Jumping rope might seem like child's play, but jump ropes make compact, light-weight exercise tool for adults, too. Although you might get bored with jumping rope every day, this simple exercise still makes an excellent addition to any weight-loss program. Even if you don't jump rope regularly, packing up a jump rope is a particularly valuable way of keeping your weight-loss plans on track when you travel.
Calories Burned
If you weigh 185 lbs. you can burn 444 calories in half an hour of jumping rope, according to Harvard Health Publications. Burn 3,500 more calories than you take in -- that's about eight half-hour workouts -- and you'll have burned about one pound of body fat.
Complete Weight-loss Program
If you're eating a high-calorie, low-nutrient diet, you could be replacing the calories you just worked so hard to burn. Net result: No weight loss, or maybe even weight gain. The key to weight loss isn't just burning calories, but burning more calories than you take in, without neglecting your body's increased nutritional needs. The best way to be sure your rope jumping is actually contributing to weight loss is tracking how many calories you consume in a day and how many you expend. Calorie expenditures include not just your jump roping efforts, but your estimated basal metabolic rate and other types of exercise too.
Example Calculations
Online metabolic rate calculators do a decent job of estimating how many calories you need every day to maintain your body's natural function, not counting the extra demands of increased physical activity. If a 185-lb. woman with a basal metabolic rate of about 1,850 calories consumes 2,000 calories per day and jumps rope for 30 minutes per day, she's consumed 2,000 calories but burned 1,850 -- basal metabolic rate -- plus 444 from exercise, a net caloric deficit of 294 calories. At that rate she'd burn 3,500 calories every 12 days, or lose about a pound of body fat every two weeks, thanks to a combination of healthy diet and jumping rope. Jumping rope for longer, or trimming the few extra calories off her diet, could help her lose the weight faster.
Considerations
Although jumping rope certainly can burn enough calories to help you lose weight, doing the same weight-loss activity over and over can increase your risk of overuse injuries and sometimes can lead toward a plateau, or stalled progress. Cross-training, or switching among multiple activities, is an excellent way of avoiding both plateaus and injury. So, consider supplementing your rope-jumping plans with other types of cardiovascular exercise such as walking, using gym cardio machines, cycling or swimming.
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