Benefits of Skipping

By: Tomsmith Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Skip-hop have produced skipping workout and skipping workshops programs, carefully designed to improve your levels of fitness, agility, coordination and general health. If you think about it, can it be a coincidence that almost all professional sportsmen and women use skipping as part of their daily workout routine.

Skipping and Bone Density

The Osteoporosis Society in the UK recommends 2 to 5 minutes of a physical activity like skipping every day to help prevent osteoporosis.

The benefits of a physical activity like skipping in relation to osteoporosis are very well established. Weight bearing activity that puts stress on the bone is recommended during adolescence to develop optimum bone mass. It is also beneficial to maintain activities like skipping throughout life because it minimises the rate of bone loss and provides the maximum protection against osteoporosis. Skipping is an ideal activity to help prevent Osteoporosis.

Visual Spatial Perception in Skipping As if the aforementioned were not enough, skipping must combine the skills of rhythm and timing in relation to visual spatial perception by recognizing the skipping rope's; distance, direction, speed and position.

All these calculations are performed very rapidly in the brain and then converted into movement by the skipper to enable him or her to perform the basic skipping techniques. Once these basic skips are mastered then there are ever more complex skipping techniques and skipping tricks which will further tax and therefore develop these emerging skills.

Another amazing benefit of skipping to lose weight is that it's so cheap! You don't need a gym membership, DVD, video, bike, treadmill or weights. All you need to add skipping to your workout is a jump rope.

Skipping is a wonderful workout for both the heart and lungs, and it works the muscles too. Jumping is excellent for shaping up your hips, stomach, thighs and buttocks, and swinging the rope even gives your arms a work out. Jumping rope really is a total body workout, and you don't have to do it for hours to reap the rewards.

Without running it speeds your heart rate like that of a runner and so requires a lot of energy to maintain a good fitness point.

But skipping rope can be frustrating or boring as after missing a few jumps. Even if you have a good stamina and maintain a good coordination, you fail to skip for more than 2 minutes. This is because your calves and Achilles tendons are stressed when you keep skipping in the same pattern and when they sting you start missing.

So to skip without missing you have to keep changing from a single bounce to a double bounce or to a skip or a jog or a knee up. You should keep changing the skipping style after every 30 seconds to avoid fatigue. To avoid a miss you can even do side skipping or rotating rope without jumping. This can be to warm you up in the start or to avoid any halt during the sets.