Improve Your Running By Jumping Rope!

Check out the video below of me performing single-leg jumps with a jump rope. Jumping rope, and in particular single-leg jumping, is very helpful for building explosive leg strength and for correcting muscle imbalances in your legs. For example, when I first started doing these, I could comfortably do about five on my right leg, but only about two jumps on my left! As you can image, this was a bit disconcerting. Here I was, running 25-30 miles a week with one leg much stronger than the other!

This idea is not original, but doing this is particularly helpful for runners. I first learned of this from Tim Luchinske at his excellent blog, Jog Hard. He has a video there as well of him doing the same drill, and he is much better at this than me, not to mention an hour faster at last check in the marathon (3:30 to 2:30, or something ridiculous like that). I’ll let you draw your own inferences of there being a correlation.

After practicing this periodically over a few weeks, I was able to get both of my legs balanced and do it around 15-20 times with each leg. This exercise works all kinds of stabilizer muscles in your core as well! You will also notice my minimalist Chuck Taylors. In my opinion, people wear shoes that are way too over-corrective when strength/functional training. This is for a future post, but you should not wear running shoes while doing anything other than running! Don’t go to the gym and lift weights in running shoes, people! You are not getting the full range of motion in your calves and achilles and these, along with soleus, will stiffen and shorten, reducing the amount snap you get from them working in conjunction.

Tim’s protocol is below:

The first time you jump rope you should do:
Both Legs: ~30 jumps
Left Leg: ~15 jumps
Right leg: ~15 jumps
Build very gradually from there by doing 2 sessions per week and adding ~10 jumps per week.

Much more to come in the future on my opinions on footwear. Hear this, less is better! Anything with a flat bottom will make your feet stronger. Anything with a sloped sole, especially with a high heel, from tennis shoes to dress shoes, will make them weaker and not function like they were intended!