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? |