Quick and Effective Exercise

Like most people, I have difficulty finding time to work out. This is especially true of Cardio. Strength exercise such as Push-ups, Crunches, Dips, and Lunges etc. can be done in most apartments. But Cardio presents a problem. If the weather is damn cold or you don’t have a safe neighborhood to go outside and jog in what are you going to do? There is a simple solution using a basic exercise that can be done at low cost in most apartments. Skipping rope. Stop! Look at the data before you disregard it.
It turns out that jumping or skipping rope is a good exercise: 10 minutes of skipping rope at a 120 RPM burns 750 calories. 10 minutes of skipping rope is equal to running 1 mile in 12 minutes; cycling 2 miles in 6 minutes; and jogging 30 minutes. Skipping Rope ranks with jogging, rowing, and stair climbing as a “hard exercise.”
I would start with Olympian Buddy Lee’s book. His book presents a 4-stage development program geared to athletes for anaerobic development off of an aerobic base. His means to anaerobic development for athletes is the “super compression principle,” --the body recovers from anaerobic exercise bursts, jumping rope, in a way that allows future exercise at a higher level of efficiency for longer duration, i.e., developing fast twitch muscle fibers. Below is a table from Buddy’s Book, to aid anyone who may have the same Cardio questions I had:

Bounce Step Table
RPS*RPM*Fitness Level *% MHR *Rope Measurement
2-2.3 *120-140 *Warm up *60-70 *Standard
2.3-2.7 *140-160*Low Aerobic *70-75*Standard
2.7-3 *160-180* High Aerobic* 75-80 *Standard
3-3.3 *180-200 *Anaerobic Low* 85-90 *Chest
3.3-3.7* 200-220* Anaerobic High* 90-95 *Chest
3.7+ *220+ *VO2 Max *95-100 *Rib Cage

Power Jump Table:

RPS* RPM *Fitness Level* % MHR *Rope Measurement
1-1.2 *60-70* Low Aerobic *70-76 *Standard
1.2-1.3 *70-80* High Aerobic *75-80* Standard
1.3-1.7* 80-100* Low Anaerobic *85-90* Chest
1.7-2* 100-120 *Anaerobic High* 90-95 *Chest
2+ *120+* VO2 Max *95-100 *Rib Cage

RPS= Revolutions Per Second
RPM= Revolutions Per Minute
MHR=Max Heart Rate
(very sorry the tables do not import corrrectly from MS Word)
Tables From: Buddy Lee, “Jump Rope Training”, Human Kinetics Publishing, ISBN-13:978-0-7360-4151-5 (post’s author has no claim to works)
Yours Etc
Screwtape