Let’s Skip Back To Basics!

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest

People often have the wrong idea about skipping. First off, they think it’s easy. That can definitely be a mistake! It might come easily to some people, but to others skipping is challenging, to say the least. It looks easy, but that’s deceptive. Doing it correctly, and finding your rhythm, can be really tricky.

Skipping-For-Weight-LossAnd even when you think you’ve got it, all you’ve really got is the most basic move — the rope turn. Actually doing anything remotely different from that, such as changing that little hop to one of the several different foot moves possible can seem almost impossible. What’s easy and fun for a five-year-old girl can be frustratingly difficult for a grownup!

The second widely-held misconception about skipping is that it’s boring. It’s really challenging to learn to skip, and the better you get at doing it, the more you want to do. It’s anything but boring! In fact, it’s fascinating. And it’s great fun too, and very, very rewarding when you reach the point where you can do something other than just a handful of rope turns without tripping yourself up.

Back to the basics

Let’s just back off a bit and make sure we have the basics covered before we go any further. There are a few things you have to get right to be in with a chance of doing this skipping thing properly.

  • Get the rope length right
  • Get the hand position right
  • Get the body position right
  • Stay relaxed

leather skipping ropeFirst, the rope length. It’s important to get this right first because if the rope’s too short or too long you’ll have trouble right from the moment you start trying to use it.Hold the two handles in one hand and step into the hanging loop. Pull the rope up to make it taut. The handles should reach up to just about your solar plexus. If it’s shorter or longer, adjust the rope length. Once you start to use the rope you might find you need to shorten or lengthen it a little bit more to find the most comfortable length, but this is a good starting point.

Next, the hand position. You should be holding the rope with your arms quite relaxed and your hands at your sides, neither in front of nor behind your bodyline. Your shoulders should be relaxed — make a conscious effort to let them drop a little because even though you might think they’re relaxed there’s often a bit of tension there.

Now, before you start to skip there’s a little bit of work to do, very easy work but work that’s worth taking the time to do because it can make a lot of difference to whether you can skip cleanly or keep tripping yourself up on the rope. It’s what you might call practice skipping. It’s a way of going through the motions without the risk of trapping the rope under your feet, or tripping over it. And here’s how you do it:

Skipping without skipping

Hold both handles in one hand at your side. Now start turning the rope as though you’re skipping. It’s that simple. What you’re doing is skipping, without actually skipping. Turn the handles, as one, as though you’re skipping, and just let the rope turn in a nice regular pattern, at your side. Turn both wrists just as you would if you were skipping for real, even though both handles are in one hand. And keep turning the rope just by turning your wrist, not moving your arm wildly about. It really is all in the wrist action.