Is jump rope good for fat loss?

It’s a common phrase that’s thrown around when promoting the sport; “jumping rope is great for fat loss.” Sadly, it’s just not that simple. Although jump rope burns a lot of calories per hour compared to other forms of cardiovascular training, this is not what really matters when push comes to shove. The only thing that matters when losing fat is achieving a caloric deficit over a sustained period of time. This means consistently burning more calories than you eat.

Put another way, the ACSM recommends a calorie deficit of 500kcal per day. Based on how many calories there are in a kilogram of fat, to safely lose 10kg / 22lb of fat you’d need to sustain that deficit for about 5 months, at a rate of 0.5kg / 1lb per week. You could lose that weight in a shorter time period, but it could become unsafe if not done under the supervision of a health professional, such as a PT. Nonetheless, how you achieve that does not matter.

Some forms of exercise burn calories more effectively, like jump rope. Some foods contain more calories per bite, like pizza.

This issue with people falsely claiming “jump is a good exercise for fat loss” is it misses the point of what ‘good’ means here. Let’s suppose you jumped rope everyday for an hour at maximum intensity, you may burn 800kcal. But then you sit down and eat a 18” pizza by yourself which is easily over 1,000kcal. If you do that everyday you wouldn’t lose weight. You’d gain weight - but not as quickly as if you didn’t exercise at all.

As the saying goes, you can’t out-train a bad diet.