"Skipping (jump rope) may be one of the most underrated workouts around . It's cheap to get started. You can do it almost anywhere without taking up space. And it targets multiple areas of the body with a singe workout," says Jones.
Jones is most interested in its benefits on the cardiovascular system. He says that he's been getting his cardio recently from 30 minute jogs in the mornings, which only adds up to 9 METs (metabolic equivalent of a task).
"The higher the MET number, the more elevated your heart rate and the more calories you'll burn during training," says Jones.
He claims that jumping rope for 10 minutes produces an MET of 12.3, a tougher task than his daily jogs. So he decides to swap jogging for jumping rope for 30 minutes for the next 30 days to measure how his cardiovascular health improves.
To get a baseline understanding of his health before he started the challenge, he strapped on a heart monitor to get his stats. To be clear, the best way to have accurate readings are in a lab environmentespecially once Jones begins talking about VO2 Max. But for his purposes, he's able to track his progress. Jones' resting heart rate was 61 BPM (beats per minute) to start. He then ran a timed 400 meter sprint at full speed, clocking in at 87 seconds and a heart rate measurements of 157 BPM. (Jones might be off the mark here; a 400 meter sprint is more likely a test of his anaerobic capacity, meaning his body does not use oxygen to produce energy, not an aerobic task that uses oxygen to produce energy. For his purposes, he should have run taken on a distance that required him to run further to challenge his cardiovascular system.)
He waited for his heart rate to return to 90 BPM, and did 20 burpees, which he did in 1:03 and resulted in a final measurement of 117 BPM. He planned to use these numbers to compare where his cardiovascular health was after 30 days of jumping rope.
His jumping plan: to do circuits of 3 minutes of jumping with 1 minute rest in between.
On Day 1, he's struggling after just one circuit.
"That felt like so long! That was much more tiring than I thought it would be. Sooo much more tiring," says Jones.
He decides to move the circuits up to 5 minutes, with 1 minute rest in between.
After Week 1, he starts to get a feel for his jumping, and starts to implement stretching and foam rolling his calves to make sure he can keep the routine sustainable. But he decides to switch up his training to include one day with moderate jumping and one day with intense jumping instead of doing the same jumping circuits each day, and implementing cross training to maximize his results.
His intense workout: 5 rounds of 2 minute circuits going as hard as he can for 2 rounds, followed by 5 rounds of 200 to 300 meter sprints, then back to jumping.
He notes that to improve and increase his VO2 max , he needs to do 1 hour and 40 minutes of work. So that's what he does.
"As my endurance has improved over the course of the month, I've had to increase the intensity of these sessions to continue improving. That means more speed circuit sand a lot more double jumps," says Jones.
By Day 30, he's back on a track to test how much his cardiovascular health has improved.
He clocks in this time at 75 seconds, a 12 second improvement, with a measurement of 159 BPM. When he went to the burpees, he completed them 3 seconds faster, and his resting heart rate decreased to 57 BPM.
"If you're struggling to find a cardio routine that works well for you or you just want to mix up some of your training, I think it's absolutely worth it to give jumping rope a try. And I'm going to continue doing it," says Jones.