 What's up ladies and gentlemen, Dan Whitmer of ZenDude Fitness and today I'm going to teach you the top five reasons why you continue to trip up your feet on the jump rope. I understand this can be a very frustrating thing when starting out but please understand that even Brandon and myself had this issue when we first started jumping rope and please Zen dudes and dudettes do not get discouraged because I promise you with practice and the more you continue to do the thing the easier it will get. So ladies and gentlemen without further ado let's get into this video. Okay ladies and gentlemen to start off one of the most important things is I see people holding the rope too high. Now I'll get in a little bit to where you want to be holding the rope but basically guys you want to have it jutting out to the sides of your hips right where my waist band is in my sweat pants that's where you want to keep it. If you notice when I'm jumping everything's fine until my hands start to come up a little bit more and I see that tendency with a lot of people. They bring their hands up higher as they jump rope. This especially happens when people are trying to attempt double unders. If you notice here even the slightest movement of my hands upwards is going to cause the rope not to be able to go underneath my feet causing a lot of frustration. So even when starting guys I would over exaggerate this and purposely keep the rope kind of low so that you make sure that it gets underneath your feet. Now as you'll see here from the side everything's fine when I have it at my waist band and then as soon as I move my hands up that's when I hit my feet with the rope and this is probably the biggest mistake that I see from a lot of people. Next up guys not keeping the rope tight also very important and what I mean by this is if you'll notice here this is where we talk about you want to use mostly your wrist. If you are using your entire arm the rope is not going to be tight because it doesn't have your wrist making it tight by pulling on it. You're essentially just forcing the rope around but you're not really keeping the rope tight by controlling it with your wrist. So if you'll notice here my elbows and my shoulders are doing a lot of the work but that's an issue because then my wrists aren't tight and aren't able to carry the rope. Now if you notice here this is how you want to do it. Notice how basically the only thing working in this in this situation are my forearms and my wrists and notice how the rope keeps that nice tight U shape. That's how you want the rope to look whether you're doing tricks whether you're just doing regular bounce and this is important because when you're increasing your speed that's what's going to help you burn a lot of fat and hang on to that lean muscle mass. So notice again how my feet or excuse me my hands are down around my waist and my wrists and forearms are controlling everything. Not a whole lot of movement in my biceps and in my shoulders. This is super important guys and remember don't get discouraged if you are doing some of these mistakes and you need to practice a little bit more. Brandon and I were once there as well. So don't get discouraged guys. Another big one you're probably not warmed up. Now this is the Zen dude warm up. It's 20 jumping jacks 10 squats 10 front lunges five on each leg and 10 pushups. I want you to run through that two or three times. But the reason I'm having you guys warm up is because simply a lot of people comment on our videos and say oh I'm tripping over the rope and I'm like well it's because you're not warmed up and I know even with myself I ran into this problem. You know my feet and my ankle joints might feel a little bit brittle. It might hurt to jump on them initially and so this is why you want to make sure that you're warmed up not only so that you don't trip over your rope but so that you also prevent injury. So I cannot stress enough the importance of making sure that the body is warmed up before you begin jumping rope. And like I said guys do what's good for your body. If you sometimes I dance before I do this sometimes you know I'll run through this excuse me warm up three times not usually four but if you feel like you need it that is totally fine. Ladies and gentlemen that is totally fine. So warm up people. Next focus focus focus on regular bounce. If you're doing tricks that you can't do yet as you see here obviously I'm messing up with this trick and guys I want you to focus more on remember if you're trying to jump rope to get the body you want to make sure that you are jumping that you have the correct regular bounce form down. Don't go don't go in our workouts don't try and do all these tricks because then you're not going to be able to get the regular bounce form down. So not only are you going to be messing up a lot but you're not going to perfect the regular bounce form and you're not going to be able to lose as much weight because you haven't learned the basics and how to go fast was simply the regular bounce. So I implore you guys just do regular bounce as best as you can and save the tricks and some of our trick tutorials you can check those out for when you are proficient in regular bounce. Now this last one we talk about this a lot you simply have not found your rhythm if you see here all I'm doing now I know you can't see inside my head obviously but I'm counting one two three four one two three four and that little I'm matching the click of the rope along with counting my breaths from one to four and then repeating so another way to do this guys is through music and by using music you can definitely connect your feet to the rope and this is also going to help with tripping over the rope I know that music is something that a lot of people use I use it myself even though I'm at the point where I don't need to worry about messing up but I still do mess up and please understand that also guys have fun dance do the thing ladies and gentlemen comment below let us know if you have questions