Necessary Tools: Jump Rope

Even if you haven't jumped rope since elementary school, you can still connect to your inner child for a full body workout on-the-go with little guidance. All you need is 15 minutes with a jump rope to achieve a combination of cardio and strength training.

Jumping rope is one of the most effective cardio workouts. In short, it helps you burn serious calories while increasing athletic endurance.

Maxine Goynes, MG METHOD founder shares, “Jumping rope requires both physical and mental presence. For pre-pandemic in person training sessions, I always used to have my clients begin with jumping rope because you are encouraged to be engaged the entire time, it doesn’t reward mindless activity.”

Jumping rope helps with the development of the left and right hemispheres of your brain, it increases spatial awareness and increases your memory making you more mentally alert.

It's also a self-limiting tool which means it enforces good form. Most training injuries come about from doing exercises with poor mechanics. With the jump rope, if you use poor form, you’ll find the rope entangled often but this can help you prevent injuries in the future.

Give this circuit a go solo or with a friend to reconnect with the simple tool that makes us wonder why we ever set the rope down before.

In this circuit we will complete each exercise for a total of 3-4 rounds total.

If you’d like other simple workouts that can be performed at home with little to no equipment, you can find them in the MG METHOD FOUNDATIONS e.book.

For some of our favorite beats to workout to, check out our MG METHOD Spotify Playlist

Movement 01:

Reverse Lunge with Twist

10 reps each leg

This lunge variation works the entire body, and adding the rotational twist ensures that your core gets a little extra attention.

Stand with your feet hip distance apart. Hold jump rope horizontally with your arms outstretched in front of you at chest level with both hands.
Keep your core activated, and take a large step back with your right foot, planting your foot and then lowering your body until both legs are bent in right angles.
As you sink into the lunge, slowly twist your torso to the left.
Bring your torso back to center, and exhale as you straighten your legs. Bring your feet back together.
This completes one rep. Do 10 reps each side for one set.

Movement 02:

Close Stance Jump Rope

60 seconds

This is the basic jump rope movement intended to help elevate the heart rate and done with both feet at the same time from a symmetrical stance.

Hold the handles of the rope in each hand.
The head and neck remain neutral as the spine and torso are tall with the shoulders back. Use a light knee and ankle motion while jumping on the balls of the feet.
The basic bounce step requires that the feet begin and stay together throughout the entire exercise.
Make sure to only clear the rope a few inches with both feet during this exercise.

Movement 03:

Squat with Overhead Raise

20 reps

Overhead squat is a great tool for training the strength and stability of your shoulders and core. It's also a great tool to mobilize your thoracic spine, ankles, and hips, and will help you feel more comfortable at the very bottom of a squat.

Stand with your feet slightly wider than hip-width distance apart and toes pointed slightly outward.
Your hands should be wide. Raise the jumprope overhead, keeping your arms straight.
Sit back into your squat, bending your knees to 90 degrees while keeping your elbows straight. (pause for several seconds to increase challenge)
Straighten your legs to standing, bring the rope slowly to starting position, to complete one rep.

Movement 04:

Single-Leg Jump Rope

30 seconds each leg

Jumping rope requires and builds a lot of coordination, one of the most important components to human fitness. Unilateral exercises are excellent options for working one side of the body at a time to help build balanced strength and an aesthetic physique.

Jump rope exercises, such as the single leg jump rope, are great calf building exercises as they provide a lot of repetition to the slow twitch muscle fibers of the calves and can be explosive by nature.

Grasp a jump rope with the handles at your sides and the rope behind your heels.

Rotate the wrists to generate velocity and help the rope revolve around the body.
As the rope moves toward your feet, hop with one leg to allow it to pass underneath.

*Hopping on a single leg requires quite a bit of hip and ankle stability. As such, if you encounter knee pain or you notice that your biomechanics are altered, consider utilizing both feet and working to increase your single leg strength via training.

Movement 05:

Plank with Alternating Hand Taps

20 reps each side

The high plank with taps helps to strengthen your core, glutes, arms, and shoulders. Any time we create instability our core is encouraged to stabilize. This exercise helps to reduce lower back pain, improves your posture, and strengthens your core.

Start in a plank or push up position with your wrists right underneath your shoulders.
Keeping your belly button drawn in and your core engaged touch your right hand crossing over to the left side of the rope, return to neutral and repeat with the opposite hand. Make sure to keep hips nice and stable.
While alternating sides of the rope, make sure that you are minimizing the movement in your hips as much as possible.

Movement 06:

Single Leg Skater Hops

20 reps each leg

Lateral movements not only improve strength, stability, and coordination, they also help reduce the risk for injuries by enhancing balance and awareness through the whole body while improving overall hip, knee, and ankle joint stability.

From a standing position, shift your weight onto your left leg, bending your left knee to lower your hips a few inches while raising your right foot off the ground.

Bound to your right by pushing off with your left leg.
Land softly on your right leg, allowing your left leg to cross behind you and your arms to swing across your body in the same direction.
Pause, and then repeat the movement, this time pushing off with your right leg and landing on your left leg.
Continue jumping from side to side to complete.

Movement 07:

Plank with T-Rotation

10 reps each side

A great exercise to improve your flexibility, posture and stability. By twisting your torso you're engaging your upper body, the obliques and challenging the core to a greater degree. This helps you strength the lateral ab wall, the chest, the shoulders and the transverse abdominal muscle.

Place yourself in plank position, hands on ground beneath your shoulders.
Straight body from head to toes.
Engage abs and glutes to hold up your body (Imagine someone is pulling the back of your sports bra to the sky).
Reach elbow up toward the sky and slowly twist upper body while pivoting the feet and looking in the same direction. Hold 1-3 seconds, return slowly and repeat other side to count one repetition.