What Jumping Rope Taught Me About Speed and Consistency
I'm addicted to jumping rope.
When the pandemic started and gyms closed, I scrambled to order gym equipment. Most things were sold out, but I got my hands on a jump rope.
During my first few sessions, I was clumsy. I could only string together a few jumps before tripping over the rope.
Every workout was a battle. Rarely would I make it through a morning without spiking the rope in frustration. One week in, I almost hung it up.
Six months later, I'm hooked. The rhythmic skip-skip-skip is the bedrock drum beat of my morning routine.
I've improved over these past six months. Jumping rope is effortless now, almost second nature.
What started out as a simple, frustrating workout ended up teaching me a few things about speed and consistency.
First, it's okay to struggle at something in the beginning. But starting things quickly without fear of failure is 21st-century arbitrage. Just start doing it and commit to doing it every day.
With anything new, don't focus on your absolute level of skill. Focus on the rate of change.
In the beginning, it can be daunting thinking about how far you have to go. Instead, focus on how quickly you are improving. The biggest leaps of improvement happen in these early stages. These leaps of improvement are motivating and keep you coming back.
It's a simple concept in theory, but harder in practice. Jumping rope made it clear to me - it's easy to improve at something you do every day.
Second, be mindful of your speed.
In jumping rope, there's a trade off between being fast and being deliberate.
I do two main jump rope workouts - 30 second sprint intervals and 10-minute marathons. In both workouts, the goal is to hit as many jumps as possible.
During my 30 second sprints, it's all about speed. I am humming along as quickly as I can. I teeter on the edge of being out of control, tightly walking that fine line.
During my 10-minute marathons, it's all about being deliberate. I work at a sustainable pace, in complete control of the rope at 85% of my max speed.
The difference between these workouts is the cost of failure. That cost of failure determines my speed.
If I trip up during my 30-second sprints, I know I get another shot in just a few seconds. Or I can just start over.
Here, the cost of failure is low. When the cost of failure is low, move fast.
If I trip up during my 10-minute marathons, I'm thrown way out of rhythmr. If I'm hitting three jumps per second, and tripping up costs me five seconds, that's 15 jumps I can't get back.
Here, the cost of failure is high. When the cost of failure is high, be deliberate.
These ideas go far beyond jumping rope.
With anything new, it's common to start out poorly. But just get started. Accept the fact that anyone prolific at anything struggled in the beginning.
In these early stages, the cost of failure is low. So move quickly. Iterate rapidly and focus on improvement.
As you improve, your failures become more costly. At some point, you transition from moving fast to moving deliberately.
Finally, an important third point comes when we combine these: never go slowly.
No matter the cost of failure, there's no advantage to moving slowly. Being deliberate doesn't mean moving slowly - it's moving as quickly as you can without failure. While moving slowly may minimize your chance of failure, it also minimizes your chance of success.
So in summary, jumping rope taught me a few things. First, just get started. With anything new, embrace the fact that you won't be great at first. Second, know when to be fast and when to be deliberate. When the cost of failure is low, be fast. When the cost of failure is high, be deliberate.
But no matter what, never be slow.