Jumping Rope Is Big Man Cardio :
From The Archives :
Late 2017
As a 15 year old lad of 6′ and barely 170lbs I was forced along with the rest of the wrestling team to skip rope for the better part of 10-15 minutes or 500 skips whichever comes first.
Having become self conscious of using a jump rope after age 5 as “jumping rope is for girls” was the general consensus on the playground at the time I now found myself whacking my upper back or skull about 50 times, and catching it on my foot for a similar number of repetitions 4 days a week that winter as I had not practiced the damn thing in about 10 years (with a short aside of being forced to take part in a “girly” activity by a 4th grade gym teacher).
Unlike running which I very much mentally burnt out of, as I grew I continued to jump rope.
Maybe I like the activity. Maybe I felt overly invested in it’s use as after that season of wrestling I spent a solid hour daily the next summer practicing it (and getting down basic tricks, in addition to actually skipping/jumping the rope efficiently) fully expecting to be forced into the 15 minute/500 revolution protocol again the next winter only to have a change in coaches, the new one liking long ass running. (Coincidently this is how a 200lber can get to running ~21:00 5ks. Do it 4x weekly as hard as possible by coach’s command while blaring foreign rap and other music no one else has heard of. This also is how one grows to hate running, another coincidence.)
Humorous forewording aside: the jump rope is a perfect cardio option, particularly for a big man.
Jumping rope provides similar benefits to distance running but without the negatives. It is far more sustainable.
You will not have it affect your system as much. Whereas running will pump up your lower back, often bother some joint or other, and often enough make you feel weaker jump rope doesn’t dip into recovery like that.
Running gets you better at running. Jump rope has in addition to the cardio benefits also trains agility. It can make you more “bouncy”.
Running indoors on a treadmill I find to be retarded. Go outside! (I do in fact enjoy running bleachers.) Jump rope on the other hand can be done anywhere.
(I skipped a ton of rope in 2015 supersetting with pushups, this oddly got me my running ability back while having run at most once every 3 months.)