The rope should have handles that are easy to grip and shouldn’t be too light or too heavy.
Try to keep the motion in your ankles. Bending your knees to jump will make the exercise a lot harder.
As your skill increases, you can swing the rope more quickly and eliminate the middle hop. As you improve your skills, you can count how long you can go without messing up. A fun way to track your progress is to count how many skips you can do in one stretch, without fumbling. Listen to your body. If you’re feeling discomfort in your joints, it’s better to decrease the exercise intensity. On the other hand, if you’re feeling great and want to extend the exercise session, you can do that as well.
The shape made by the jump rope will create an “X” shape in the air, or a shape that looks a bit like a squashed bow tie. Sway your hips to get the momentum of the rope going. Once you finish making this shape, bring the right hand up and over to create a shape, or a “rainbow,” to jump through. Jump through the shape, make the “X” shape again, and keep repeating the process.
One or two other jumpers can join you as you run into the rope, but you should approach the rope one by one. Once one person finds a rhythm, the next person should jump in.
Once the ropes start moving, you should jump over each rope while still facing the turners. Remember that you’ll have to jump twice as fast as you would with one rope, because you’ll have to jump over two ropes in each jump cycle. Double dutch is more challenging and more fun if there is more than one jumper. You can even sing songs to count how many times the jumpers have jumped. One popular song begins, “Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?” After those words, you can start counting, “one, two, three. . . " to mark how many times the person or people jumping have successfully jumped.
