What’s up, JRD nation?!
If you’re like most people, the image you have of jumping rope is on the schoolyard or playground. And yet, in 2022, the jump rope is now widely considered one of the most versatile and effective fitness tools available.
Why? Because it’s one of the simplest tools you can use to achieve any fitness goal. From agility to speed to cardiovascular endurance, it is the powerhouse tool for burning fat.
Our goal at JRD has always been to help people lose excess weight and live better. Because we, (Dan and Brandon), started with that same goal. We both began our jump rope journeys and subsequent body transformations with the intent to burn fat, get lean, feel better, and have more energy.
We have seen from our own experiences, and through the hundreds of transformations we’ve witnessed in the JRD community, that our method of losing weight with a jump rope works. We often receive the question “does jumping rope burn fat?” Today, we are here to answer the question (yes!) and provide some insight on the JRD method for burning fat and having fun with a jump rope.
Let’s dive in!
The Science of Weight Loss
Finding the right fitness routine and diet can be confusing and overwhelming when there is so much conflicting information. Some of the most common misconceptions about weight loss are:
- You can only lose weight with an extreme diet and exercise regime.
- Carbs make you fat.
- Eating fat makes you fat.
- You need a lot of time to exercise every day.
- All calories are equal.
- Obesity is about willpower.
This list could go on and on. No wonder people are confused about how to lose weight. We aim to make things as simple and straightforward as possible. The JRD weight loss method is:
Burn more calories than you take in and BOOM! Weight loss.
Of course, there are plenty of other factors, and we will discuss those in detail. But the main takeaway is that you need to aim for a daily calorie deficit to lose weight.
Jumping rope happens to be the preferred cardiovascular workout of highly trained athletes like boxers, football players, and world-class Olympians. Why? Because jumping rope can burn more calories per hour than any other type of cardiovascular exercise.
The number of calories burned while jumping rope depends on the speed, intensity, and duration of your workouts. This is why we love HIIT workouts and find them super effective for weight loss. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) requires you to exercise between 70%-80% of your maximum heart rate while taking brief timed periods of recovery in between rounds.
HIIT is phenomenal at burning fat because, by increasing the intensity of your effort, your body produces more epinephrine and norepinephrine. Both of these hormones contribute to lipolysis, the process by which your body breaks down fat.
While HIIT workouts take care of the physical component of weight loss, there is still a lot to consider, like diet, sleep, hydration, time, and money.
5 Common Obstacles to Losing Body Fat
We get it – losing weight is hard! We’ve been there and seen hundreds of similar struggles in our community. However, a few common obstacles tend to make losing weight even more difficult, and we are going to cover these in this section. We hope that by understanding these weight loss challenges, you can overcome them. Remember, knowledge is power!
1. Diet
You already know that a proper diet is crucial to weight loss. The tricky part is ensuring that you’re fueling your body to build and maintain muscle while staying in a calorie deficit. Eat too much, and risk gaining weight. Eat too little, and your body will consume muscle tissue for energy (known as catabolism).
There are so many popular diets right now, from intermittent fasting to Keto, plant-based, low-carb – the list goes on and on. There’s a lot that goes into a healthy diet, and we’ll touch on that more later.
Watch these videos, How to Eat to Lose Weight and What Dan Eats in A Day, to see how we eat for performance daily.
2. Sleep
Researchers have been studying the effects of sleep on weight loss for decades. There’s a clear connection between poor sleep and metabolic disorders, weight gain, and an increased risk of obesity.
Neurotransmitters ghrelin (tells you you’re hungry) and leptin (tells you you’re full) are hugely important for regulating appetite. Lack of sleep throws off the signals your body gives to increase or decrease the levels of these neurotransmitters.
Many studies have shown that sleep-deprived participants reported increased appetites and feeling less full after eating. Also, people just don’t eat well when they’re fatigued. They’re more likely to grab easy, high-calorie, processed foods.
Not only does sleep impact your appetite, but it can also lead to metabolic dysregulation. Poor sleep is associated with increased oxidative stress and glucose intolerance, a precursor to diabetes.
3. Hydration
Staying hydrated helps tremendously with weight loss. It can suppress your appetite (studies have linked overeating to dehydration), boost your metabolism, and make exercise easier and more efficient.
An interesting study on animals showed that when they increased their water intake, it accelerated lipolysis (burning fat for energy), and when they were mildly dehydrated, it decreased. The theory researchers posed was that water expands cell volume, playing a role in the body’s ability to metabolize fat.
4. Time
Balancing life, work, hobbies, and family can make it feel like there just isn’t enough time to get a workout in. It is our firm belief that jumping rope is the most efficient exercise you can do if you’re tight on time.
Developing the habit of working out daily, or most days, is more important than how much time you spend exercising. Establishing the habit of jumping rope, even if all you have is ten minutes, makes it more likely that you will stick with it long-term. A study found that just ten minutes a day of skipping rope was comparable to thirty minutes of jogging.
Not to mention that jumping rope incorporates even more muscle groups than running, making it a full-body workout that promotes a healthy heart and increases lung capacity. So rather than worrying about how much time you don’t have, just squeeze in what you can. Jumping rope frees you to make the world your gym, saving the time you’d spend driving back and forth.
5. Money
One of the benefits of jumping rope for fitness is that it’s a low-cost investment. You don’t need to fork over nearly $100/month for a fancy gym membership or spend thousands on equipment for your home.
You may have seen that the only jump rope we use and promote is the Crossrope. Do you absolutely have to buy a Crossrope jump rope to get all the benefits? Nope! We started out with just a $5 sporting goods jump rope, which worked fine (for a while).
Once you start having fun and seeing results, you’ll be hooked and itching to get your hands on the best, high-quality ropes available to take your performance to the next level.
The JRD Approach to Losing Weight
Watch these weight loss transformations; you will see that the JRD time-tested method for losing weight works. We’ve helped thousands transform their bodies and, more importantly, live better quality lives with this approach.
Weighted Jump Ropes
Weighted jump ropes are absolutely our secret ingredient to fat-burning workouts. Adding resistance transforms the jump rope into a powerful piece of equipment that can be utilized at any fitness level.
Heavy ropes require you to slow your rope rotations and, in turn, give you great rotational feedback. Feeling the rope as it rotates around your body is an excellent way to establish the fundamentals of good form, timing, and cadence – indispensable skills for long-term jump rope success.
When propelling a weighted jump rope around you, you have to recruit more muscles to work harder, giving you a more complete muscular workout, cardiovascular training, and increasing fat-burning hormones (like HGH).
We love using weighted jump ropes in HIIT circuits because we can easily swap out ropes to add or decrease the intensity. This keeps our workouts fresh and effective while challenging our muscles in different ways.
Jump Rope HIIT Circuits
We have said it many times before, HIIT workouts are the most efficient for fat loss. In fact, studies show that high-intensity interval training burns nine times more fat than steady-state cardio.
In addition, HIIT is a method that can be incorporated into any workout. Thus, it’s the best workout method if you’re short on time because it burns more calories faster, giving you more time back into your day.
Healthy Lifestyle Choices
We wholeheartedly do NOT believe in killing yourself with highly restrictive, miserable diets. They’ll never last, and you might feel too fatigued to do the high-intensity workouts needed for weight loss. Consider what lifestyle choices you can adopt that will be sustainable for you long term.
You cannot jump your way into a lean, fit body if your diet is trash. For us, intermittent fasting allows us the occasional indulgences that we love that make life, well, more fun! Short periods of fasting ensure we don’t over-consume calories while being able to fuel our bodies in a way that is satisfying and less restrictive.
We recommend following a nutrition system to ensure a healthy balance of macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Through our decade of experience and the hundreds of transformations we’ve been fortunate to be a part of, we developed the JRD Nutrition System.
The nutrition system is not a diet! It is a meal planning system expertly designed to help you lose weight or build muscle mass. You choose your fitness goals and learn how to eat to meet them in a healthy way while streamlining your fat loss.
Our system includes:
- Easy to follow recipes.
- Diets catered to your specific body type.
- Loads of highly researched information detailing exactly how much and what to eat to fuel your workouts and your life.
“Marathon” Mentality
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires a “marathon” mentality.
Just like running a marathon, you have to pace yourself. Do too much, too fast, and you’ll burn out. A marathon mentality means you’re in it for the long haul, committed to your health, and living your best quality life.
In order to see significant fat-loss results with a jump rope, you must first master the fundamentals. You can’t run before you walk, so focus on learning to jump with good form and proper timing. Check out our beginner’s guide, The Ultimate Jump Rope Workout Guide, if you need help.
We’ve said this many times, but it bears repeating – the most essential element of your weight loss journey is… having fun!
We transformed our bodies not because we have the world’s strongest willpower, but because jumping rope is fun! We can’t get enough of it! When you wake up excited to work out, get your heart pumping and those endorphins flowing, exercise is enjoyable, and you stay consistent.
How Long Should You Jump Rope to Lose Weight?
In our countless experiments, we can tell you there is no one size fits all rule for how long you should jump rope to lose weight. But it’s vital to know how many calories you’re burning during your jump rope workouts to ensure weight loss.
There are many variables to losing weight, like age, sex, fitness level, the intensity of the workout, and more. The best way to ensure that you will keep losing weight is to monitor your calorie intake and the calories you burn through daily exercise.
For fat loss, focus less on how long you spend skipping rope and more on the intensity at which you’re doing it. A high-intensity HIIT workout, like the ones embedded at the end of this article, will maximize your efficiency and results won’t take as long.
Check out this piece – How Many Calories Does Jumping Rope Burn – to get the full run-down on how to calculate your calorie burn.
Best Jump Rope for Weight Loss
Like we mentioned above, a weighted jump rope is our preferred way to up the intensity of our workouts quickly. Crossrope has crafted a unique jump rope system, using weighted resistance to amplify fat loss and increase muscle mass. The 1 lb. and 2 lb. weighted ropes featured in their Get Strong Set can benefit all fitness levels.
As you get better and more confident in your skills, this system transforms into a fat-incinerating, strengthening, and endurance-building powerhouse tool.
While we love weighted jump ropes, we need to mention that not everyone should use a weighted jump rope, at least not right away. If you’re new to fitness training, especially to jumping rope as an entire workout, start with a lighter rope.
The Get Lean Set by Crossrope is perfect, offering a 1/4 lb. and ½ lb. rope, so you can still vary the intensity of your workouts. You will also love this set if your goals involve increasing your speed, agility, and footwork.
3 Fat Scorching Jump Rope Workouts
These high-intensity workouts are designed explicitly to scorch fat for weight loss.
1. Fat Loss Workout for Beginners
In this quick, twenty-minute burn, Brandon walks you through a circuit incorporating the ¼ lb. and ½ lb. ropes from the Get Lean Set with a few bodyweight resistance exercises.
2. At-Home Fat Loss Workout
This workout kicks up the intensity a notch. Brandon uses a ½ lb. and 1 lb. rope, mixing in some bodyweight exercises to give you a full-body workout.
3. High-Intensity Weight Loss Jump Rope Workout
This workout is classic JRD – simple and will kick your butt! In this workout, Dan starts with a heart-pumping 1,000 skips, followed by a resistance training circuit.
So, Does Jumping Rope Burn Fat?
Today we analyzed the question: Does jumping rope burn fat? The short answer – absolutely!
We hope that with the information provided, you can see just how nuanced and personal your weight loss journey is. Equip yourself with the tools to track your diet, workouts, and other factors influencing your fat loss.
Have any questions for us? We’d love to hear from you! Our Facebook and Instagram are full of great jump rope content and awesome, supportive community members. You can send us a message with your jump rope-related questions or concerns straight to our social media.
If you’re new to jumping rope or need some accountability partners, we urge you to check out Jump Rope Dudes TV. It’s full of hundreds of commercial-free workouts, a community forum to connect with fellow dudes and dudettes, and personalized fitness coaching.
Well, that’s all the knowledge we’re dropping on you today. Until next time, track those calories, burn fat, and, of course…
DO THE THING!