Can jumping rope replace running?

Now that it’s cold, many people hate going for a run. You have trouble running because of snow and ice, you suck in cold air… All in all, running outside when it’s cold isn’t as much fun as running when it’s sunny and hot. Then you might consider another alternative, jumping rope.

Jumping rope can be a great replacement for running or cycling. Work your body in a completely different way. The movements are elastic and require the lower legs to provide much more activity during the movement than when running.

You should also keep in mind that even if your legs are conditioned due to your race work, you will likely experience some pain. This is because you are working muscles that you haven’t actually been training while running.

Some people may have trouble with the shape at first. It’s natural, it’s a learned skill. This can be a bit frustrating at first because your pace may be slower than your running pace and you may not feel like the workout is as good as when you run. However, if you stick to your guns, you’ll be able to duplicate the same work effort.

One thing I would suggest, especially if you plan on losing weight with these activities, is that you get yourself a heart rate monitor. You can keep track of your heart beep and set your rhythm with your heart rate monitor. If you start to slow down, the heart rate monitor will give you a short beep to let you know that you are below your lower heart rate limit. When this happens, you simply pick up the pace and go right back into the weight loss zone of your choice.

Another thing that’s on hand is that many heart rate monitors will tell you how many calories you’ve burned during your activities. This is a great way to make sure you actually did your workout long enough and hard enough to change your body composition.

Many heart rate monitors don’t track calories burned well. They use a fairly simple formula that estimates calories burned by reading your heart rate. Unfortunately, these tend to overestimate how many calories you burn.