It's time for your workout, but you've also arrived at that awful part of winter when it's pitch-black outside by 4:30, with temperatures hovering comfortably in the high teens and sidewalks slicked over with just enough black ice to make walking treacherous and running a choice made only by those with a death wish. On top of that, traffic sucked, so you're getting home later than usual and still have to cook dinner. How, then, do you fit in a workout?

The solution to this age-old problem costs about ten bucks and takes just as many minutes: Get you a jump rope.

As an adult, I realized that the amount of time I spent jumping rope in elementary school P.E. seems wildly disproportionate to the amount of time I've spent jumping rope since, but in this case, Mr. Ford was on to something. A famous 1968 study—to the extent that any scientific study of exercise can qualify as famous, I guess—found that after six weeks of daily ten-minute jump-rope exercises, participants demonstrated the same levels of improvement to their cardiovascular health as individuals who jogged for a half hour each day. Rope-jumping, the researchers concluded, is a more efficient method of achieving the same results.

Subsequent research has somewhat tempered these expectations, which is probably why running shoes remain a billion-dollar industry and plastic-rope manufacturing does not. Still, in a pinch, jump-roping is really good for you! From an energy-expenditure perspective, it's roughly the equivalent of running at an eight-minute-mile pace, and it easily outdoes other forms of exercise—including swimming, rowing, and bowling—in terms of calories burned. It is, in effect, a low-impact plyometric workout that fries the muscles neglected by regular calf raises, and while this won't matter much for the next few months, you'll be glad you did it when shorts season finally, mercifully rolls back around. Plus, it can all be done in the privacy of your own home!

For a neat, tidy ten-minute workout during the next occasion on which you find yourself pressed for time, clear a little space in your living room and create a miniature interval workout, jumping at high intensity for two minutes, followed by a half minute of rest. Rinse and repeat three more times. (One-legged and jog-in-place varieties prevent it from getting too repetitive.) Think about it this way: If you start at the beginning of Double Jeopardy, you can be done and ready for the rest of your night by the time Alex Trebek gives the category for the last clue, and out of the shower in time to find out which contestants got Final Jeopardy right, and who had no idea that the phrase "the Big Apple" was originally an 18th-century gambling term used to describe a desirable prize, and was thereafter popularized as a nickname for New York City in the 1920s by a sportswriter for the New York Morning Telegraph. Lesson learned!

Watch Now:

Try This TABATA Endurance Workout