Dope Ropes Jump Rope Tutorials

In this section, you will find our jump rope tutorials produced as part of Dope Ropes TV. Enjoy!

Episode 1 - Fundamentals Part 1 - Two Core Jump Rope Fundamentals for Beginners

More coming soon!!

Episode 1 - Fundamentals Part 1 - Two Core Jump Rope Fundamentals for Beginners

The real key to jump rope progress is practice, practice, and more practice!

However, adopting proper form from the onset will make your jump rope journey more enjoyable and you’ll progress much faster. We recommend focusing on 2 core fundamentals…

1) The first thing to remember is to jump lightly on the balls of both your feet simultaneously. Jump only a couple of inches off the ground, just enough to let the rope pass under you.

2) The second fundamental is proper arm form. You should set your elbows slightly back, have your hands close to your torso, palms facing outwards and grip the handles so they are parallel to the floor. Then, with this arm and hand positioning rotate the rope around you by moving the cables in a small circular motion. You should not have to engage your entire arms and shoulders, everything should stay quite tight and strong and make sure you are rotating those wrists!

Check out the video where we demonstrate these 2 fundamentals!

Episode 2 - How to do Double Unders

In this video, I 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 points below for reference that accompany this video:

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 the 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. Make sure all effort is focused on using energy to explode vertically upwards.

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!

- Ease in - practise doing singles unders followed by a double under rather than going straight for consecutive double unders.

Drill 2 - Perform 3 single unders followed by a double under then repeat. See video below!

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 to make sure you create a 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 about progressive shortening of rope lenght

- 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 the Dope Ropes range:

Signature Beaded https://www.doperopes.co.uk/collectio...

Cardio 2.0 https://www.doperopes.co.uk/collectio...

RX SmartGear with a buff cable https://www.doperopes.co.uk/collectio...

Only move to lighter cables when you can comfortably do 50+ DUs consecutively.

We hope you found this useful!

Episode 3 - Southpaw Side Swing Tutorial

This is a great move to learn at the start of your jump rope journey and I still use this move a lot!!

The key is hand positioning. With the southpaw you need to side swing into what is called a cross over side swing where the hand coming across side needs to move beyond and above the other. People go wrong in this move when they do an open side swing. As we are moving into an open jump after the side swing, we need to make sure we do a cross side swing, ie

Cross side swings are always followed by an open skill/jump

Open side swings are always followed by a cross skill/jump

Enjoy!