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- Whistling Dixie
I love walking. It's amazing how much of a workout it can give you and yet so many people miss out on it because they drive everywhere. Imagine the extra calories you could burn if you just took the time to walk somewhere everyday. I've seen people drive across the street just to pick up their groceries before driving home to sit and watch TV. Stop being lazy and get out there and walk!I digress, anyway, I was taking a walk yesterday early in the morning around the neighborhood where my in-laws live. As I was coming up to one of the yards, a dog came flying out to meet me at the fence barking it's head off. Some dogs are quite gifted at the bark and this one certainly fell into that category. I started to speed up so I wouldn't wake the neighbors when I heard a little girl whistling for the dog. I looked at the house and noticed she was probably about 6 or 7 and stood there whistling over and over again. The dog looked back at her, ran a little ways before it turned around and ran back at me barking. It did this a couple times before the little girl ran inside the house. I honestly thought she had given up, but just as I was about past the house I heard a whistle blow. I turned around and saw the dog immediately give up barking and race back to the house without a seconds hesitation. This girl knew that dogs number.
Does your exercise routine feel like you're just whistling in the wind. No matter how often you go and run on the treadmill it's almost like a dog that toys with you, momentarily obeying before turning and running away again? So many people try doing the same thing over and over without ever seeing the results they desperately crave. Is that you? If you find that's the case you need to learn an important phrase...Cross Training.
Every good athlete knows that to see the most improvement you can't just do the same thing and expect to be at your best. You have to mix in different exercises that challenge your muscles to work differently. I used to work in a gym as a trainer and I remember seeing the same people in there everyday doing the exact same exercises. No variation, day after day, month after month, no change at all. After a while, your muscles adapt to that consistency and you can go a long time with that exercise and not really get a very good workout.
Let me give you an example. I jump rope. I'm sure you've figured that out already, but just in case, I jump rope. In fact I do it a lot. Last year I did 365 programs in roughly 170 school days. One comment I hear from loads of teachers after my performance is, "I can't believe you can talk so smoothly while you're jumping". I wear a wireless microphone and talk through the entire show. I don't breathe hard, outside of how much I sweat, you'd be hard pressed to tell I even did anything. Jump rope is easy for me because I do it so much. Everyone thinks I'm in amazing shape, which I am, but I can't run a mile without almost dying. What gives?
My body is so conditioned to jumping that I can do it without hardly any effort, but running kicks my tail because I do it so rarely. If you only do the same thing over and over, your body adapts to that exercise and you don't get nearly the workout you could be getting if you just started cross training. Most people run and bike, but do you jump rope?
Jump rope is the best cross training exercise available. Besides the obvious health benefits, it's challenging, fun, creative and will help you develop skills that will benefit any sport you do.
Go on, give it a try, you'll be whistling Dixie in no time!
- Work Smarter, Not Harder
Yesterday I had a performance in Hayfork, CA. If you've never had the opportunity to drive through NorCal, it's quite an adventure, especially if you get off the interstate and drive along the mountain roads. The roads are quite windy and can become very steep at a moments notice. Most of the drive was spent at about 30 mph as I was pulling a loaded down trailer. One thing I found interesting is that I rarely touch the brake when driving downhill through the mountains, but I found myself stuck behind a guy that practically stood on his brake pedal through every downhill segment. What gives?I remember as a child wondering why you need the 1-2 and 3 gears on an automatic, isn't the point of having an automatic no shifting? Someone had once told me that to control downhill speed while driving in the mountains, just downshift to first or second gear and let the engine do the work, so that's what I do. The vehicle in front of me will no doubt seriously reduce the life span of his brakes if he spends much time at all in the mountains. Not to mention the fact that he was physically doing a lot more work than I was, even though I was pulling a trailer and he had an empty car.
Exercise is very similar to this, if you do things incorrectly there's a good chance you'll reduce the life span of your parts. Even if there's no correlation to how long a body part works, you're still putting in a lot more effort than you need to. As an example, I was working with a jump rope team a couple days ago and I was helping one of the jumpers work on her T.J. Triple Cross. She was having a difficult time coming out of it in the air and it kept catching on her foot. Anytime you're learning a multiple under skill, or you're consistently missing on one part, it's always best to walk through it on the ground to make sure you have the motions down in single bounce so that you know where everything needs to go when you take it into the air. So I had her show me the steps. 1) Side Swing. 2) Toad on same side of body as side swing. 3) Bring arms out and return to regular jumping position...Hold it! Step 3 had a slight problem that needed to be addressed.
What I noticed was a common error that many people have when doing a toad. When coming out of the toad, the leg that is on the ground and has been supporting the body weight is kicked backward as they rock onto their front foot. This doesn't seem like too much of an issue when you're doing a toad on the ground by itself, but it does present an issue if you ever try to do a combination of skills or when you're adding it to a multiple under. The reason it's an issue is that your body weight and posture are in a very tough stance to go to any other skill. In the case of the T.J. that foot kicking back on the landing is catching the rope as it's way behind her and the rope is catching it. A proper toad would have you jumping off the supporting foot and landing on both feet at the same time. This puts you in a position to continue jumping and when done in the air, it minimizes the opportunities for the rope to catch you. The other side to this is that when done properly, you're using less energy than the other way, it's not a lot, but if you are overworking on every jump, you'll wear out a lot faster.
Take time to learn how to do skills properly and everything about what you do will be better. You'll be much more efficient and you'll look better doing the skills. If you're just getting started in jump rope or you've been doing it a while the best thing you can do is take the time to look at how a skill is supposed to be done and evaluate yourself in light of that. The best way that I've found to do this is a mirror. Whenever I can I like to jump rope in front of one and it has nothing to do with the amazing figure that stands in front of me. I want to make sure things are correct. I look at everything, hand, shoulder, foot, leg, arm, etc. placement. I check it out from the front, the back the side. I want to make sure that it looks correct and if there's anything I can change I fix it.
The biggest wake up call I had to this was the 1996 National Competition. My team had an amazing year and swept the tournament, I had been the only competitor that year to medal in all 9 events. We were really happy with our results, but I remember watching the tournament on ESPN and all I could remember was how awful I looked when doing speed. My left shoulder was a good 3 inches lower than my right one and it looked terrible! I immediately got out my rope, stood in front of the mirror and jumped. I was amazed that I had never seen it before, but sure enough, that's what I looked like. Ever since then I have been extremely conscious of how I look when jumping. I force myself to level my shoulders and constantly check to make sure they're correct.
Form and posture are very important when doing skills in rope skipping. It's not enough to just be able to make a trick, you need to make it look good. The secret to this is LOTS of practice, but you need to start with knowing how to do the skills correctly. Practice makes permanent, if you do something incorrectly and practice it that way, you'll always do it wrong. Learn correct to start with and you'll be way ahead in the long run.
- 5 More Steps to Jump Rope Like a Pro
This is a follow up article to '5 Steps to Jump Rope Like a Pro'. I thought I would share a few more tips on how you can look like a pro while you jump. Enjoy! - Variety is the spice of life Or so the saying goes anyway. Work on a variety of skills. You can do footwork, crosses, multiple unders, rope releases, swings, wraps and a plethora of other skills. Don't just work on only one type of trick, take time to learn a little from each category. To the uninitiated, most skills in the same category look th