Jumping rope grows up, becomes competitive

Three teenage girls demonstrating how to jump rope double Dutch -- not just jump, but jump really, really fast -- invited a middle-aged observer to give it a try.

The woman, among those watching the demonstration of speed jumping at the Westfield Sunrise Mall in Massapequa, hesitated a moment. "I haven't done this since I was a kid in the Bronx singing 'A my name is Alice,' " she was overheard saying before she joined in and managed several jumps before tripping on the rope.

She got a round of applause.

"See, you never forget how to do it, and it's lots of fun," said Lucie Buissereth, 42, co-owner of Lucie B's Jump N' Fun, a jump rope school in Baldwin that presented the demonstration on a recent Saturday.

Then, Buissereth grabbed a rope and started jumping, the rope a blur as it whipped through the air. Like the Pied Piper, she soon had everyone in the vicinity jumping - boys, girls and grown-ups, even a reporter who hadn't jumped rope in several years.

Competitive jumping
Buissereth is right: Jumping rope is not something you forget. And it's fun. And because it's an aerobic activity, it's good for you, too. Long Island even has a team, the Rock-It-Ropers, based at Lucie B's, that has won regional and national competitions.

Jumping rope - long the province of residential sidewalks and schoolyards - has grown up into a recognized competitive sport.

"Most people have no idea what the competitive part of it can be," says John Fletcher, operations manager for the USA Jump Rope organization in Huntsville, Texas. "Around the world, boys, girls and adults into their 50s compete, doing double Dutch, speed jumping, push-ups and even handstands."

Push-ups and handstands -- yes, competitors do them as the jump rope spins past.

"Competition drives our organization," said Fletcher, "but our goal is to promote jump-roping as a healthy lifestyle and sport for a lifetime."

For starters, jumping rope "can help you burn approximately 800 to 1,000 calories in an hour," said Fletcher, at least if it's done at a steady pace.

And it helps build strength of "your calves, arms, shoulders and even abs," he said.

That's not all: "It's used as a training tool for sports that require good hand-eye coordination, like tennis, boxing and skiing," he said, "and it helps improve endurance for sports that require a lot of running, such as soccer and track."

All that from a single jump rope
Such healthy results have been the aim of the American Heart Association, which for 33 years has been running Jump Rope for Heart fundraisers with local schools. Larry Pyser, youth marketing manager for the organization's Nassau County chapter, said that last year about 200 events were held in Nassau and Suffolk elementary and middle schools.

He said most are held in February, which is American Heart Month. "Kids get a real connection between exercise and being heart healthy," Pyser said. "The phys ed teachers talk to them about being physically fit, and they pass that on to their parents. Our belief is if we can educate kids when they're young, they may continue to exercise later in life."

Kathy Mundy, a physical education teacher at Lee Road School in Wantagh, said she teaches jump rope skills to students in kindergarten through fifth grade. By the end of first grade, they can join jump rope clubs.

"It's one of the few skills that everybody can do, it's inexpensive, and it has multiple benefits," Mundy said.

For example, she said, "when kids use long ropes in pairs, it teaches cooperation. It's a full-body fitness and strength workout, and it teaches kids rhythm. They also get results, which is satisfying because they see if they work at it, they can improve."

The opportunity to achieve goals appealed to Buissereth, who came to the sport only six years ago. "I wasn't someone who jumped rope as a kid," she said. "I'd watch the other kids through the window, but I was too self-conscious because I was overweight." 

Her jump start
Her path to jumping started when she was coming off the night shift at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, where she was two years into a residency. As she was leaving the hospital one night in 2004, she noticed a television broadcasting the USA Jump Rope Nationals. "I decided right then it was what I wanted to do," she said, explaining that she had already realized that a career as a physician was not what she really wanted.

She left the residency program, earned a certification as a fitness instructor and began teaching at several clubs, including Bally's, Equinox and New York Sports Club, then designed her own jump rope fitness programs.

The next year she competed at USA Jump Rope Nationals and won a gold medal in the women's three-minute speed event - jumping as fast as she could for three straight minutes. (She also earned a silver in the one-minute competition.)

She continued to compete, even after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2007. "It's a struggle," she said, "but I overcome the daily ups and downs by keeping active."

She wanted to bring the concept of jump rope fitness to children, too, so in 2006 she and business partner Dion Tulloch started the Jump N' Fun program. In 2008, they opened the Baldwin gym, Lucie B's.

Tulloch, 44, of Rosedale, Queens, is a national champion in freestyle and speed jumping. He, too, came to jump rope as an adult, after having worked in sales and been a top-ranked men's tennis player with the U.S. Tennis Association Eastern. "I took a jump rope fitness class with Lucie to improve my foot work for tennis, and then I fell in love with the sport," he said. "It takes a lot of patience to learn the tricks and some athleticism, but everyone can do it." 

Fit & fun
Indeed, at a recent class at Lucie B's, Tulloch's students as young as 8 practice push-ups while teammates spin the rope. The children are members of the Rock-It-Ropers, the only USA Jump Rope speed team representing New York. They won 88 awards at the 2010 Regionals in April in Exeter, N.H., and are now practicing to compete again this year, hoping to qualify for the Nationals in June.

Tamara Weinberg, 16, one of the original members, started taking jump rope classes in 2006 as one more after-school activity. And then she started training for the team.

"The more I did it, the more I liked the challenge. I'm competitive and like being pushed, but there's no stress to it. It's just fun," says Weinberg, who also plays volleyball and softball for Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls in Hewlett Bay Park. She placed second in the 2009 regionals in speed jumping -- 260 jumps in one minute -- or more than four jumps each second.

The team has adult members, too. Tulloch says he has seen adults get into it because their kids are involved. "It's an infectious sport, and adults chomp at the bit to do it," he said.

One such parent is Carolyn Lieberman, 39, of Woodmere, an accountant and mother of four who started jumping rope three years ago because her two daughters were in the class.

"I was out of shape, and I decided to take Lucie's class. It was hard," she said. "But I got really fast, and I joined the team and competed at nationals in the 30-and-over group." Within 18 months, she said, she had lost 10 pounds. At age 37, she came in seventh nationally for speed in her age group and at the regionals came in first in one-minute speed.

Lieberman no longer jumps rope, instead relying on spinning, kickboxing and working with a personal trainer to keep her in shape. "You could say that jump roping jump-started my weight-loss program," she said.

Alicia Hall, 53, is a current team member and school nurse in Far Rockaway. "I grew up on jump rope in Brooklyn. I just fell right back into it, like riding a bike," she said. "But competitive jump rope is very different."

The trim Hall says she's known for the jumping jacks, high kicks and backward kicks she can execute. "The kids on the team can do a lot of athletic stuff, but at 53 I'm kind of like: Do I need to do the tricks? When people see what I do and how I look, they want to learn more.

"There's no better example that jump roping is a great exercise than that."