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Skipping your way to Fitness

Skipping your Way to Fitness

The playground sport is right back in fashion, reports Nicholas Roe
 
1 A rope screams through the air at 200 revs a
 minute, energy is burned at the jaw-sagging
 rate of 1,300 calories an hour and miracles
 of physical activity are performed in front of
 cheering crowds. Welcome to the new, super
 cool world of … skipping. Once considered
 childish, this ancient playtime skill [id:69043]. And
 what’s emerging is not just an effective route
 to mass fitness for little outlay (£5 buys a
 decent rope), but a new place for Britain’s
 young athletes in a growing international
 sport that’s intriguing to watch.
2    Fiercely competitive, hugely intricate and
 physically demanding, skipping – also known
 as rope-jumping – also shows signs of being,
 quite literally, the new rock ’n roll. Singer
 James Morrison recently featured a team of
 competition skippers in his music video You Give Me Something. [id:69044] , Britain’s
 best skippers returned from the World Rope Jumping Championships in Canada
 this summer with a creditable fourth place.
3    Four years ago the British Rope Skipping Association (BRSA) started trying
 to raise the profile of the sport, persuading television shows such as Blue Peter
 to focus on the subtle complexity of rope work, which can involve 200 different
 kinds of ‘jump’. Directors loved the fancy footwork and youthful profile. Huge
 efforts were also being ploughed into getting skipping back into the playground.
 This year saw Britain establishing a new world record when 7,632 children
 skipped continuously for three minutes in 85 locations, backed by teachers who
 consider rope-work to be a great way to improve youth fitness.
4    “Skipping went out of fashion because video games and PlayStations came
 along,” says Sue Dalem, secretary of the BRSA. “But teachers are now pushing
 to bring it back.” Dalem says that young people are instantly amazed at what is
 possible with just a simple rope. Her own daughters, Beci, 18, and Rachael, 17,
 started as seven-year-olds and now skip for Britain: “We skip four or five times a
 week for two or three hours at a time,” says Rachael. “It’s fun.”
5    And this is the key. [id:69046] basic skipping is simple, and almost anyone with
 five square feet of free space can do it, there’s a genuinely attractive art to
 higher-level work. Half a dozen clubs in Britain regularly compete.
6    In speed contests, the world record is 188 jumps in 30 seconds. More
 creatively, rope-jumpers use one or even two long ropes held by team members
 to perform cartwheels, push-ups, handstands and aerial leaps while avoiding a
 rope spinning at 200 rpm. Skipping for 10 minutes is said to be the equivalent of
 30 minutes’ jogging, and it tones the upper body as well as the legs. The truly
 extraordinary thing, perhaps, is that this antique pastime ever lost its mass
 appeal in the first place.
7    Although the trend has been reversed, one remaining challenge is that many
 young men still consider skipping an off-puttingly girly activity. This is surprising,
 given that boxers rely on skipping for endurance training. And when was Mike
 Tyson ever a sissy?