Bad Habits to Avoid When You Jump Rope

Jump rope can have quite a steep learning curve at the start. This learning curve is made steeper by bad habits creeping into your training - which you’ll be completely unaware of at the time. Not to worry, as a jump rope coach I train many beginners and have compiled a list of five bad habits to avoid that will help you excel in your jump rope training.

Discipline is Freedom

Before we start I want draw your attention to the idea that discipline is freedom. Bad habits can prove damaging to both our training itself, in terms of hindering progress, and damaging to our bodies such as sports-related injuries. The ethos of discipline is freedom revolves around the principle that by practising discipline we gain more freedom. At face value, this may seem contradictory. Discipline feels like the opposite of freedom. When I say ‘discipline’ you might imagine rules or strict behaviour or self-limitation. But this is missing the point of discipline. Discipline gives us the control over our training allowing us to explore, experiment and enjoy our training more. Training, jump rope training especially, should be fun. Above all else. And having a dash of discipline sprinkled in our training can lead to an environment in which freedom and fun can taste even better.

Avoid Not Stretching

With all the countless skills to learn and simply how fun freestyle jump rope can be, it can be easy to over-do it and jump for hours at a time. Your calf muscles (gastrocnemius) get the majority of the brute of the work when jumping, as do your thigh muscles (quadriceps). This can lead to inflammation and cramps. Since prevention is better than cure, I would strongly recommend always stretching before and after your jump rope training. Stretching will make sure you prevent a sports-related injury or developing muscle tightnesses which can lead to postural imbalances.

According to the ACSM, stretches before intense exercise should last at least 8 seconds and can be static (holding a muscle at its full-length) or dynamic (moving the joint through an increasing range of motion). Stretches after intense exercise should last at least 15 seconds and should always be static.

Avoid Not Practising Both Sides

Jump rope is a bilateral sport. But what does that mean? It means that all skills can be performed on either the left or right side of the body. There exsists a perfect symmetry between the two sides. Most other sports have a dominant side or stance, which lead people to perfecting certain movement patterns on only one side of the body. In jump rope, an imbalance like this can be a very hindering habit. Wherever possible always learn new freestyle skills on both sides of the body; when trying to advance to more difficult freestyle skills such as multiples or manipulation sequences an imbalance can make certain skills impossible to learn because the individual foundational pieces haven’t been learned yet. 

A perfect example of this would be the multiple, SCSEB (Swing-Cross-Swing-EB). If a jumper can only perform a Cross or EB with a certain hand as the dominant hand, this severly restricts the possible ways for the jumper to execute this skill. SCSEB can be performed four different ways (counting left and right) and having an imbalance could restrict a jumper top struggling with even one variation, let alone having the freedom to choose.

Avoid Advancing Too Soon

Because the number of different jump rope skills you can learn is pretty insurmountable, it can be easy to get ahead fo yourself and advance too soon. However, this can be a bad habit for beginners to develop for two reasons. Firstly, it is incredibly counterproductive. More advanced freestyle skills are all built upon the basics so by advancing too quickly you risk failing to perfect the correct technique, which in turn makes the higher-level skills harder to achieve by design. Secondly, advancing too soon, especially for multiples and strength skills can be potentially harmful and increase the risk of a sports-related injury.

Mastering the basics here ensures efficient movement patterns are perfected first, before progressions are made. In doing so, you also save time. Better technique and mastery of the basics speeds up the progress you can make with the more advanced skills. This ultimately saves you so much time in the long run, whereby new high-level skills will be easier to unlock due to a greater mastery of the building blocks they are made from.

Avoid Swinging Out of Skills

This habit is the one that’s closest to my heart on this list. Side swings are a quintessential tool for stitching together sequences, transitioning between skills and forming different high-level multiples. But beginners often make the mistake of swinging out of new skills when learning them. Since freestyle jump rope skills are incredibly taxing on the jumper’s coordination, muscle memory is depended on heavily during the learning process. By developing poor movement patterns it can make this bad habit incredibly difficult to undo later down the line when the jumper decides to advance to higher-level skills. 

Surprisingly, the hardest part of successfully landing a new freestyle skill is often the single bounce immediately after - this is because it demonstrates excellent rope control by showing that the jumper is able to return to the standard body position in a single bounce regardless of the skill that came before. By swinging out of skills you deny yourself this opportunity to develop better rope control, hindering your own progress. I have seen so many jumpers hit a plateau because of this, and then really struggle to overcome this bad habit even long after becoming aware of it.

Avoid Being Too Strict

As we discussed earlier, jump rope should be fun. And although these recommendations are all based on the idea that discipline is freedom, you shouldn’t forget why we’re including jump rope in our training in the first place. Because it’s fun. So always remember to have fun in your training. Another way to look at this is that the ethos of discipline is freedom comes from a training principle called ‘training for efficiency’. But having fun and enjoying the learning process is equally as important, and this is an extension of the training principle called ‘training for completion’. Sometimes you have to simply give things a shot, ignore the specifics and just enjoy the journey. Avoid being too hard on yourself when jump rope training. Discipline is important but it shouldn’t come at the expense of enjoyment.

Need Any More Advice?

If you need any more advice around your jump rope training, and how you can more effectively progress, get in touch today.