But how can you stay in shape if you don’t leave your house? Bodyweight circuits can help, and if you’ve got things like adjustable dumbbells, resistance bands, or kettlebells, you should have no problem maintaining your endurance and strength. But what can you do for cardio?

Jumping rope is a good choice for home-based ruggers.

Jump rope benefits and advantages

Jumping rope has a lot of benefits – both for ruggers and home exercisers in general. Those benefits include:

1. Jump ropes are cheap, easy to find, and hardwearing. For $20.00 or less, you can buy a PVC speed rope that will last you for years and deliver a great workout. Even a cheap treadmill can cost upward of $1000.

2. You can jump rope indoors or outdoors and at just about any time you like. No need to wait for the gym to reopen and no need to risk coronavirus contamination by going outside to run.

3. Jumping rope is an effective calorie burner. Boxers use it to help them make weight before a fight. It’ll help ward off lock in-related weight gain.

4. As a weight-bearing activity, jumping rope will strengthen your bones as well as your leg muscles, heart, and lungs. This can reduce your risk of suffering osteoporosis.

5. Once you have mastered the basics, you can do lots of cool jump rope tricks you can use to make your workouts fun and varied.

6. Jumping rope develops eye/hand/foot coordination, so it’s an especially useful workout for ruggers. It also promotes better ground reactivity, speed, and agility.

7. Although it looks like a lower-body exercise, jumping rope is actually a full-body workout. You’ll soon feel your shoulders, arms, and upper back working along with your legs.

Of course. Not all forms of exercise are suitable for everybody’s body. There are a couple of jump rope disadvantages you should be aware of…

Jump rope disadvantages and challenges

1. As a high impact activity, jump roping can be hard on your feet, ankles, knees, and hips. This means that heavier exercisers may find jumping rope uncomfortable. You can mitigate this problem by wearing supportive, shock-absorbing shoes for your jump rope workouts.

2. The skill of jump rope can take a while to develop; it’s not as instant a workout as hopping on an elliptical trainer or going for a jog. That said, with practice, most people can learn to do some basic jump rope exercises.

3. You’ll need plenty of space to jump rope, in front, behind and above. A fast-turning tope rope can be quite destructive, so keep anything fragile out of the way and especially look out for low-hanging light fixtures.