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Read on to find out how to skip properly and try our beginner skipping workout to get started. Skipping is a fantastic workout and can burn up to 10 calories per minute if done at a high intensity!

In order to get skilled at jumping rope, it's important to practice and to break it down into sections. When most people start skipping for the first time they jump too high, just going for it and doing what feels natural without any knowledge on proper technique. But skipping too high is not efficient for a workout and will leave you unable to skip for longer than a few seconds.

When skipping, the key is to not actually jump. Wait, what? If you change your mindset about what your feet are doing, it becomes a lot easier. Instead of jumping, think about doing a calf raise.

Practice doing it without the rope to start: raise your heels so that you are on the balls of your feet, and then lower yourself back down using your calf muscles. You may need to increase the strength and stamina in these muscles before skipping feels easy. Take your time and enjoy the process. You should only come a few centimetres off the floor on each bounce.

Keep your ankles loose and feel the balls of your feet flex. See if you can keep it up for 30 seconds without stopping. After your feet, what you do with your arms is the most important part of skipping. Hold the handles near the rope-end as this is the most efficient and will allow the rope to swing better. Keep your wrists loose, and your elbows close to your hips. It is a very subtle movement; you do not want to be swinging your whole arm, just a slight movement of the wrist.

It will be tempting to tense your arms and lock them by your sides, so try to relax from the shoulder. This moves us onto your posture. If your goal is losing weight, you may need to do more. A cardiovascular workout like jumping rope can have serious benefits for your health , from reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease to improving your circulation and lung function, improving your cholesterol profile, regulating your blood sugar and insulin levels, and reducing inflammation.

It can even strengthen your immune system and act as a natural mood booster. To get this kind of health benefit, the U.

Department of Health and Human Services HHS recommends getting at least minutes of moderate-intensity cardio exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity cardio, every week. That works out to 15 to 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week, depending on your workout intensity. That said, not everybody will have the coordination to do a continuous, intense jump rope workout.

If you find yourself stopping to untangle the rope more often than you'd like, it's more practical to aim for 30 minutes of moderate-intensity rope jumping on most days. The health benefits don't stop as soon as you cross that magical threshold of 75 to minutes of aerobic activity per week. In fact, the HHS makes it clear that more is better when it comes to aerobic activity. You'll see even more benefits if you can double that recommendation to minutes of moderate-intensity cardio per week or minutes of vigorous cardio in the same time period.

So even if you're a real jump rope aficionado, don't be afraid to cross-train by introducing other exercises to balance out the stress an extended jump rope workout puts on your body. Some particularly good exercises you can combine with jumping rope include low-impact workouts, such as cycling, swimming or walking. You can also opt for rowing and aerobic dance classes, both of which work your body through a wider range of motion than jump roping does — and they're low impact too.

Would you like even more proof that aerobic exercises like jumping rope are good for you? In a study that was published in an October issue of JAMA Cardiology , researchers followed more than , patients and found that cardiorespiratory fitness was inversely associated with long-term mortality.

To put it another way, the more cardiovascular fitness you have, the more likely you are to live longer. What if your primary goal is weight loss? That depends on whether your rope skipping and your diet combine to create a calorie deficit or, to put it another way, you burn more calories than you take in. Next steps Increase the time that you skip by two minutes every week.

You can also find some longer ropes and get friends involved. Remember how good at it you used to be at school? Your daily routine. Need more convincing? The Movement Challenges. To skip rope for a minute working up to 5 minutes at least. Skipping properly uses big and small muscles, and improves good hand-eye coordination.

As you progress through the steps, see how long you can skip for. Increase the time that you skip by two minutes every week.