Welcome to June!!!
I don't know about you, but my year is FLYING! Summer is right around the corner, and I'm feeling the energy!
As many of you may know, I'm not crazy about cardio. It's just not my thing. Steady state cardio is nothing but a snooze fest for me. While it is necessary for heart health and recovery, quite often people mistakenly assume that it's the best way to lose weight/reduce fat. This is not true at all. HIIT circuit training is the way to go if you're looking to lean out, and there are so many ways to incorporate HIIT training into your program.
Jumping rope is an AMAZING way to rock out a fun HIIT workout in 10-30 minutes.
When was the last time you jumped rope?
I remember jumping rope all the time as a kid! While you don't need to include (but you totally can) all the songs that went along with this activity, you can still reap the benefits of this high-intensity training modality.
Jumping rope helps to:
- Improve cardiovascular strength
- Improve breathing efficiency
- Strengthens your feet and ankles
- Improves coordination
- Burns calories both during and post workout
- Improves bone density
- Improves muscular endurance
- Stimulates the brain to improve spatial awareness, memory, and reading skills.
- Requires minimal equipment and is portable.
With all these excellent benefits, why wouldn't you want to incorporate jumping rope into your training program?
Try fitting in more jumping by:
- Use jumping rope as a 5 minute warm up
- Adding in 1 or 2 rope jumping HIIT workouts per week
- Incorporate jumping rope into a HIIT circuit
- Jump rope between sets of a strength workout to keep your heart rate up
- Get outside with your kids or a friend and have a contest to see who can reach the highest number of jumps without tripping up!
Give this fun, cardio exercise a try and let me know what you think.
I have included a copy of the jump rope challenge I ran from June of 2017. If you're looking for an extra challenge this month give this a try!
Have a great week!
