My New Goal In Life

Since we’re into winter, and I can’t always head out into the park I leave nearby to get my hikes in, and since I don’t want bulky exercise equipment again taking up interior home space, I’m getting back into rope jumping.

Yeah the very same jumping of rope we all did as kids.

Over the years, I’d also done “heavy rope” jump rope, which was, literally, a heavier rope (I think the rope was about an inch in diameter), and I got pretty good with it. But after some serious use, the handles kept coming apart. I never understand how manufacturers never dealt with obvious equipment flaws like this, or perhaps they did so on purpose to get you to buy another—but that makes no sense to me, cause if’n it broke the first time, I’m certainly not going to buy another. And I haven’t.

So, I bought a new speed rope, and I began using it—and quickly found out, wow, it’s, uh, been a while. Not only in technique, but in cardio fitness level. It looks easy, not much effort whipping that rope around you with simple flicks of the wrists, but let me tell you, it takes good cardio to do that for any length of time, the way it ramps your heart rate up and in no short order. But there’s also technique. I thought my cardio was in “decent” shape, given what I currently do, but, it’s not the same. So, I’m quite looking forward to getting back into this, and if you are too, check out this site for some great tips on buying a rope and using it.

But this guy, man, he takes it to a whole new, over the top trick-jumping level!

Now, I could (Karen L.!) make all kinds of allusions to rope jumping and writing, in that both need development of a “cardio system,” and the building up of that “system” into a well-honed, well-oiled machine. That writing and rope jumping are all about “baby steps,” small steps, few leaps (except for the few exceptionals who can produce “trick jumping,” as illustrated above), constantly picking at the effort every day to get better and better; about both involving larger, greater issues at hand, like overall fitness levels and huge manuscripts and complex story lines, emotional intricacies, and that all begin and are created with small steps (“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time…”). That both involve learning and mastering techniques. Becoming “One” with the medium. And that both are fun in the pain that comes with the burn….

But, nayyy…I won’t bore you with all that.

Enjoy the video.