Jump rope as cardio for fitness | Is Jump rope good cardio?
Jump rope as cardio is considered a very underrated exercise that can effectively serve many benefits than it is supposed to provide.
Besides, a study revealed how daily jogging for 30 minutes is as efficient for your cardiovascular fitness as 10 minutes of jump rope cardio.
Let us know some benefits or health perks of jump rope as cardio:
Improves muscles coordination
How does a jump rope can improve your coordination?
Whether you do a simple jump rope or other mixed variations like alternate footstep jump, high knees, criss-cross, or backward jump rope, it develops motor coordination during the practice.
Once you become a pro at one variation, switch to another one, extending fiber coordination to a different set of muscles.
Besides, it is fit for all age groups people to improve your muscular endurance. This activity alone can serve you several health perks as it strengthens the connection between your brain and reflexes that make you conscious of your body movements.
Further, these skills are beneficial for your body balance and avoid befalling.
Encourages brain functioning
After significant coordination and muscle enhancement, jump rope also advances your brain functioning. According to research, the practice of jump rope exercise helps develop the left and right hemispheres of your brain.
This phenomenon further improves your reading skills and memory power. Further, these activity enhancements are due to neuromuscular adjustments needed during the workout.
Improves cardiac health
Jump rope exercise elevates your heart rate that helps with its functionality too. Such cardiovascular activities strengthen your heart, reducing the risks of heart failure or strokes.
Plus, 10 minutes of practice of this whole body workout improved the cardiovascular efficiency of college students to 50% than those who didn’t.
Moreover, it was as beneficial for your cardiovascular system as 30 minutes of jogging practice. So, we can say that jump rope exercise can elevate your heart rate three times faster than jogging.
However, if you are a heart patient, you must consult a doctor before heading to any exercise like a jump rope. It may be an intense activity for you to practice concerning your heart conditions.
Tones muscles
Jump rope is an isometric exercise, which tones your muscles and makes them strong. This exercise mainly works on the glutes, abdominal, hamstring, forearms, shoulder muscles.
Favorably it works on two causes resistance weight and agility to carve your muscles. Regular practice of jump rope cardio can even reveal abs if you actively incorporate it into your daily routine.
Helps burn calories
Jump rope as a cardio burns more calories than other static cardio exercises like running, jogging, or cycling. It considerably cuts 200-300 calories in 15 minutes jump rope session.
Moreover, jump rope exercise can be 25% more efficient in burning calories than running. The regular practice of jump rope workout grasps your core tight that decreases belly fat too.
Supports weight loss
Firstly, we should understand that weight loss isn’t possible through just one exercise. It has to include a balanced diet combined with a workout routine to burn more calories than you intake.
As a full-body workout, jump rope exercise helps burn fat faster than jogging or running. However, you can always test and try different variants to know if it suits you to obtain your ideal weight.
The graph for weight loss through jump rope reduces with the decrease of current body weight. In other words, the more you weigh, the faster will be the weight loss through jump rope, and the rate will decrease with your body weight.
The reason being, the more you weigh, your muscles work harder to push you off the floor that results in burning fat. However, you can turn to the long list of variants in jump rope to make it an enjoyable strength exercise and keep up with your weight loss plan.
Some variants include – backward jump, alternate footstep jump, high knees, criss-cross. It is a never-ending cycle once you choose to practice one type after another or like to repeat some.
Builds stamina
One of the fitness benefits of jump rope is that it helps build endurance. Endurance is one important measure when you want to stand against fatigue in sports conditions.
Generally, it includes dynamic endurance or static endurance. Stamina is the same term as endurance, including the mental tension or pressure to deal with while performing the task.
To gradually build your stamina, begin with a medium or low-intensity jump rope so that you don’t overdo yourself as it may increase your chances of injury.
For instance, 5-10 min of jump rope can be good enough to start whether you are a fitness expert or not. However, you may increase the time to 30 minutes as your expertise.
If you are new to opt for jump rope, you should follow the same rule to practice jump rope for stamina at the start because every physical activity has a distinct range of muscles to operate.
Moreover, the speed and agility included in the practice may also prove to be a great help to build your stamina.
Helps concentration
Concentration is a general outcome of every physical activity – yoga asana to cardio exercises. Being one of the cardio jump rope provides you improved mental strength.
Studies reveal that jump rope cardio improves the communication of the left and right parts of your brain. It includes different sections of your brain activity to keep you with coordination and balance.
Enhances blood circulation
Jump rope fitness increases our heart rate that improves blood circulation. Moreover, as an intense cardio exercise, jump rope develops your volume of oxygen intake.
However, the key is to maintain a correct posture while you practice jump rope. Proper posture helps with breathing and blood circulation that contributes to your overall wellness.
Restores bone density
Jump rope cardio exercise builds pressure on our bones and muscles. This slight tension we create on our bodies helps them grow strong, developing their overall fitness.
Besides, IOF recommends exercises like jump rope cardio for individuals with osteoporosis as it may help them grow their muscle density and improve their health status. Moreover, people who practice jump rope have a reduced risk of developing osteoporosis later in life.
How long should I jump rope for a good workout?
It is essential to discuss how much we should jump rope for good health. As eventually, this will be a definitive factor for your fitness and injury prevention.
Being a complete beginner, you can start with 5-10 minutes of jump rope exercise. Even if you cannot achieve the target skips (i.e.,1-2 skips per sec), you can practice shallow jumping, i.e., casual jumping.
How to practice jump rope cardio workout
- Keep hands to the waist level and elbows close to the waist.
- Fasten the cord firmly but not too tight. Straighten your back and neck and look forward. This posture helps to breathe efficiently.
- Bend your knees a little to better absorb the jumps. Also, get your ankles and feet easy to support your weight well.
- Smoothly move your wrists to swing the rope, plus keep the shoulders still and coordinate with the movements.
- Catch your sway on the feet balls, and do not land your heels to the ground while jumping rope.
Can jump rope burn belly fat?
Regular jump rope for cardio helps you burn calories and build lean muscles. Furthermore, building muscles need calories to serve. Sometimes when you are in the calorie deficit state, your muscles rely on those excess fats and eventually reduce fat.
But this is something every exercise does right! How jump rope, in particular, help it out?
Firstly, when we jump rope, our bodyweight acts as resistance that makes our muscles work to push ourselves off the ground and manage to return with as slightest pressure on our joints as possible.
Secondly, during jumping rope, keep a straight posture that includes holding the core and back to engage the parts. Further, keeping your core muscles tight engages the body section and even helps tone your muscles out there.
Jump rope vs Running
Based on burning calories, jump rope exercise can be a better option to shed excess calories on medium to high-intensity workouts than running.
Running as well as jump rope include lower body parts work actively during the practice. Plus, on the upper body, the benefits include only balancing the weight and periodic motion required to bear the same.
However, both are intense exercises that you should avoid during recovery from a past injury or similar fitness situation, especially for the lower body fitness.
If you like to achieve running for a long distance as your goal, you can opt for running practices.
However, if you like to choose cardiovascular endurance with a limited time strap, jump rope might be a better option.