Although there are pretty much no rules in skip-roping unless you participate in an official competition, there is a number of things that you should keep in your mind the whole time.
Posture
In skip-roping, your elbows should be tucked closely to sides of your stomach whenever possible.
When you begin turning the rope, never start with hands on your shoulders. Your hands should at the waist height to begin with. Swinging the rope from your shoulders is a bad habit that beginners have, and because of this habit, beginners tend to use their entire arms when they should be using wrists and elbows.
In the air, your shoulders should be relaxed, and your knees should be slightly bent. You could bend your knees further back if you need a bigger space below your feet , such as in crossover. In multiple unders make sure that your back is not bent beginners tend to do this a lot and that makes them really hard for balance.
At the moment of landing, you shuold go toes first, and with toes only. With a few exceptions, your heels must not
ever touch the ground while skip-roping. This is because you do not want to lose the power created by spring
effect in your legs to jump back up. Think of skipping as bouncing instead of jumping.
Equipments and Location
Choosing a correct rope and adjusting the length of rope are both really important factors in skip-roping. These 2 factors would definitely affect your performance.
Generally there are 3 kinds of skipping ropes based on what material they are made of: Nylon, Leather, and Plastic.
Nylon ropes require a lot of effort if you want to turn them quickly, and depending on the diameter, they can be extremely heavy.
Leather ropes are much easier to turn than nylon ropes, however the leather makes them heavier than nylon ropes.
Both nylon and leather ropes help strenghten wrist muscles with their heavy weight.
Plastic ropes have a vast variation, and most of plastic ropes are lighter than other nylon or leather ropes. Because of the large variation, they dome in all shapes, sizes, and prices, from an expensive professional rope to a cheap toy from the dollar store. The disadvantage that plastic ropes have over nylon and leather ropes are that, the plastic is fragile, and the rope can be cut if you wear the rope down. Plastic ropes are especially suited for exercises that require speed.
I personally prefer a light plastic rope over a nylon or leather rope since its light weight does not tire me out even after 30 minutes of intense skipping.
The length of rope is probably more important than a type of rope. Skipping with a rope that is too long or too short for you would suboutage you from improving. To measure the correct length for you, hold the rope with both hands like you would normally do, step on the middle of rope with one of your feet, and then pull the rop up. The rope with the correct length should come up to right below your chest. As you improve, you should make rope shorter and shorter. This is because good skippers need less space to move the rope and shorter rope allows faster rope rotations helping them with performing multiple unders.
Although any ground with a flat surface and a very few objects would serve as a good location for skip-roping, the best place would be inside an average school gymnasium. Gym floors usually have no objects on the ground, and are not as hard as the ashphalt or concrete, so you have less chance of hurting your legs.
ΔTop