Jumping rope was easier when I was eight.
I wanted to mix some cardio in with my weights in the mornings, and doing random aerobics moves wasn’t all that appealing, so I got a jump rope. A nice beaded one, which was easy to shorten.
Beaded ropes, by the way, *hurt* when you mess up and they slam into you.
It also occasionally hits the ceiling, because my workout space is in the basement with its low, oppressive ceiling. But otherwise it’s going well. After a few weeks I got enough coordination to do 20-30 jumps in a row. Hooray.
I found a 10-min jump rope video that’s pretty basic but gives a good idea of what kind of jumps can be done aside from just up and down (age 8 was a long time ago). I haven’t actually done the video yet, because I usually don’t do a 10-min chunk of cardio in the morning, and because I trip myself up in much less time than her jump rope segments take. But I’ve borrowed the different jumps (side to side, split jumps, etc) that she does to give my practice more variety.
Aside from the lack-of-coordination issue, it’s a really good aerobic workout.