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10 Jump Rope Benefits: The Unique Results of Jump Rope Training

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woman jumping rope outside to experience the benefits of jumping rope

Jump rope training is one of the best-kept secrets in fitness right now. 

Even though we’re seeing the popularity of jump ropes growing in recent years, many are still unaware of numerous jump rope benefits available to all fitness levels. 

Not only is it easy to get started, but jumping rope supports almost any fitness goal—fat loss, endurance, strength, and performance. You name it, and a jump rope can help. Plus, it gets the job done anywhere. 

In this post, we’ll break down the physical benefits of jumping rope, the mental jump rope benefits, and show you why we (and many others) think that jump ropes provide more than just a good workout, they should be a staple in your fitness routine.

What are the Benefits of Jumping Rope?

Want to get straight to the point? Here are the health benefits of jumping rope: 

  1. Burns calories
  2. Improves cardiovascular health
  3. Boosts bone density
  4. Greater muscle activation
  5. Increases agility
  6. Improves coordination
  7. Builds Balance
  8. Has meditative qualities
  9. Improves Overall Wellbeing
  10. It’s fun

Quick Tip: Use the list above to jump to a more detailed breakdown of each jump rope benefit. 

Want to learn about the benefits of weighted jump ropes? Check out this infographic.

Physical Jump Rope Benefits

1. Jumping Rope Burns Calories Like Crazy

If jumping rope is anything, it’s efficient. 

You don’t need to chain yourself to the treadmill for an hour to get a decent cardio workout. All you need is a few minutes of jumping rope to get the same calorie-burning results. 

When asking if jump rope is good cardio exercise, you’ll be pleased to know that research has shown that jumping rope can help you burn over 1,000 calories an hour. 

Jumping rope can achieve a burn rate of up to 1,300 calories per hour of vigorous activity, with about 0.1 calories consumed per jump. Ten minutes of jumping rope can roughly be considered the equivalent of running an eight-minute mile. 

Compared to other activities, jumping rope is one of the most efficient forms of exercise you can do for torching calories. 

infographic displaying the calorie burning benefits of jumping rope compared to other forms of physical activity

You can achieve some impressive results from jumping every day. Check out some of the jump rope transformations from our community members who know jump rope benefits from taking on our monthly jump rope challenge

collage of people showing their jump rope results for weight loss, before and after

2. Jumping Rope Benefits for Cardiovascular Health

Jumping rope is phenomenal for heart health. The exercise can:

  • Lower your resting heart rate
  • Decrease blood pressure
  • Reduce stress
  • Reverse bad cholesterol
  • Lower your risk of cardiovascular diseases

These examples are just a few jump rope benefits linked to cardiovascular health.  

If you’re looking for a powerful cardio tool, a jump rope should be in your line-up. 

Seeing cardiovascular benefits from physical activity start with roughly 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week. So, is jump rope good cardio? And how long should you jump rope to reap those cardiovascular benefits? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers jumping rope to be a vigorous-intensity activity and is about the same as two minutes of moderate-intensity exercise. 

On that note, you can improve your cardiovascular health with only 15 minutes of jump rope a day, five times a week. 

Work smarter, not harder. 

3. Jump Rope Benefits for Bone Density

Building strong bones is another one of the many jump rope benefits. 

Bone-strengthening activities create a force on the bones that promotes growth and strength, and impact on the ground creates this force.

Harvard Health defines jumping rope as one example of an impact loading exercise, making it ideal for giving your bone density a boost.

4. Jumping Rope Creates More Muscle Activation

Total-body strengthening is another winning jump rope benefit, and you’ll get more results when you jump with different weights. 

With weighted jump ropes, you engage more muscle groups with every swing. Here’s the difference between light ropes and weighted ropes: 

infographic showing the muscle building benefits of jumping rope and comparing the difference in muscle activation between light jump ropes and weighted jump ropes

The heavier the rope, the greater the resistance. And with more resistance, you create more muscle engagement. 

What Muscles Does Jump Rope Work?

Jump ropes offer a complete full-body workout. Jumping rope works your calf muscles, quads, hamstrings, glutes, abs, oblique muscles, forearms, biceps, triceps, shoulders, back muscles, and chest muscles. Not only are you building strength in your lower body, but you’re also engaging your entire upper body to control the force when you swing the rope. So, your whole body can benefit from a good jumping rope workout!

5. Jumping Rope Increases Agility

Want to get faster? 

Research shows that jumping rope has a significant effect on increasing leg muscle power.

Proper jump rope form helps you develop:

  • Quick footwork
  • Speed
  • Power
  • Agility

This benefit of jumping rope makes the exercise exceptionally useful for cross-training if you play any sports where you need to change direction quickly (boxing, hockey, basketball, or volleyball). 

Or maybe you just want to get better at chasing your kids around. There are jump rope benefits to help you with that too. 

6. Jumping Rope Improves Coordination

Jumping rope requires a lot of coordination, especially when you progress past the basic jump. 

To maintain the rhythm of jump rope footwork techniques, you need to coordinate your eyes, feet, hands, arms, legs, and torso while you jump. 

As you get more comfortable with the exercise, this is one of the jump rope benefits that will extend to all areas of your life. 

7. Jumping Rope Builds Balance

Alongside improved coordination, jump rope benefits extend to better balance. 

Research shows that while you jump rope, your body needs to re-establish balance with each skip. 

Building balance works hand in hand with coordination. Given that you need to coordinate multiple areas while your whole body is in motion, the combined movements are tasked with maintaining balance. 

With consistent practice, you should find that balancing becomes easier over time. 

Mental Jump Rope Benefits

8. Jumping Rope Can Be Meditative

Even though jump rope is considered a vigorous exercise, it has certain meditative qualities. 

Some Crossrope jumpers even go so far as to say the activity feels like therapy. 

“I am addicted to your ropes! Not only have I experienced amazing results and gains, but I enjoy the exercise. There’s something about the rhythm and counting reps. I think it does the same things to your brain as throwing and catching a ball. It activates certain parts of my brain, which happens to be extremely therapeutic and healthy stress relief.” 

Let’s break this idea down. 

Jumping rope can be pretty tricky. We’ve already discussed how much balance and coordination are involved, so keeping a steady pace for 30 seconds takes some work. To build up to long periods of unbroken skips, you must keep your mind in the present moment. 

When you enter a state of flow with your jump rope, everything else that’s clouding your mind just slips away. It’s just you and your rope. 

One Crossroper, Kathy, explains, “the best part of jumping, for me, is the freedom. There are no rules. You don’t have to worry about making a mistake with a step or the wrong movement. I throw on my favorite music, and allow myself to move however I want.” 

If that’s not therapeutic, we don’t know what is. 

9. Jumping Rope Improves Overall Wellbeing

Jump rope benefits not only add years to your life but life to your years. 

Studies point to physical activity, like jumping rope, improve several areas of wellness such as: 

  • Quality of sleep
  • Ability to cope with stress
  • Mental sharpness
  • Self-image
  • Opportunities to make new friends
  • Productivity

One Crossrope, Ahmed, told us that once he started jumping rope, he started to appreciate more small joys of life—cooking beautiful meals, learning new languages, sleeping soundly, experiencing nature, reading and writing, enjoying music from all corners of the world, and respecting his body for the places it can take him. 

It’s clear that jump rope benefits extend past physical health.

10. Jumping Rope is Fun

The fun factor is crucial when it comes to finding a sustainable workout routine.

We all know that when it comes to exercise, consistency is everything. You need to be able to stick with your routine over the long haul if you want to see lasting results.

But to be consistent with something, you have to actually enjoy doing it.

While everyone has a different outlook on what’s fun, we think the jump rope offers a fun workout for a few different reasons:

  1. It gives you the freedom to take your workouts on the go and break free from the gym. No more staring at walls or screens.

Bonus: with our free jump rope workout app, you can get easy-to-follow jump rope workouts with you wherever you go.

  1. It gives you the ability to learn new skills. Unlike running, jumping rope allows you to learn and progress with new skills like crisscrosses, double unders, and side swings. Each exercise is a new adventure and something you can add to your repertoire of skills.
  2. It gives you the ability to compete with yourself and with other jumpers. You can challenge yourself with one of our app workouts or tackle a workout with a partner (like this).
  3. It gives you endless versatility. There are hundreds of ways you can structure a jump rope circuit to get lean, strong, and fit at your own pace. If you want to get a taste of what that looks like, try one of our fun fitness challenges in our app.

Firas, one of our jump rope fitness community members, said:

“I've always hated the cardio warm-up part of working out whether it was on a treadmill or elliptical machine as they're boring for me. What I love about the jump rope is that it's challenging and forces me to be more mindful of what I'm doing. This way it's both a warm-up for my body and my mind that helps me go into my workouts with more focus.”

Interchangeable Jump Rope Benefits

The best benefits of jumping rope come from being able to utilize a combination of light and heavy jump ropes in your workouts.

Think about how you use other training tools, like dumbbells. You don’t just train with a single set of weights. You have different weights that you mix and match depending on what you’re trying to achieve.

The same goes with jump ropes.

Lighter ropes are great for getting lean and improving endurance. Heavier ropes are great for building strength and power. Together, the combination gives you the ability to get a complete, full-body workout wherever you go.

showing the benefits of jumping rope with interchangeable sets from Crossrope

We designed the Crossrope Fitness System to give you this type of workout. Clip in different weights of ropes and follow along as our app guides you through fun workouts and challenges.

Quick Jump Rope Benefits Summary

We hope you found this post helpful. Whether you’re looking to add something fresh to your routine or for a workout you can do anywhere, the jump rope is a great solution.

Like we said, it’s the best kept secret in fitness.

We’d love to hear from you. What jump rope benefit resonates the most with you? Leave your response in the comments below.

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