The key that I found in working with a number of different people, and one that has been proven by countless others, is being consistent with your workout. Over Christmas I was helping my dad get into some weight training and one question he asked me was, which exercise should I do? I thought about it for a moment before answering, 'whatever ones you will actually do'. You see, it's not what exercises you can do, but what exercises you will do on a consistent basis. I've seen it in a number of people where they get into the gym, they're ready to learn everything they can about working out because they're going to lose weight. In almost every case you'd see the same person slacking off week after week because they never liked the exercises they were doing. It wasn't long before you didn't see them at the gym at all. The only way you'll ever change is by being consistent. So how do you do it? Aren't all forms of exercise awful? I don't think so, below are some tips that I've come up with for staying consistent.

1. Find something you like. I don't care who you talk to, everyone has exercises they hate doing. Unfortunately most people only learn a couple different types of exercises they can do and they get stuck doing ones they hate. It won't take long for you to tire out and stop doing them. The nice thing about an exercise program is that there are so many different types available now. You should include both weight exercises and aerobic to get the maximum benefit from a workout. But don't let those words scare you, aerobic exercise is any type that keeps your heart rate elevated for a period of 20+ minutes. You can run, bike, dance, step, swim, etc. and get an amazing aerobic workout. My personal favorite would be jump rope of course, but I love to unicycle (mountain and distance) and play racquetball. If you ask around, I'm sure you can find a class that piques your interest and won't bore you to death. Weight exercises are typically done with free weights or machines, but did you know that you can also find resistance bands to do a lot of the same exercises? Ask a trainer about some different weight techniques and you'll be surprised at all the options that are available. The big key with this is to pick something that you enjoy.
2. Jam to the Music. Studies have shown that music can help keep you interested in a workout far longer than if you try to do it quiet. Pick up an iPod or a Zune and load some of your favorite tunes and workout to it. I personally prefer audio books (I know I'm weird), but I find that if I'm listening to something interesting I forget about how long I'm spending doing stuff. Find what works for you and get to it!
3. Schedule it. If your excuse for not working out has been that you don't have the time or that you don't feel like it, guess what, nobody does. Most things in life that are worth doing require you to make a commitment to doing them. I tell students in my assembly programs that most of the time you won't feel like practicing, but you have to make the choice to do it anyway. Get a calendar, choose what days you're going to workout and stick to it! Some people are very militaristic in how they schedule their workout sessions, if that's what you do, go for it, I personally am better at being flexible with my schedule. I'll pick which day I'm going to workout, but I don't give myself a specific time as situations come up that will make me alter my plans. Sometimes I do it in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, rarely do I go at night, but if it's my day, I gotta go. Make a schedule and keep to it! If you need visual reminders get a mega-sized calendar and write what days of the week you're going, set up reminders on your computer or phone, tell your spouse to remind you (this one works great most of the time), find what works for you, but make sure you remember.
4. Team Up. Working out is always easier with a friend. If you make a commitment to work out with someone you're more likely to be there. Maybe you don't know someone who wants to go, one thing I used to do was go to the gym, start talking to people and it's not hard to find a workout partner. Maybe you'll take a friend, your spouse, your dog (if you hate the idea of a gym or want to start small, walking is a great exercise and your dog will love it too), find someone and go it together. The gym I used to work at had a group of us that would be in there at 5:30 every morning, it was always the same group and we actually turned into a sort of small family. People would check up on you if you missed, we'd go out to eat breakfast once a month, it was a great group. Team up and you'll find keeping to your exercise plan a lot easier.
5. Chocolate is King. At least that's what my wife tells me. I'm personally a fan of smoothies and cereal, but hey, whatever floats your boat. If you stick to your plan, reward yourself. Anyone who has worked with kids (I don't have my own, but they tell me it's the same) will tell you that positive reinforcement works a lot better than punishment. If you view your workout as some sort of punishment, it's hard to keep at it. You'll find any reason you can to give up and quit. A great way to stick to it is to reward yourself on a regular basis. Maybe you'll have a special dessert, maybe you can go out to a movie, maybe your spouse will agree to do all your chores. Come up with some sort of reward system for sticking to your exercise plan and don't forget to use it! I spend a lot of time flying and I find it interesting how many unused frequent flier miles there are. I love free trips and all this business travel eventually gives me some sort of reward, your workout needs the same thing. You should have a lot of small rewards that you get and maybe make a big one for every 3 months, 6 months or year that you stick to your plan. Positive reinforcement can go a long way to helping you reach your fitness goals.

As you can see there are a number of things you can use to help you be consistent with your workout. Maybe you have some more that you would like to share, fill out the comment form below and let me know what you do to keep to your workout. Exercise is fun, but every person defines fun a little different, make sure you take time to figure out what way is best for you. If you need ideas and no one around you seems to know, invest in a couple sessions with a certified personal trainer, a good one can help you find just the right thing.

If you've never seen a pair of these shoes before (and you would remember them if you had) here's how they're built: First, you have your standard tennis shoe, I don't know if they were built for comfort, style or function, but they did have a shoe. Second, the shoe was positioned off the ground by a few (possibly 6 or more) inches through a small connector piece that attached to a platform that was on the floor. The platform was about the size of the front of a normal shoe and was positioned underneath the ball of the foot. Basically what this causes you to do is walk in such a way that you're always on the ball of your foot, your heel can't touch the ground even if you wanted it to because of how far off the ground it is. To get the feel for what this does, try walking around your house for a few minutes without ever letting your heels touch the ground. You'll notice pretty quick that your calves are being used much more than normal since a burn has started to develop. Supposedly if you played basketball in them, magic would happen and you'd become a monster that could terrorize the floor like never before.

When you move away from the advertiser wording, here's what is actually going on: Because you're constantly walking around on the balls of your foot, you are putting increased strain and effort on the calf muscles as well as the Achilles Tendon. Any time you add stress to muscles/tendons they are going to react, and in this case, you develop these muscles to help you jump higher, run faster, etc. The whole idea these shoes were built on is this: Strength vs. Power.

I know some of you may be thinking that these are the same thing, but I don't think so. If I wanted to build more strength or muscle mass in my calves, I would probably load up some weight on a machine, do some standing calf raises, then switch to a seated calf raise and repeat. Power is developed in a very different manner. One definition of power is that it is energy, force or momentum, think of it as maximizing the strength that you already have. I'm not going to dwell on strength training because of the amount of information you can easily find on the topic, but I do want to touch on the basics of power training. So how do you develop your power? Plyometric training.

Plyometric training was designed with this idea of strength vs. power in mind. Developed by Yuri Verkhoshansky in the Soviet Union, it was originally called the shock method and was used successfully by Soviet sprinters as early as the 60's. Its popularity in the U.S. started in the early 70's and has been used by top athletes throughout the world ever since. In fact, whether you realize it or not, every coach/trainer in the world is probably using some form or type of plyometric exercise. Unlike weight training for strength, most plyometrics use your body weight as the only form of resistance, but the exercises will give you some amazing results. For an in depth study of this type of workout and the technical aspects of how it works, there are a number of books and websites devoted to it that are well worth reading, but I want to give you some quick starter exercises for those that just want to get going. They start with some low intensity plyometrics to some higher intensity ones.

1. Squat Jumps. An all time favorite of basketball coaches around the world. Squat down to the ground and bring your arms to your side. Raise your arms above your head and jump as high as you can. Return to the squat position as you land and repeat. Try to minimize the amount of time it takes between the squat and jump positions.
2. Jump to Box. Stand facing a sturdy box (start with one that's only about 6 inches or so off the ground, then work up to taller ones). Squat down slightly and jump onto the box with both feet. Step off the box one foot at a time, then repeat.
3. Split Squat Jumps. Start with your legs together then bring one leg back about 2 feet or so. You should now be standing in a split stance. Squat down by bringing your back knee toward the ground and lowering your hips. When your front leg is parallel to the ground, explode upward as high as you can. While you're in mid-air, switch feet so that you land back in a squat with the opposite foot in front. Repeat.
4. Lateral Hurdle Jumps. Pick an object that is a few inches wide and that you can jump over comfortably with both feet. The goal is to jump side to side over the object without kicking it. Make sure you keep both feet together and go until you can't do any more.
5. Single Leg Bounds. FYI: These can be very strenuous on your legs. Pick one foot to start with. Jump as high as you can off chosen foot in a forward direction. Bring that leg up underneath you and then down to land on the same foot. Repeat. Once you have traveled a certain distance, turn around and do the same thing with the other foot.
6. Multiple Unders. Jump rope has some great built in plyometric exercises. One of the goals in true plyometrics is to minimize the amount of time you spend on the ground, in fact, you should try to spend less than 0.2 seconds if possible. Multiple unders are any skill where the rope passes under you more than one time per jump. Start out with doubles and try to work up to triples or even quads. One thing I love about using jump rope for plyometrics is that the exercises are a lot more fun to do. As you're doing multiples you can do different tricks, add crosses, under the legs, turns, etc. The only thing to remember is that you need to do as many as possible, jumping as high as you can every jump to get the benefit.

Get a rope, practice and you'll be amazed at what you can do. If you haven't already done so, sign up for the Rope Masters videoKast for ideas on multiple under tricks you can do. I'm a firm believer that exercise should be fun. I've found that with a little practice, even something as strenuous as plyometrics can be enjoyable. Strength vs. Power, develop both to maximize your potential.

First off, this study followed 14 untrained men for 3 months. This group had 2-3 weekly rounds of soccer practice, of the duration of approximately 1 hour. Their percentage of fat went down, the total mass of muscle went up, their blood pressure fell and their fitness ratings improved significantly. Everything we tested improved, says Peter Krustrup.

The study also followed a group of joggers who trained 2-3 times per week, but their efforts showed smaller effects than that of the soccer players...After 12 weeks, the soccer players had lost 3.5 kilos of fat and gained more than 2 kilos of extra muscle mass, whereas the joggers had lost 2 kilos of fat and showed no change in total muscle mass...The sports scientist believes that it is the shifts between walking, running and sprinting that causes the soccer players to experience better health improvements

The study goes on with a number of other observations including the fact that the soccer players didn't report the boredom that the joggers experienced. Alright, now that we've got some of the facts in the open, let's digest just what this is saying. I think it's great that they followed untrained men who only exercised 2-3 times weekly and didn't stick with superb athletes practicing everyday under strenuous supervision. Thus the results are more realistic for the majority of us. To veer off from the soccer study, let's look at how this would relate to jump rope. The consensus between the scientists was that it was the shift in activity that made the participants experience the greater health improvements. The thing that makes jump rope such a great exercise is that there are so many different things you can do with it beyond just jumping in place.

I don't think I would be too far off the mark to say that you can experience the same benefits as soccer if you will design a jump rope workout that properly incorporates the same principle. Design your workout to constantly add change to what you're doing. I'll break down a quick idea of what a workout could look like in a moment, but imagine the health benefits you could experience and the great part is, you can do it at home alone! I love soccer and think it's a lot of fun, but the tough part has always been getting a group that can consistently play together and avoiding injury while doing so.

Before you get into a detailed workout, the first thing you need to take time to do is learn some skills! The idea of change in jump rope requires you to be able to do a variety of tricks that will challenge your body in different ways. I don't mean you have to be able to do the most difficult skills in the world, but you do need to have a decent repertoire that you can pull from to make this work. I would suggest learning a variety of footwork skills to start with as they will offer the most variety with the easiest learning curve. Once you've got a few of those, go on to learn some crossing skills, a double under and a couple double under skills. One thing they mentioned is that it was the change from jogging to walking that helped, so it's a good idea to learn some non-jumping skills like the arm wrap, the side swing, the step-through and the marching step. These skills will allow your heart rate to go down and give you a breather in between the more strenuous parts of your workout. I'm a big fan of rope release skills so you might want to spend some time to learn the basic rope toss and maybe the mamba, as that one is always fun to do in a workout and will have you working on your hand-eye-coordination. If you need some help learning how to do any of these skills (or others) make sure you're signed up for the Rope Masters videoKast which is a free resource to learn how to jump rope and you can also pick up the Rope Masters Single Rope Skills DVD as it breaks down 76 different skills that you can use in your workout.

Now that you've got some skills together it's time to put together that fat-burning, muscle enhancing workout that you've always dreamed of. First, get some rocking music! This is one other great thing about a jump rope workout vs. Soccer, you can listen to music while you're doing it. I'm a huge fan of trance and highly recommend picking up a dance mix at about 130-140 bpm. If you don't know where to start, check out 'A State of Trance' by Armin Van Buuren, it usually has a good selection of music and comes out every week. Once you've got your music selected, crank it and use the following guideline to build your own uber-workout.

1. Warm-up. Start with some light marching with the rope at your side and then work into the basic single bounce. Switch back and forth between this and side swings to get you set for the rest of the workout.
2. Footwork. Start with some basic footwork skills like the Skier, Bell, Side-Straddle, Forward-Straddle, etc. This will finish off your warm-up and also give you a change in motion from the previous, mainly stationary skills.
3. Core Workout. This is where all the fun (and health) happens. The key is to constantly change what you're doing. Every 15-30 seconds change what you're doing. Do some crosses then footwork, then jog in place, then jump sideways for about 10 feet then back, do a couple double unders, jump as fast as you can, march in place, etc. Remember, change up what you're doing! Push yourself to where you're breathing hard then take a break and do some non-jumping skills. You don't need to kill yourself to make this work for you, have fun with it and just mix it up.
4. Cool Down. After the core of your workout it's very important to take time to cool down. Too many people stop without giving their bodies time to cool off and suffer for it the next couple days. Do some light jumping and marching. Take about 5 minutes to give your body enough time to cool down completely. Once you're done make sure you also stretch out your calves and legs as you've just given them one good workout.

That's about it. You'll find that your workouts will be more fun and productive if you consistently change what you're doing. I thought this study was fascinating and hope that it has opened your eyes to the awesome benefits that variations in exercise can do for you.

1. The Rope
   Sounds simple enough, but you'd be amazed at how many people jump with ropes that are garbage. The right rope doesn't need to be expensive. There are great ropes available for as little as $2-$3. The main thing to look for is whether the rope turns freely inside the handle. If it gets caught up easily it will make jumping very difficult. Don't go for the ball bearing 'super rope', they're junk and not worth it. Try to avoid cloth ropes as well since they're usually too lightweight and don't rotate well. The best ropes are made of either straight plastic (commonly called a speed rope) or plastic beads. The other thing to check is the length. When you stand on the middle of the rope with both feet, the handles should reach to just under your arm pits. Jumping with a rope that is too short will trip you up faster than anything.
2. Bounce
   The most common mistakes people make when trying to jump rope are usually rooted in bad jumping form. If you're jumping properly, you should be on the balls of your feet (if you stand on your tip toes the 2-4 inch area still on the ground is the ball of the foot) and your knees should be slightly bent. While jumping, your heels should never touch the ground. Jumping flat footed is really bad on your knees and should be avoided, plus it wears you out fast. Don't lock your knees and remember to relax, jumping should become a very fluid motion in time.
3. Start Simple
   Everyone wants to jump in and impress their peers the first time out, but if you skimp on the fundamentals, you'll always look like an amateur. The most important skill to master is the single bounce. Every skill in rope skipping is built off of this, so when you fly through it without properly learning it, everything you do will look wrong. To properly execute the single bounce, you should only be jumping about 1/4 - 1/2 an inch off the ground (your rope is only so thick) and you should be landing softly on the balls of your feet. Your elbows should be near your side and the rope should be turned by your wrists, not your arms. A common thing for beginners to do is take really big jumps, kicking their heels up to their backside, their arms are making huge circles and they look rather ridiculous. It's ok to start like this, but take the time to lower your jump and bring your arms down before you try any other skills. It can't be stressed enough, learn this before you try anything else. It may take a while, but it's worth it in the end.
4. Contact Zone
   What type of surface are you jumping on? Sometimes you'll be missing constantly and it's not your fault, it's the contact zone. Carpet will make your rope bounce, there's no way around it, you have to jump higher than normal if you are on carpet. Each surface type has it's own characteristics and you should be aware of them before you get out there and strut your stuff. If you have a choice in surfaces, a suspended wood floor is the best for your joints, plus it can give you some extra bounce in case you want to hit a multiple under and get up really high. Since most of us live in the real world and don't have a choice in premium surfaces, your next best bet is to find a flat surface that has some give to it. Try to avoid concrete if possible since it will wear you out faster, it's not good for your knees and it will eat your rope up. Try a few jumps out on whatever your surface is and pay attention to how the rope bounces and slides across the floor. Once you've tried out a few different places, you'll start to notice similarities and the adjustments you'll need to make for each location.
5. Practice Makes Permanent
   Focus on the mechanics of each skill so that you're doing them properly from the get-go. Some skills may feel unnatural at first, but if you practice them properly, your body will input that into muscle memory and it will become second nature in no time. The longer you practice something with bad form, the longer it will take to unlearn that motion. Lots of jump rope skills will take time to master, take it slow and focus on the mechanics. If you don't know how to do something, watch/ask someone who does or pick up a video. There are a load of resources available online with plenty of teaching that's either free or very low cost. (make sure you're signed up for the videoKast).