Get a jumprope. If you haven’t tried jumping rope just lately, pick one up. Why, I gave it the ole college try this morning, and was pleasantly surprised.
This morning, I started enacting my heavy-weight-loss-focused efforts, which involved intense bouts of calisthenics, calorie burning efforts, and slightly more moderate weight training. Here’s what I did.
Jump rope for warming up. (30 seconds)
Pushups 20
Dirty Dogs 20 a side
Crunches 100
Flutterkicks 30
Leg curls 30 (for hamstrings)
Stability ball squats 30 (against wall)
Jump rope (30-60 seconds)
Run 1 lap
Jump rope 1 minute
Run 1 lap
Pushups 10
Crunches 50
Flutterkicks 100
Jump rope 1 minute
Run 1 lap
Jump rope 1 minute
Run 1 lap
Row 10 minutes
Bike 10 minutes
Run 10 more laps.
Then, I switched to cable weights for a while. If you’ve been doing strictly dumbbells lately, try cables for a change. I found them dynamic, and just generally an interesting switch up. I did a full body workout, but with nothing like the amount of weight I’ve been throwing around. Oh, and I skipped chinups, as I still have some neato shoulder pain to contend with.
Notes about purchasing a jump rope. At home, I have this one with really good handles, with foam and a weight to them, etc, and actual fabric rope. It’s crap. It’s horrible, and it makes me jump horribly. What worked best for me were those plastic macaroni-beaded jumpropes you had way back in gym class, or the kind where the rope is some kind of plastic like the kind you use for keychain crafts in scouts. To measure what height you need, step dead middle of the jumprope, and the end of the handles should be about equal to your armpit. For me, this is something longer than 9 feet, it appears, as the 9 foot jumprope I purchased wasn’t exactly perfect.
My heart was HAMMERING when I did the jumproping segments, and the reason I kept doing 30-60 seconds at a whack was that I couldn’t handle any more. I was dying. So, when I find something like this, I work at it more and more. I like getting up to a level where it feels easy cheesy to accomplish.
I really enjoyed this workout. Doing calisthenics based work, especially throwing in all the heavy calorie burning stuff I was doing, really made me feel like I was accomplishing something. I felt the closest I’ve yet felt to those training scenes in movies, like when you see Rocky working his head off on the speed bag or football dudes training so hard their shirts are black from sweat. Why this appeals to me is an unknown, but maybe that’s primal.
Do you all want that? Do you like your workouts to leave you feeling like you REALLY did something?
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