Skip It Real Good

Tone your legs, burn kilojoules, up your fitness and improve your coordination with one simple tool you can use in your garden. It’s, quite literally, child’s play.

Like riding a bike, swimming and running, skipping is one of those fun childhood activities that becomes a slog with age. And that’s a pity because, should your fitness goals sit firmly in the camp of cardiovascular improvement and max kilojoule burn, skipping is a form of exercise that comes highly recommended. And unlike those other three (equally healthy) pursuits, you can do it at home and on the cheap – you can pick up an entry-level rope for the price of two cappuccinos.

“Skipping is a fantastic method for training power, speed and endurance, with key benefits for ankle, pelvic and knee stability,” says trainer Corinne Naomi, whose boxing-inspired classes use the humble skipping rope as a hero piece of equipment. That’s why skipping is a popular feature in CrossFit workouts of the day or WODs (mastering double-unders, where you spin the rope around twice in a single jump, is a badge of honour) and has long been a fave among boxers looking to boost balance, coordination and overall fitness.

In fact, fancy footwork aside, skipping is one of the most efficient exercises out there: a study in the journal Research Quarterly For Exercise and Sport found that skipping for ten minutes a day delivered the same cardiovascular benefits over six weeks as jogging daily for 30 minutes.