about jumping rope is that it is very versatile. When you have a gym membership you can only work out at the gym and when you have a stationary bike you can only work out at home. However, a jumping rope is very convenient because you can use it anywhere.

You can use a jumping rope in your bedroom, living room, out front on the sidewalk, in the backyard, or you can go to a park too. You can also take it to the gym or skip together with your friends too. Finding the motivation to exercise can be hard, especially when you have to go to a certain place to do it, but being able to work out anywhere you want is definitely a big bonus.

Moreover, it is shown that exercising outdoors is healthy for your mind because it can actually increase your problem-solving skills, make you more creative, and also relieve stress. So if you’re ever in the dumps, feeling sad, and in the need of a quick and efficient workout, just try going to the park to jump some rope. There is also the fact that all you need to jump rope is, well, a jump rope!

Benefit #7: Better Cardiovascular Health

Jumping rope is also very beneficial for your heart and for your cardiovascular system. Jumping rope is definitely a form of aerobic exercise. In other words, it trains your heart to be better and stronger. As we mentioned before, jumping rope can burn a serious number of calories, and that is due to the fact that it is so strenuous and demanding, and of course the number of calories burned is also thanks to the workout that jumping rope puts on your heart.

It’s just as demanding for your heart as anything else and will definitely get it pumping. Having a stronger heart is very beneficial for a variety of reasons. A well exercised heart leads to lower blood pressure, a lower resting heart rate, a decreased chance of heart disease and heart attacks, as well as healthy cholesterol levels.

Not only are there those heart healthy benefits, but a more efficient heart that can pump more blood and oxygen to your muscles also helps to improve your physical performance. More blood and oxygen in your muscles means that they can work harder and work for longer periods of time before getting tired.

Benefit #8: Agility, Quickness, and Balance

Another benefit that you get from jumping rope is that makes you quicker and helps you balance better too. Like we mentioned before, jumping rope makes you lighter on your feet, or in other words, it makes you quicker.

Of course, jumping rope does make you more agile and it’s as simple as being in better shape, having stronger leg muscles, and having better endurance. Jumping rope makes you quicker because it increases your coordination and your reaction time, at least if you’re working hard enough not to fall over the rope!

Jumping rope also helps increase your balance and it does so through a number of ways. First of all, having stronger leg muscles allows you to deal with quick slips better, also known as saving yourself at the last minute before you fall on your butt. Your balance is also increased by skipping rope because like we talked about before, you skip on the balls of your feet, which automatically forces you to balance every time you land.

Benefit #9: Eliminating Toxins

Another thing that jumping rope is great for is for eliminating toxins from your skin and from your body. First off, your lymphatic system is kind of like your body’s trash compactor system. That is where all of the toxins in your body collect, but there is a problem, that being that your lymph system has no way of getting rid of those toxins by itself.

Your lymph system needs you to manually contract your muscles to get blood to flow through them and pump the toxins out of your lymph system. Skipping rope definitely makes your muscles contract from top to bottom, and that gets the toxins out of your lymph system.

On that same note, jumping rope will definitely make you sweat, and sweating is good for your skin. Bacteria and other bad things that can cause acne and skin infections build up in your pores. When you sweat, like after a good jump rope session, you sweat out those toxins and bacteria, this preventing acne, keeping your skin healthy, and eliminating even more unwanted compounds from your body.

Benefit #10: Building Muscle

Something else that you should like about jumping rope is that it will definitely help you build some muscle. Sure, it isn’t going to build muscle like lifting weights, but it will tone your muscles for sure.

Just think about it, when you jump rope you engage pretty much every muscle in your legs, plus you use your arms to swing the rope, you use your back to stay upright, and if you feel like it, you can even clench your abs to engage those too. In other words, something as simple as skipping rope definitely qualifies as a full body workout.

Benefit #11: Relieving Stress

Another benefit that you can reap from jumping rope on a regular basis is that it helps to make you happier, relieve stress, and helps combat the effects of anxiety and depression too. It is shown that exercise causes your brain to produce an excess of neurochemicals which make you feel happy.

The 2 most important chemicals that your brain produces when you exercise are called serotonin and endocannabinoids. Serotonin gives you a sense of elation, joy, and happiness, and endocannabinoids give you a sense of relaxation and also help to relieve pain. Together these two things help to give you an increased sense of wellbeing and happiness.

Conclusion

As you can see, the benefits of jumping rope are quite numerous, and all of them go a long way in keeping you fit and healthy. From strengthening your legs, your heart, and your lungs, all the way to improving your balance and coordination, plus a whole lot more, you can’t argue with all of the great aspects that come with a simple rope which you jump over.

If you have any questions or comments about jumping rope, please feel free to leave us a comment and we will get back to you as soon as possible!