If you’re amongst the people that hate the typical cardio exercises and are looking for an easy and fun alternative, jump ropes fit that spot nicely. They’re super versatile, provide a variety of exercises, and can deliver a pretty intense cardio workout. Since this unique method of training shares a lot of similarities with plyometrics, I get asked this question quite a lot: Is jump rope plyometrics?
Jump ropes can be considered a low to moderate-level plyometric exercise especially if you’re doing them at a fast pace or alternating between two legs.
In this article, we’ll try to compare jump ropes with other plyometric exercises in order to check the similarities between them and verify if they can really be considered plyometrics.
Table of Contents
Is Jump Rope Plyometrics?
In order to answer this question, we’ll first take a quick look at what plyometric exercises are all about and then compare them with jump rope exercises to see if they can really be considered plyometrics.
What Defines Plyometric Exercises?
This is a very important question that doesn’t get asked a lot and it’s why there is so much confusion around this subject. What really defines plyometric exercise? What makes exercises plyometrics?
Even though there are thousands of definitions all over the internet, most of them aren’t that accurate since they always miss the central point of plyometrics and its foundation. I’ll try to explain it as simply as possible.
First of all, plyometrics, or what some others like to call “jump training” is a type of exercise that can be applied to pretty much any resistance training exercise that you can think of as long as it’s following some rules. It’s any high-intensity type of movement that always starts with the muscles being stretched and then followed by their contraction in an explosive manner in order to build up power, speed, and agility.
The first rule here is the emphasis on the velocity between this stretching and contraction of the muscles. The faster it is, the better of a stretch reflex that we can reach.
The second and most important rule and the one that everybody seems to miss is the fact that these exercises need to be done in contact with a surface (In most cases, the ground). And this contact can’t be more than 120 milliseconds in order to trigger something that we call the “stretch-shortening cycle” to its full capacity which is an essential factor in plyometrics.
This makes any exercise that follows these rules a plyometric exercise. The most common ones are plyo box jumps since you’re able to limit the contact time between the ground and your feet to less than 0.12 seconds when you’re jumping in an explosive manner every time you hit it and you’re constantly increasing the velocity of your movement.
Even push-ups can be turned into plyometrics if you follow those same two rules and make sure that your hands are not touching the ground for more than they have to.
Jump Ropes Compared to Plyometric Exercises
Now that we fully understand the main rules that define plyometric exercises, we can easily compare jump roping to them to check if we really can fit them into that same category.
But we first need to know how jump roping is performed. You pretty much use your hands and wrists to swing a rope over your head, and when it’s close to the front of your feet, you hop over it and you repeat the same movement. It’s a straightforward exercise that has a lot of benefits.
Now, let’s compare it with plyometric exercises. Does it revolve around a stretch of the muscles that’s followed by an instant contraction in an explosive manner? Since jump roping imitates the movement of jumping which is the core mechanic of plyometrics, it definitely involves the stretch and the contraction of the muscles. But depending on what type of jump roping exercise you’re doing, the explosiveness factor can vary. It is mostly present in double-unders variations but others get their fair share as well.
Is the contact time between the ground and the feet limited to 120 milliseconds? Again, depending on what type of jump rope exercises you’re doing, this can vary. But most times, unless you’re not super slow with it, you’ll naturally jump before reaching that time. And if you’d like to reach it even more easily, alternate between your legs, but most other variations will do the jump as long as you’re fast enough.
So now after our analysis, we can conclude that since jump roping follows the two main rules of plyometric exercises, it can definitely be considered low to moderate level plyometrics.
Conclusion:
Jump roping is not only a great exercise overall that offers a lot of benefits that include fun and easy workouts, versatility, improving coordination, and so on, it also has the added benefits of being a plyometric exercise that can improve power, speed, agility, and explosiveness.
