The Sport of jump rope has been evolving over the past 40 years and is now a full-fledged organized international sport that continues to grow each year.  (To learn more, about the sport, go to one of the links to jump rope organizations that I have listed.)  The events in this sport fall currently fall into four main categories, with a number of variations in each:

1. Speed Jumping:  The goal here is self-explanatory.  Jump as fast as you can in a given amount of time.  The length of time varies from 10 seconds at Bloomer, Wisconsin's regional competition to 3 minutes for USA Jump Rope's "endurance" speed jumping event.  Besides varying the amount of time for speed jumping, some of the other ways for varying the event include:

	Speed jumping in Double Dutch ropes.
	Relay teams where teams, typically of 4 athletes take turns sequentially and their total score is added up (see photo below).
	Doing as many Triple Unders (rope turns three times for each jump) as possible  within 60 seconds.

Speed jumping competitors and judges at the 1998 USAJRF national tournament (thumbnail).

2. Freestyle Jumping: In these events the goal is to do a routine in a given amount of time that includes a smooth flow of difficult skills with as few misses as possible. As you might guess, this is a challenging event to score, so judges have to be carefully trained to watch and weigh the different elements that are needed for a good routine.  Variations in this event include:

	Individual Freestyle
	Pairs Freestyle
	Team Freestyle
	Double Dutch Freestyle (see photo below)
	Nawatobi (Japanese style) - this variation of freestyle involves the use of springboards to help the athletes do various routines that require the arms to cross in different ways  while the rope turns more than once for each jump.  It's also done by some teams in Canada and a short demonstration can be see at this web site.

A Freestyle Double Dutch Routine by the "Heartbeats" (thumbnail).

3. Artistic Jumping: Routines that emphasize expression, and subtlety in skill execution are sometimes featured in some team freestyle routines.  However, the main home for artistic rope jumping at this time is in the Olympic women's sport of rhythmic gymnastics.  Admittedly, the rules, skill repertoire and training background for these athletes is much different than with sport jump rope.  Personally, I wish that there was an artistic event in our sport, but it's not likely for some time .

             

A rhythmic gymnast in the first thumbnail showing incredible flexibility.  The second thumbnail is from a routine Deb and I did in a dance concert.

4. Endurance Jumping:  A true aerobic endurance event in jump rope is not present in jump rope tournaments to my knowledge.  Don't get me wrong, speed jumping for 3 minutes does require stamina.  However, a true test of aerobic endurance would require a longer period of time.  The reasons for the absence of endurance jumping in tournaments are twol fold: it wouldn't be exciting for spectators, and jump rope athletes tend to be endowed with "fast-twitch" muscles.  Under my urging, USAJRF did experiment with an endurance event earlier in its history - the most "doubles with a cross in a row."  My reasoning was that this event lasted 22 minutes when I did it for the Guinness record, so it wasn't likely to go on too long for tournament purposes, but it still would be a test of aerobic endurance.  However, the event wasn't well received by the athletes, so the event was understandably dropped.

The Guinness Book of Records has acknowledged various endurance events in jump rope, however, from the most jumps in 1 hour to simply the longest that you can jump (up to 36 hours before they stopped listing the event!).  Guinness also used to recognize the fastest 10 mile run-skip, which I held at one time and various other endurance events from time-to-time. (Note: Guinness varies which events they recognize from year to year.)

End of my 10 mile run-skip record in 1988 (Thumbnail). Note the crowd of millions!