How to | Learn to Skip

Skipping is a skill worth honing: it’s fantastic exercise, you can do it anywhere and it looks pretty cool, especially if you can throw a move or two.

The basics

Get these down and it’ll feel like less effort. • Jump low: jumping too high wastes energy and stresses the joints. • Keep on the balls of the feet: avoid kicking your feet back and up as you jump (bending the knees only slightly prevents this). • Keep elbows pointing back, hands close to the body, next to your hips. • Rotate the rope with your wrists not your arms. • Keep your rope shorter: it’s more efficient. • Avoid the double jump if your aim is harder moves.

The trickier bits

Whatever feat you’re tackling, practise without the rope first to get your rhythm right. Start by jumping side to side or forwards and backwards as you skip. Then try jumping toes and heels together (the ‘wounded duck’). The enviable boxer’s skip is simply jumping from side to side (jump right, tap left, jump left, tap right). Once you’re comfortable with your feet, play with the arms: crossing and swinging the rope and the 180˚ turn. And when you get really confident, try doing it with your dog: Purin, a beagle from Japan, holds the record for ‘Most skips by a dog and a person in one minute – single rope’ managing 58 in a minute.

If you like skipping, you might like to get back into these childhood games, this bank holiday

French elastic
Grab two friends and a length of elastic and start chanting: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. Inside, outside, inside, ON! You can learn to do it at the Scouts’ website.

Hopscotch
All you need is a piece of chalk, a pebble and to be able to count to ten and you have yourself aan afternoon of back garden entertainment. Learn to hopscotch here.

Cat’s Cradle
Find a length of string, look up the rules and get looping with a cat’s cradle partner.

Hula-hooping
Here’s one you can do alone (and you WILL want to do it alone until you get a bit good and can show off in the park. You can find instructions on how to hula hoop on our blog.

You can find more merriment and silliness in our Miscellany pages each month.

Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

More outdoorsy fun and games…

More from our June issue…

How to | Hula Hoop

Because it’s a skill everyone should be able to surprise their friends with

Our July cover photo had us all wanting to invest in a hula hoop and rotate our hips like hula-pros. So we thought we’d put together a short guide on how to get started with hula hooping.

1. Invest in the correct-sized hula hoop - you need one that comes up to your belly button when it is standing on the floor in front of you.

2. Once you have your hula hoop, hold it in front of you and step inside the hoop with your feet towards the back. Bring the hoop to your waist level with two hands and stand your feet shoulder width apart. 

3. Keep your body long and give the hoop a big flat spin and then start to push forwards and backwards. If you’re right-handed spin it anticlockwise. If you’re left-handed spin it clockwise. Keep your knees, chest and hips still and just move the belly and back if you can. 

4. Move your waist in a circular motion, moving your belly froward as it crosses your front and pushing backwards as it crosses your back. You need to move the part of your body you want the hoop to sit on and keep the other areas still as much as you can.

5. Put one foot in front of the other if it feels easier. If you feel the hoop starting to drop, go faster, or turn your body in the same direction as the hoop is moving while pushing faster. 

6. Once you’ve got the momentum and you can do a few hoops, you can start being fancy. Try taking a step forward and back or moving across the room. Try these tricks for beginners if you like.

More skills to learn…

More from our July issue…

The rules of petanque

Nothing quite says summer like the clink of pétanque balls. Lager and Gallic shrugs optional

Pétanque (or boules) is played in two teams with two sets of differently marked boules. You can play in teams of two (3 boules each); three (2 each) or one against one (3 each).

1 Draw a circle on the ground (or use a coiled rope), 50cm in diameter.

2 A player from team one stands in the circle and throws the jack (the wooden boule) to land 6-10m from the rope, a metre away from any other object. Team one throws a first boule as close as possible to the jack.

3 A player from team two tries to get a boule closer. If successful they ‘have the point’ and play returns to team one. If not, they continue to throw until they do and play passes back.

4 Play continues until one team has played all their boules. The other team then throws the rest of their boules.

5 The team with the closest boule to the jack wins and gets a point for each of their boules closer to the jack than the other team’s nearest boule.

6 The winning team draws a new circle round the jack and throws it to start the next round. Play ends when one team reaches 13 points.

You will find lots more fun for outdoor gatherings in our July ‘Embrace’ issue. It’s in shops now.

Get hold of your copy of this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

More from our July issue…

More fun for outdoors…