How to do Double Unders - Tips and Drills
In this blog, I am going to run through my best tips and drills for learning and training double unders. Once you unlock consecutive DUs, it can really help to increase workout intensity and vary your rope workouts! Also see the video at the bottom of this post where a lot of these points are demonstrated!
1) Arms
- Have your elbows set back and tucked in - This allows you to engage the elbows to drive energy through the forearms to the wrists rather than it coming from the shoulders which will cause fatigue and strain in that area.
- Hands in next to the hips - This is facilitated by the elbows being set back. The benefits of this is that the compact positioning will allow you to have a shorter and more efficient rope loop and overall exert less energy per DU. This position also allows you to rotate the wrists and exert force downwards giving you maximum energy to explode vertically upwards.
- Wrist rotation - ensure the wrists are rotating. With the above set up, this should happen naturally. Your thumbs will almost be facing downwards in the rotation to ensure that the force is being exerted in that direction, thereby creating the necessary energy for the rope revolutions. DO NOT rotate your entire arm in circles!!
Note - shoulders should also be back!!
2) Legs
- Stay on the balls of your feet - explode from the balls of your feet to create a consistent and clean bounding motion.
- Legs Straight - there only needs to be a slight bend in the knee as you bound. There is no need to pike your legs forward or flick them back, this exerts unnecessary energy and is incredibly inefficient. You want to ensure all your energy is focused on exploding vertically upwards and not wasted in any way by wayward leg (and arm) movements.
In fact, your entire frame and body needs to be kept straight and with movement kept to a minimum to ensure maximum efficiency and to keep the motion clean and consistent.
3) Execution and drills
- Jump Higher - this will allow you to slow things down and give you more time for the two rotations to occur. This will overall give you more control!
Drill - Practise this without the rope. Bound as high as you can and tap your hips twice as you are airborne which mimics the 2 rotations. It's good to be able to do this before you introduce the rope. This also gets you into keeping you hands next to your hips and your elbows back! See video below where this is demonstrated.
- Ease in - practise doing singles unders followed by a double under rather than going straight for consecutive double unders.
Drill 2 - Peform 3 single unders followed by a double under then repeat. Also see video below for a demonstration of this.
4) The rope itself
- Shorten your rope - long ropes are less efficient and less aerodynamic. A shorter rope will also help with rope form as you will need to make sure your hands are in close to the hips and elbows back in order to create a big enough loop for the rope to pass overhead and under your feet.
This also helps with rope longevity as a shorter rope will barely brush the surface you are jumping on, causing less friction, impact and wear on the rope.
See our sizing guide for more info on progressive rope shortening. I am 6ft and my ropes are now around 7.5ft as an example. This has helped me increase efficiency and max DU sets.
- Use a heavier rope - most people make the mistake of learning double unders with a light speed rope. You need to use a rope with enough feedback so you can feel the rope around you. This will allow you to learn technique and form correctly. The best option is something around the 3oz range, so one of these from our range:
Signature Beaded, Cardio 2.0 or RX SmartGear with a buff cable
Only move to lighter cables when you can comfortably do 50+ DUs consecutively.
5) Video illustration
Here is a video that demonstrates a lot of the drills and tips mentioned above!
I hope you found this information useful! Let me know if you have any further questions and hope you get those DUs down!!
Keon