Skipping Rope Doesn’t Skip Workout

From WedMD

What piece of exer­cise equip­ment sells for under $20, fits into a brief­case, can be used by the whole fam­ily, and improves car­dio­vas­cu­lar fit­ness while ton­ing mus­cle at the same time? And using it for just 15–20 min­utes will burn off the calo­ries from a candy bar? The answer: a jump rope.

Jump­ing rope is a great calorie-burner. You’d have to run an eight-minute mile to work off more calo­ries than you’d burn jump­ing rope.

Basic Require­ments

For novices, a beaded rope is rec­om­mended because it holds its shape and is eas­ier to con­trol than a light­weight cloth or vinyl rope.

• Adjust the rope by hold­ing the han­dles and step­ping on the rope.
• Shorten the rope so the han­dles reach your armpits.
• Wear prop­erly fit­ted ath­letic shoes, prefer­ably cross-training shoes.
• You’ll need a four-by-six-foot area, and about 10 inches of space above your head. The exer­cise sur­face is very impor­tant. Do not attempt to jump on car­pet, grass, con­crete, or asphalt. While car­pet reduces impact, the down­side is it grabs your shoes and can twist your ankle or knee. Use a wood floor, piece of ply­wood, or an impact mat made for exercise.

How To Jump

If you haven’t jumped rope since third grade, it can be hum­bling. It demands (and builds) coor­di­na­tion. Ini­tially, you should prac­tice foot and arm move­ments separately.

• Hold both rope han­dles in one hand and swing the rope to develop a feel for the rhythm.
• Next, with­out using the rope, prac­tice jumping.
• Finally, put the two together. You’ll prob­a­bly do well to jump con­tin­u­ously for one minute.
• Alter­nate jump­ing with lower inten­sity exer­cise, such as march­ing, and you’ll be able to jump for longer peri­ods. You’ll prob­a­bly never want to jump for a solid 10 min­utes. Rather, incor­po­rate it into a var­ied exer­cise rou­tine, such as one devel­oped by Edward Jack­owski, PhD, author of Hold It! You’re Exer­cis­ing Wrong. He uses rope-jumping inter­vals, ini­tially 50–200 rep­e­ti­tions, in a com­bined aer­o­bic and strength­en­ing program.

The high­est inten­sity work­out involves one jump each time the rope passes. Slow­ing the rope to adding an extra lit­tle jump reduces the inten­sity. Pay atten­tion to your tar­get heart-rate zone. That’s where you’re exer­cis­ing with enough inten­sity to ben­e­fit from the exer­cise and not so vig­or­ously as to endan­ger your health.

Pre­vent­ing Injury

Check with your doc­tor if you have any doubts about your abil­ity to with­stand the impact and high aer­o­bic inten­sity of rope-jumping. As men­tioned, shoes and jump­ing sur­face are impor­tant. As with all exer­cise, warm­ing up, stretch­ing and cool­ing down are impor­tant. How you jump will deter­mine the impact on your body.

“The real key is to make sure you jump prop­erly,” says Roger Crozier. He teaches phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion at Fox Run Ele­men­tary School in San Anto­nio, Texas, and coaches a com­pet­i­tive jump-rope team. “Stay high on the toes. When you walk or run, you impact your heel. With rope jump­ing you stay high on your toes and use your body’s nat­ural shock absorbers.” Crozier says rope-jumping is lower impact than jog­ging or run­ning if done prop­erly. If not, it’s con­sid­er­ably more impact.

“Begin­ners usu­ally jump higher than nec­es­sary. With prac­tice, you shouldn’t come more than one inch off the floor.”

Learn more →

Benefits of Plank

Plank exer­cises are a pop­u­lar ele­ment of iso­met­ric train­ing, which involves con­tract­ing your mus­cles against sta­tion­ary resis­tance. Iso­met­ric exer­cises are com­mon for injury reha­bil­i­ta­tion or recon­di­tion­ing. Iso­met­ric exer­cises, such as planks, can help you get past strength-training plateaus and improve energy trans­fer­ence between your upper body and lower body. Plank exer­cises, in par­tic­u­lar, ben­e­fit mul­ti­ple ele­ments of phys­i­cal fit­ness and your gen­eral well-being.

Strength
The plank exer­cise helps strengthen mid­sec­tion, upper-body and lower-body mus­cles along the front of your body. Planks also strengthen inner core mus­cles that sup­port your joints.

Flex­i­bil­ity
Plank exer­cises help increase flex­i­bil­ity in pos­te­rior mus­cle groups through­out your body. Your shoul­der gir­dle expands and stretches var­i­ous mus­cles around your shoul­ders, col­lar­bone and shoul­der blades. Press­ing the front of your thighs upward and length­en­ing your legs as much as pos­si­ble stretches the ham­strings that form the back of your thighs. Plank exer­cises also stretch the arches of your feet as your toes hyper­ex­tend to sup­port your weight.

Aes­thetic
Plank exer­cises have aes­thetic ben­e­fits that can enhance your appear­ance by improv­ing pos­ture. Planks acti­vate core mus­cles, includ­ing the trans­verse abdo­minis and iliop­soas, which sta­bi­lize your spine and hips.

Men­tal
Plank exer­cises might pro­vide men­tal ben­e­fits that improve your mood. Plank exer­cises stretch mus­cles that com­monly stiffen through­out the day and con­tribute to stress.  Plank exer­cises might also help to sup­press anx­i­ety. Symp­toms of depres­sion may improve if you per­form plank exercises.

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Master the Plank

From Active​.com

There is no exer­cise that works your abs more effec­tively and effi­ciently than the plank. All of your abdom­i­nal mus­cles (trans­verse, obliques and upper) have to work together to sta­bi­lize and sup­port your entire body weight.

It also engages your glutes, shoul­ders, lats, arms and legs. Almost every mus­cle in your body is being toned and tight­ened when you per­form this power move.

Get ready to flat­ten and tone your mid­sec­tion in as lit­tle as 60 sec­onds with all the vari­a­tions of this super pose.

Mas­ter the Plank

Before you try some of the more cre­ative poses it’s essen­tial the you mas­ter the basic pose.

Remem­ber:

1. Draw your navel towards your spine. Think about really pulling your belly up, no sagging!
2. Don’t over­arch your back. You want your whole body from the top of your head to your ankles to be in a straight line.
3. Engage your glutes. This will help you keep that straight line.
4. Keep those angles at a 90 degree angle. This helps your entire body stack correctly.
5. Don’t col­lapse into your shoul­ders or let them rise towards your ears. Pulling your abs tighter will help you direct the hold to your core instead of your neck and upper shoulders.
6. Keep your gaze about 6 inches in front of your face. This will keep your neck from straining.
7. Work up to a 60 sec­ond hold, focus on per­fect form. If you need to rest dur­ing your plank drop your knees down to the ground and then rise back up again into the pose.

Plank Vari­a­tions

Once you’ve mas­tered the basic plank, check out these fun and chal­leng­ing takes on the basic movement:

Oblique Plank: Mov­ing your legs while hold­ing the plank increases the work your lower abs and obliques have to do, plus it gets your heart rate up burn­ing a ton of calories.

Side Plank: Shift­ing the plank from one arm to two forces your obliques and lats to engage– say good­bye to love handles.

Moun­tain Climbers: Want to tone and tighten your abs while ramp­ing up your heart rate? Try this fast paced ab move as a car­dio inter­val between strength moves.

Exer­cise Ball Planks: Doing this bal­anc­ing exer­cise on an unsta­ble sur­face dra­mat­i­cally increases the chal­lenge to your core by forc­ing it to tighten and lift to sta­bi­lize your body.

Step It Up

Adapted from Life­Hacker

Stair climb­ing is a sim­ple exer­cise you can per­form any­where there is a stair­case, whether that stair­case is in your home or in pub­lic. You’ve likely seen films depict ath­letes run­ning up large stair­cases in sta­di­ums before, and this is because it’s great exer­cise. It’s espe­cially effec­tive if you skip every other step. How can you do this as a prac­ti­cal exer­cise? If you have access to a stan­dard stair­case at home, just fol­low these steps:

1. Run up and down the stair­case as many times as you can. Skip steps in-between if you can. Stop when you are so tired you can­not con­tinue any­more. When you get to this point, you mostly likely will only be part of the way up the stair­case. If you made it to the top, chances are you’ve got another climb left in you.
2. Take the total num­ber of times you made it to the the top of the stairs and cut it in half. For exam­ple, let’s say you maxed out at 20 times and that halved num­ber is 10.
3. The next time you climb stairs, run up and down 10 times each (the halved number).
4. Take a 60–90 sec­ond break, then do another set of 10 (the halved number).
5. Take another 60–90 sec­ond break, then do at least 10 (the halved num­ber). If you can do more, do more. Your goal is to push your­self until you’re too tired to go on.
6. As this gets eas­ier, increase the num­ber of times you climb the stairs per set so you’re always push­ing your­self to work harder.

Not every­one has a stair­case, how­ever, so this exer­cise isn’t always an option at home. If you don’t want to go out and use a pub­lic stair­case with reg­u­lar­ity, just add stair climb­ing to part of your every­day life. When you have the option to take the stairs, take them, and run up them skip­ping every other step. This is a good way to work in a lit­tle exer­cise to your reg­u­lar day.

The Benefits of Push-ups

Did you enjoy your med­ley of push-ups this morn­ing? Mil­i­tary, dia­mond, incline, decline and more… these exer­cises have an over­all pos­i­tive impact on your health — beyond just arm strength.

FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Build Strength
Push-ups are one of the old­est and most basic exer­cises and they are very effec­tive. They work out all the mus­cles in the upper body and build opti­mal strength in the fore­arms, wrists, upper arms, shoul­ders and chest. For­mer NFL star Her­schel Walker was one of the top run­ning backs in the game in the 1980s. He eschewed weightlift­ing but he did a reg­i­men of at least 100 push-ups every­day, some­thing he has con­tin­ued well into his retire­ment. “They helped me get in shape and stay in shape,” Walker said. “That’s why I have always done them. Every day.”

Increase Metab­o­lism
Push-ups push the body toward phys­i­cal exer­tion. In addi­tion to build­ing strength, they force the heart to work harder and the blood to pump faster. This increases metab­o­lism and helps you burn more calo­ries. The ben­e­fit of the push-up is still felt hours after the exer­cise is done.

Con­fi­dence
Doing push-ups on a reg­u­lar basis will make you stronger and improve your over­all con­di­tion­ing. How­ever, it will also increase your con­fi­dence. You will find that doing push-ups in sets of 25, 50 and 100 will build mas­sive arm and upper body strength. Do it reg­u­larly and you will build as much strength as the guys who spend hours in the gym. This will give you tremen­dous pride in your accom­plish­ment and the con­fi­dence that comes with achieve­ment. It is such a good exer­cise that the U.S. Army still uses the push-up as one of its pri­mary activ­i­ties to get sol­diers in shape.

Build Core Strength
In addi­tion to build­ing upper body strength and gain­ing more power in the arms, shoul­ders and hands, push-ups done with the proper form will help build the core mus­cles in the mid­dle of your body. To do push-ups prop­erly, your elbows must be fully extended at the start and end of a push-up, your toes should be on the floor and your legs, hips and back should be straight.