Bruce Lee Jumping Rope

I can’t stress enough the importance of warming up before a workout—a brief period to get your heart rate going, and start moving before you begin more strenuous training.

I’ve always disliked aerobic activities, but for whatever reason jumping rope has kept my interest. Maybe it’s the childlike associations with the activity, or because every tough guy (usually boxers) jumps rope. For whatever reason, I’m sold.

Last week, I wrote an overview of hangboarding. But before I even touch the board, before I even start warming up my fingers, I jump rope for 20 minutes to get the blood moving and get psyched.

This spring has been very wet, and my wife, knowing how much I hate getting wet, realized I was serious about this this season as she watched me jumping rope in the rain.

Who knows why I do what I do. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. Crime has been up in our subrural neighborhood, so I figured I could warm up and do my 20 minutes of neighborhood watch, looking for suspicious characters who have been in the area stealing mail and other sundries. It would be like National Night Out, only I would be jumping rope. Plus, I figured no one would want to mess with someone hardcore enough to jump rope in the rain. I thought, maybe the criminals would see me and say to each other, “Hey, bro, maybe we should go to the next house with the guy that’s overweight and smokes. I don’t think we should mess with this guy, I mean, look at him, he’s jumping rope in the rain! Anyone crazy enough to do that is crazy enough to chase us down with a jump rope.”

So you can imagine my surprise the very next day when I woke up and went to the kitchen to make my coffee: I looked at out the kitchen window and saw that not only was my truck door open, there was actually a man in my truck!

What the hell?! Clearly this guy didn’t see me jumping rope the day before.

I opened the door and yelled at the guy, and he took off running. I was still in my slippers (and I hadn’t warmed up), so I didn’t really feel up to chasing him on foot. I grabbed my car keys, told the wife to call the police, and went after him. Because I know you’re in suspense I’ll keep it short: he got away.

But back to jumping rope.

When I’m warming up, I start my stopwatch and put on my training mix. For the first few minutes, I take it easy, but once I get going, it’s on. In fact, I jumped my rope to death. It split from too much wear. I picked up the wife’s, which is a Survival and Cross, and kept on going.

The Survival and Cross rope is great. It’s a lightweight speed rope with a coated cable. And though it’s starting to show signs of wear as well, the metal cable will take a lot of jumping to kill. It’s been working well for me.

I know jumping rope can feel like you’re running in place, but Bruce Lee swore by it, even said it was better than running. If you’re looking for a fun way to get some cardio, and warm up, I recommend jumping rope.

(Note from Kim aka The Wife: Survival and Cross, aside from making a great rope, are a great company. In the weeks following my purchase they sent me e-mails about how to size the rope and excellent jump rope workouts. )