In this day and age, you would think the Internet has all the answers. Or at least it should. I had a question last night and Google didn't quite give me a straight answer.
My exercise regiment, while I am unemployed and sheltering in place (at home) includes rope-skipping, elliptical, and Wii Fit. I never skipped when I was a kid. It's not something boys would do, at least in Viet Nam. But I keep seeing it used as part of a training program, especially in the Rocky movies. I happen to have a skipping rope in the house, it takes very little space to skip, and you can do it almost anywhere. Some time ago, I started skipping in the alley at my house, my son and I took turn using the one rope we had. Those early days, I could barely do five or six consecutively. I jumped too high and wore myself out quickly. Or I would get entangled with the rope because my timing was just off.
With this current pandemic, I renewed my interest with skipping and made much improvement. I now can do forty reps of the rope moving overhead to in front of me then gliding below me. I think that's the standard. I can even do backward, where the rope goes overhead behind me then comes back to the front from underneath. At much slower speed, but still in reps of ten or so. My current routine is 3 sets of 40 reps each, forward, then 3 more set of backward skipping, whatever rep I can manage. I may have read a little bit about rope-skipping, but maybe only about variations, to make it less boring. Last night, I decided to research some more, especially with regards to losing weight. Articles after articles would discuss the work involved in terms of time duration, not reps or sets as I've been doing. That led me to dig some more around the question of "What time duration should I do with my daily rope-skipping exercise?" And wow it sure took a lot of digging. At first, it seems 30 minutes is the answer, but then the instructor mentioned that in that 30 minutes one would also do push-ups and other exercises, so that's not it. In the end, I found from some blog that for a beginner a series of 10-minute sets will do. With short breaks, like one or two minutes.
That's what she said, supposedly. Today, I put myself to the test. I thought I am pretty good at it now, that I should be considered intermediate. Was I wrong! While I was able to do 80 reps in one minute, I was flat out tired afterward. I tried to have one-minute break, as opposed to the usual breaks that I had before, which involved doing other things around the yard, or checking for updates on social media. The verdict is that I can do 5 sets of 80 reps in about 10 minutes, rest included. I sure was all sweaty and panting. The last set I think I only got to 70 something because I was out of gas and couldn't jump high enough so the rope got me.
The moral of the story: sometimes there's no one size to fit all. Research and get an idea what should be done, but then try it out yourself.
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