RKC News - July 2017

As you can read in the headline of the Kettlebell News above, the RKC "The School of Strength" and the associated kettlebell hardstyle training stand for strength, endurance, mobility, and injury resistance.

Today's article is about a tool that must not be missing in any (home) gym besides kettlebells and with which you can ultimately train the two other motor skills of speed and coordination: The jump rope.

DO YOU EVEN JUMP!?

Pretty much everyone has attempted to jump rope at some point in their life. Either as a child or later in adulthood. The reasons for this vary widely. For some, it’s "just for fun," and for others, it’s because they have become aware of the extremely long list of benefits of jump rope training. However, many athletes struggle with jumping rope.

Despite seemingly endless YouTube videos, blogs, and guides on the internet, everyday athletes and hobbyists today face technical problems and constantly get stuck in the rope. Frustration sets in, and the jump rope soon hangs lonely and alone on a hook. In my view, jumping rope is a self-limiting movement task. Deficiencies in the motor skill "coordination" and lack of technique are usually the limiting factors for the jumper. In other words: Poorly developed coordination skills and inadequate jump rope technique will simply exclude the athlete from this exercise, which naturally prevents the corresponding movement patterns from being improved.

Practice Makes Perfect!

Coordination skills are not innate; they must be learned, solidified, and further developed.

Between the ages of 7 and 12, there is a special learning ability in the area of coordination skills. Children who learned to jump rope during this age find it easier to recall or learn this skill later in adulthood than athletes who start late. I myself only started jumping rope at the age of 33 and trained several times a week for several months to make it "look easy and sexy."

10 minutes of jumping rope at 120 revolutions per minute generates the same cardiovascular fitness as, for example, 30 minutes of moderate jogging, running one mile (1620m) in 12 minutes, or cycling two miles (3240m) in 6 minutes?