Many people know that using a jump rope can be helpful for losing weight. Find out if this also means jumping rope can help you burn belly fat.
Some people have the impression that you can choose where you lose fat by doing certain activities.
Unfortunately, it is generally not possible to target fat loss in significant amounts. To burn belly fat, you have to lose enough body fat overall.
On the one hand, this means jumping rope can potentially help you burn belly fat at some point in your weight loss journey.
Jumping rope is actually relatively good when it comes to increasing your energy consumption (how many calories you burn.
On the flip side, this means that jumping rope does not necessarily help you burn belly fat.
Additionally, to even begin the more general weight loss process, your habits in other lifestyle areas like your nutrition need to be good enough. Exercise is no guarantee for losing weight.
Does jumping rope help you lose fat?
Most people vaguely know that exercises like jumping rope can help weight loss but working out more is no guarantee for losing fat.
First of all, you need to make it so your body needs more energy than is coming in from food. At this point, it starts using energy stores.
Body fat is only one form of stored energy. For example, there is also an energy store called glycogen which your body tends to prefer for high-intensity workouts.
These differences aside, since jumping rope can help you get to a point where you start using up energy stores by burning more calories, you can say it can help you lose fat.
At the same time, you need to keep in mind that your habits in other areas like nutrition play a big role in whether or not fat loss will happen and to what extent.
Jumping rope does not always lead to fat loss either.
Can you get a flat stomach by jumping rope?
Many people get the idea that you can choose where you lose fat by doing certain workouts like jumping rope.
Unfortunately, it is generally not possible to choose where you burn fat in significant amounts.
So even if you get to a point where jumping rope makes you burn fat, this does not necessarily mean the fat comes from around your stomach or other areas.
To make this happen you have to lose fat overall. At some point, your body will “choose” to also use your belly fat which can result in a flatter stomach.
In what areas the fat loss from jumping rope will happen the most depends on details like your genes and how far you are in your weight loss journey.
The body fat around the stomach, hips, and thighs tends to be the last to go. That being said, you can likely already see results in these areas throughout the rest of your journey too.
Does jumping rope burn fat in your thighs in a similar way?
You may wonder if there is really no exception when it comes to thigh fat loss because the quadriceps and calves are the main muscles jumping rope works.
Unfortunately, the answer is similar to the question in the previous section.
If you want to burn thigh fat by jumping rope, you have to lose enough fat overall.
This can also happen through changes in other lifestyle areas.
How long should you jump rope to lose (belly) fat?
Before heading into a jump rope exercise routine, you may want to know what results you can expect.
These jump rope statistics can also help you figure out whether you are doing something suboptimal in other areas.
First of all, you need to assume that the example individual below has a routine that keeps them at the same weight and that implementing more jump ropes is the only change they make.
With that in mind, a 155-pound (70 kg) person can burn around 2440 calories in total during 10 sessions of jumping rope at a moderate pace for 20 minutes.
Since one pound (0.45 kg) of body fat contains around 3500 calories, the amount above is about 0.7 pounds (0.31 kg) of body fat.
After 30 sessions of jumping rope at a moderate pace for 20 minutes, this same person will have burned around 7320 calories, 2.09 pounds (0.92 kg) of body fat, during the workout.
One important to thing to note is that as this person loses weight, he/she will burn fewer calories with the same jump rope workouts.
If you get to a plateau after seeing progress for a while, it is possible that you have to make more changes in your routine to keep burning (belly) fat.
Relevant jump rope studies
The information above is definitely helpful but you may also want to know about real-life situations where people actually implement a jump rope exercise routine.
One small study with 23 overweight middle school students got the participants to follow a 12-week jump-rope-based exercise program.
They measured significant decreases in visceral fat and total body fat after the exercise program (1).
A similar study with 40 girls between the ages of 14 to 16 years measured significant decreases in central adiposity (belly fat) in the group that followed a 12-week jump-rope-based exercise program compared to the control group (2).
How effective jumping rope is vs alternatives
Whether or not jumping rope can help you burn belly fat is not the only question. Because you only have a limited amount of time, how many calories jumping rope burns compared to other options matters too.
Keep in mind that the amounts below are very rough predictions. In reality, the numbers can vary for you due to differences in body weight, body composition, hormone levels, etc.
That being said, they can still be helpful to see how much fat loss potential jump rope alternatives have.
A 155-pound (70 kg) person can burn more or less the following amounts of calories when doing the activities for 30 minutes (3).
- Jumping rope (slow): 293 calories
- Jumping rope (moderate pace): 366 calories
- Jumping rope (fast): 439 calories
- Water Aerobics: 149 calories
- Rowing, Stationary (moderate): 260 calories
- Bicycling, Stationary (moderate): 260 calories
- Running 5.2 mph: 335 calories
- Elliptical Trainer (general): 335 calories
- Swimming (crawl): 409 calories
- Bicycling 16-19 mph: 446 calories
- Running 10 mph: 614 calories
It should become clear that burning a lot of calories is definitely one of the benefits of jumping rope. In turn, this can potentially lead to a nice amount of fat loss results.
jumping rope can be a great exercise choice when it comes to calorie burning and in turn potentially fat loss results.
Something to note is that differences between activities in areas like injury risk, convenience, and what you like doing can also be relevant to a good exercise routine.
Additionally, do not forget that your habits in lifestyle areas like what you eat stay important even if you pick an alternative to jumping rope that is more effective.
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