Benefits Of Jumping For Weight Loss

Skipping rope for weight loss: what you need to know

Jumping, with a rope, on a trampoline, or simply on solid ground is a cardiovascular exercise proven effective for losing weight and burning fat.

It will improve your endurance and your cardiovascular health, burn calories, and give you a fun time while you work out. Although it’s an activity most utilized by athletes, anyone with rubber shoes, gym clothes, and a skipping rope can pull it off, which is what makes it so great apart from all the benefits that you receive.

So if you’re here to discover how jumping, specifically skipping rope, can help your lifestyle, then you’re in the right place.

Is jumping/skipping rope good for weight loss?

If the goal is to reduce abdominal or subcutaneous body fat then skipping rope as a high-intensity intermittent exercise (HIIE) is more effective compared to other forms of exercise.¹ Combined with a powerful diet, results show that HIIE has mechanisms underlying fat reduction. Though these mechanisms remain unclear, they may have something to do with suppressed appetite and induced fat reduction during and after exercise.¹

As in any workout, especially HIIE, endurance and cardiovascular health are key things. Any physical activity will demand your body’s energy and ability to pump blood to support your muscles. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors are improved in a study on prehypertensive girls,² while another study on the overweight and obese show that a combined calorie deficit with a rope-skipping program improves overall health status.³

Interestingly, the greatest induced fat loss was found in type 2 diabetic adult studies, but individuals with higher initial fat mass may present with greater fat loss, and therefore more studies are needed on this particular demographic.

How many calories do we burn in skipping?

Skipping rope can burn between 15 to 20 calories a minute, and on average, a person can burn around 200 to 300 calories from jumping for about 15 minutes.⁴ According to Harvard Health,⁵ skipping rope slowly for 30 minutes in persons weighing 125, 155, and 185 pounds burns 226, 281, and 335 calories respectively. If skipping rope is done at an intense and fast rate, these individuals would burn 340, 421, and 503 calories respectively, all in a 30-minute workout.

If you’re not part of the mentioned strata, agreat way to calculate the number of calories you burn is through this formula:

Calories per Minute = (MET X BODY WEIGHT IN KG X 3.5)/200

Where MET is the metabolic equivalent or the energy you use being inactive. 1 MET is approximately 3.5 millilitres of oxygen consumed per kilogram of body weight per minute.⁴

Benefits of skipping rope for the body

Muscular activation

Skipping Rope activates the following muscle groups, and grows them from wear and tear:⁶

• Deltoids
• Hamstrings
• Abdominal Muscles
• Glutes
• Quadriceps
• Calf Muscles
• Oblique Muscles
• Forearms
• Biceps
• Triceps
• Shoulders
• Back Muscles
• Chest Muscles

Not to mention the additional flexibility and mobility for your arms and your wrist. Like many other exercises, skipping rope with heavier weights raises intensity levels.

Improves cardiovascular health

To put it into perspective, ten minutes of skipping rope is equivalent to 30 minutes of jogging for improved cardiovascular efficiency.⁷ Your endurance gets stronger, and much like any other workout, you’ll be able to do more of it without fatigue for a much longer time than when you started.

Calorie deficit support

The number of calories you burn is extremely high, and so adding jumping to your workout routine can massively benefit your caloric deficit. This helps people who are attempting to lose significant weight and visceral fat in a shorter amount of time.

Building stronger bones

The mechanical stress on bones from jumping causes a significant osteogenic response. Around 10 to 20 skips or jumps per day can increase bone mass and strength. This return diminishes over time as mechanosensitivity decreases, when you practise jumping every day at the same number of repetitions your bone strength, and bone size (diameter) increase. The stronger your bones are, the more stress is needed to cause the osteogenic response. ^[8]

Stronger bones directly translate to supporting your weight loss goals, and workouts get easier collectively.

Coordination and balance

Jumping rope can be a sport-related physical activity apart from being the sport itself. It involves coordination and balance of the entire body, as repetitions require constant rhythm and a stable centre of gravity^.9

It is one of many general physical activities that allow young athletes to enhance coordination and balance.⁹

Flexibility

It’s a highly dynamic and flexible workout, but not in the way you’re thinking right now - it is flexible in such a way that you can choose where to add skipping into your routine. It is effective as a warm-up routine, an actual workout, a cool-down, or as a HIIT exercise. You can skip anywhere with solid ground and you can do it at any point in the day. Fun Factor

Working out can feel repetitive, much like Groundhog Day. Skipping rope and constantly challenging yourself has a factor of fun that entices you to do it at an increasing rate. It is a highly effective exercise that can bring you some good vibes!

How long should you skip every day to lose weight?

Losing weight requires you to burn more calories than what you consume every day. This is called a calorie deficit, and fortunately, skipping rope can burn enormous amounts of calories, and uses a massive amount of energy in a short amount of time.

If you’re wondering how long a skipping routine for you should be in order to lose weight, then you might want to start by calculating your macros and your calories to achieve your goals. Based on your age, weight, height, sex, and weekly physical activity, you can use a caloric calculator to find out the number of calories needed to either maintain, increase, or decrease your weight.

The next step is to calculate, using food energy converters and the type of food you are more typically used to eating, the amount of food you are meant to eat per day. You can now decide to eat at a level to maintain your weight or decrease it for more weight loss. Either way, coupling your new diet with skipping rope will lead to weight loss.

If your goals are time-restricted, calculate the length of time you need to skip to burn a given number of calories using the formula mentioned in this article:

Calories per Minute = (MET X BODYWEIGHT IN KG X 3.5)/200

Since skipping rope is a better exercise compared to jogging [Buyze], and adds the fun factor maintaining your new regime, and achieving your weight loss goals should be easier.

The effectiveness of skipping in weight loss 

Jumping rope is an extremely effective way to burn many calories in a short amount of time. Some believe that 10 minutes of skipping has the same cardiovascular effects as 30 minutes of jogging, but a study by Buyze et al. [Buyze] shows that skipping does not bring forth the same training response as jogging.

It is an indisputable fact, however, that skipping rope is a high-calorie-burning exercise that requires a short amount of time. It is effective, demanding the whole action of the body, and benefits not only the bones but other factors that independently support other forms of exercise.

Summary

Weight loss is achieved by a caloric deficit, and coupled with a diet, skipping rope has proven to be immensely beneficial as a mechanism to lose weight. It not only supports your weight loss goals but makes other exercises easier. Skipping every day at a location of your choice can result in stronger bones, a healthier heart, better coordination and balance, a healthier mindset and lifestyle, and most importantly, a lower weight on the scale to help you achieve your goals.

In order to track your calories and burn the required amount, you must do your own research beforehand. A workout plan will always come in handy when you feel as though it hasn’t shown results in the past, and will make sure that you gain most of the benefits that skipping rope has to offer. This plan involves a highly specific diet as well as a committed training regime and is imperative for first-timers who are looking to lose weight in short time frames.

Use calorie and food energy calculators to find out just how many macros you need from the food you eat. The higher the accuracy of your research, the better your results will be.