You can jump.
Hello Jump Ropers!
Think about it. You can ride a bike and have a conversation at the same time. Your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, and your legs are pedaling, yet you don’t think about which muscles to activate, or even think about balancing. You can talk about the football game or the upcoming party while you ride, yet this seemingly simple, but extremely complicated combination of movements just happens, automatically. How is that possible?
The answer is that your subconscious mind took over these tasks. After a lot of repetition and practice, you no longer need to think of how to do these things. After learning as a child, riding a bike becomes automatic and natural, while your conscious thoughts can focus on other things, like a conversation.
Kids are programmed to learn. And it’s easy for them. That’s why children that are exposed to two languages at an early age, pick up both with no effort. The same thing happens when riding a bike, or swimming. A kid thinks it must be easy once they learn, and so it becomes.
But try that with an adult. Something simple somehow becomes very difficult. Swimming is a good example. Adults can still learn to stay afloat and move around in the water, but few adults will ever develop a perfect swim stroke if they did not learn a proper swim technique as a child.
Jumping rope is also on the list of body movements that do not happen naturally, but it’s not as difficult as swimming. Like everything else, kids learn it quickly. While it’s more difficult for adults, a flawless jump rope technique only takes diligent practice and repetition, and it’s far from impossible.
Some complain that they are not coordinated, but that is not the case. They just haven’t done it enough. And for those that spend more time looking for shortcuts than putting the necessary time, I have bad news. There are no shortcuts to perfect. But this is not a problem when you are having fun and getting a good workout.
So back to the subconscious. Practice is just teaching your subconscious to take over. Once you do that, it becomes automatic, like riding a bike. And once that happens, you’re on your way to intense and fun workouts that get your whole body involved, without much conscious effort.
In previous weeks we talked about the side-swing, the figure 8 and the simple jump. For this week, try to continue alternating between these three moves, but try to string more and more simple two-foot jumps in a row. Once you can do 40 or 50 jumps with no interruption, you’re on your way to incorporating the next jump trick into your repertoire, which we will talk about next week.
Go hit 20 -30 minutes of side swing, figure 8 and jump, jump, jump. Remember to stay away from exhaustion by going back to resting moves, but don’t let up! The more you practice these three, the easier it becomes to learn the next set of tricks. So, play your favorite music and go for it!
Jump on!