Which aerobic exercise is better, jumping rope or running?

It is actually completely unnecessary to make an absolute comparison. Both of them are aerobic exercises that rank in the first echelon of fat burning efficiency. There is no way to say that one is better than the other. Which one you choose depends entirely on your own conditions and current needs.

I have been doing aerobics for almost seven or eight years, and there are a lot of friends who have experienced these two sports pits. They say that skipping is good and running is almost equally divided. In the end, it is just about using the right one. A while ago, a little girl who works in operations came to ask about a fat loss plan. It was almost ten o'clock every day when she got home. The neighborhood was surrounded by main roads and she couldn't even find a suitable night running route. The soundproofing of the old house she rented was still poor, so I asked her to buy a weight-bearing rope, spread a two-centimeter-thick yoga mat, and dance in the hallway. She would jump for 10 minutes each time, rest for 2 minutes, and jump three times in a row. In the group, the pure exercise time was only half an hour, and the amount of fat burned was higher than the 40 minutes she ran around the community before. In two months, she lost 2.8% of her body fat. Before, she was afraid of thick legs when jumping rope, so she changed the posture of landing on the soles of her feet and tightening her core throughout. On the contrary, her calf circumference became 1 centimeter thinner. Everyone said that skipping rope is a miracle drug for losing fat.

There are also some friends who encountered a big pitfall when they first tried to jump rope. Last year, I had a male colleague who weighed 175 pounds. He wanted to lose weight before summer and wear a slim-fitting T-shirt. He followed the online tutorial and danced 1,000 times a day. After three days of jumping, his knees hurt and he had to go up and down stairs. He went to take a film and said that the meniscus was slightly worn. He has a large body weight, and the weight-bearing pressure on his knees is higher than that of ordinary people. When jumping rope, his knees have to withstand 3-4 times the weight pressure, and he is easily injured if his posture is slightly wrong. Later, I asked him to run on the plastic track in the park next to my home. At first, he did a combination of walking and running, running for two minutes and walking for five minutes, and gradually transitioned to running 5 kilometers at a time. He has lost 20 pounds in three months, and his knees are not a problem at all. Now everyone I meet says that running is the most suitable aerobic exercise for ordinary people.

You see, it’s not about which exercise is better, but which one suits you better. There is a lot of quarrel on the Internet right now about injuries to the knees from jumping rope and thick legs from running. The essence is not the problem of the exercise itself, but that you have not chosen the right way to adapt to yourself. Just like you can't use a screwdriver suitable for small hands to tighten a big screw. If you can't tighten it, it's because the screwdriver is not easy to use, right?

If you are usually tight on time and have little space for exercise, and want to burn fat efficiently, skipping rope is indeed the most cost-effective option. You can practice it by buying a rope worth dozens of yuan, and there is almost no threshold.； If you like to go out and wander around, enjoy the feeling of blowing in the wind and looking at the scenery while exercising, or your weight base is too large and your joints are not very good, as long as you have the right posture and choose the right road with good cushioning, the running experience will be much better than skipping.

If you really have to choose, you don’t have to worry about it for too long. Try both for a week. Whichever one you can stick to without getting scared will be the best exercise for you. After all, no matter how good the exercise is, it’s useless if you can’t stick to it.