Ericka Arguedas | Rx Smart Gear Marketing Director
Jumping rope is one of the easiest and most efficient ways of improving your cardiovascular health.
It delivers a full-body workout, meaning your heart has to work really hard to pump your body to loads of working muscles.
What are the results? Well, you’ll see loads of calories burned per session in a very short space of time.
This is where jump rope is unique. It has the insane ability to deliver effective workouts without forcing you to keep going for ages. In fact, a 10-minute jump rope workout is all you need to see some amazing results.
It begs the question: What is 10 minutes of jumping rope equivalent to?
We’ve done some research and compared 10 minutes of skipping to other activities. Go ahead and read what we discovered - you’ll be incredibly surprised!
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Jump Rope vs. Running
How much skipping is equivalent to running? We find that a lot of jump rope beginners try this exercise because they hate running.
To be honest, it’s easy to see why. Running has the following disadvantages:
- It’s a high-impact activity, leading to the possibility of joint injuries
- If you don’t have access to a treadmill, you need to run outside. So, it’s weather-dependent.
- You typically need to run for a fairly long time to see any results.
By comparison, jumping rope or skipping is way easier on your joints and there’s a lower chance of injuries - especially if you jump on a softer surface. Secondly, you don’t need a lot of space and can jump rope at home in your garden or garage.
Thirdly - and perhaps most importantly - skipping is more intense and burns more calories over a shorter period of time.
There’s evidence to back this up, with a 2013 study from Arizona State University comparing 10 minutes of jumping rope with 30 minutes of jogging. The findings indicated that 10 minutes of skipping is the equivalent of 30 minutes of jogging. Similar calories are burned and the test subjects both showed the same improvements in cardiovascular fitness.
With that in mind, if you’re looking for a good fat-burning workout that improves cardio - and you hate running and wish to minimize the impact on your joints - 10 minutes of skipping can be the perfect alternative.
If running is the most common form of cardio, cycling comes in at a close second. It has a key advantage over running in that it is a lower-impact exercise, so you reduce the chances of developing shin splints and other problems.
However, some of the downsides of cycling (particularly when compared to skipping) include:
- A relatively high-cost activity to partake in.
- Again, requires lots of outdoor space unless you purchase a static bike.
- Can put your joints in compromised positions, making them tight.
- Your leg muscles are the primary movers, so it’s not the best for calorie burning.
It’s a better exercise for your joints and posture as you’re not scrunched up on a seat with your hips tightly bunged up. Jumping rope is also way more affordable - we have jump ropes that start at under $50 while a bike will set you back a few hundred at the very least.
Then, when we look at the cardiovascular and exercise intensity, jumping rope clears cycling by some distance. Lots of muscles work when jumping rope - far more than when you’re biking. As a result, the energy demands increase so you burn more calories.
In comparison, cycling only burns 10 calories per minute. If we do some quick calculations, it means that 10 minutes of jumping rope burns the same calories as 20 minutes of cycling.
Both exercises are fairly low impact, but jumping rope gets you standing upright in a better posture and will help you burn more fat.
Jump Rope vs. Swimming
Swimming is another popular form of cardio - and for many good reasons.
It’s hard to fault this exercise as it delivers the following benefits:
- Full-body workouts with water resistance.
- Zero impact on your joints.
The only downside is that swimming isn’t widely accessible - you typically need a club membership to access a pool, unless you have one in your yard. Either way, it’ll be an expensive exercise to partake in.
Comparatively, jump rope is more affordable and offers a similar full-body workout.
In fact, jumping rope actually involves more muscles than swimming, which seems strange but makes more sense when you look deeply. Jumping rope requires a lot of balance, so you use way more small stabilizer muscles around your joints to stop you from toppling over. You’re also typically moving your arms and legs a lot faster to get the rope to come around and stay taught.
This is reflected in the calories burned in both exercises. On average, reports show that 60 minutes of swimming burns between 300-600 calories. That equates to around 5-10 calories per minute for the average person. So, 10 minutes of jump rope burns the same calories as 20-40 minutes of swimming.
Jump Rope vs. HIIT
We know a lot of you will be wondering how these two compare, as HIIT workouts are used for cardio and fat burning a lot.
However, we can’t make a comparison because jump rope workouts can be a form of HIIT. If you exercise for 30 seconds jumping rope and then take a 30-second break, you can have a seriously good HIIT workout.
There are also too many possible exercises you could do in a HIIT workout, so we can’t compare. Instead, we will say that jumping rope should become a core part of your HIIT workouts or circuits for maximum cardiovascular training and fat loss.
Looking at how jump rope compares to other exercises, we can easily conclude that it’s one of the most superior out there. It’s a low-impact exercise that works many muscles in your body and can provide serious fat-burning benefits.
In fact, just 10 minutes of jumping rope will provide the same (or better) health benefits as 20-40 minutes of many other activities. So, if you’re short on time and want a great workout, try jump rope!
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