When I was planning to learn to skip, my main problem was a broken hand, and I had no idea what would become of exercise – the cornerstone of this huge fallacy of self-improvement in a crisis, plus one of only a handful of excuses to leave the house. Well, now my hand is healed(ish), and skipping is huge. I can see the appeal: on an atmospheric level, it is a truly democratised activity, as popular with boxers as it is with 10-year-old girls. On the practical one, it is, like all activities that use your entire body weight, a fail-safe calorie-burner. If you don’t already own a rope, they’re available on Amazon for a million pounds, if you’re prepared to wait until May (I’m being flip; you can get a perfectly good rope, fast, on eBay).

I already had a rope, and it was impossible, I thought because it was too long; turned out, it was because it was too light. You get much more feedback from a heavier rope, so your feet can feel it coming and react. Sounds improbable, but it’s true. Now choose a surface. I can tell you what doesn’t work: grass (too catchy); my kitchen (marble floor, bone-shaking; I felt as if I’d done parkour); my room with a carpet (fine, except that I made the house tremble). The dudes always demonstrate in a car park (search Jump Rope Dudes on YouTube), and tarmac is kinder than concrete. Ideally, you want one of those spongy playground surfaces, but sadly, since lockdown, they’re out of bounds.

You don’t need to warm up for beginner skipping as it is, in itself, a warm-up. I noticed the pros often swing the rope in front of themselves a couple of times before they start, to get used to the weight. Then, basically, you skip. You’ll trip over a few times at the start. If you trip a lot, make sure always to blame the rope. Once you have built up a rhythm, do 20 seconds, with a 10 second rest, for 10 minutes. You’ll soon notice that this is repetitive; this is the time to build in other alternating exercises, again on a 20 second/10 second rest cycle, but make sure they’re also body-weight moves, as this is a very short workout and you want it to count: high knees, butt-kicks, jumping jacks, press-ups, if you put some welly into them.

Focus on your posture: straight back, shoulder blades together. The best tip I’ve been given for keeping your back straight is to imagine you’re wearing drop-earrings and want everyone to see your diamond. Even though I loathe materialistic display, and also don’t have my ears pierced, it works: the act of straightening and elongating your neck has a knock-on effect on the rest of your upper body. Also focus, at least for now, on tiny hops rather than big jumps, as the less physically exhausted you are, the more you’ll be able to improve your technique.

The best thing about this is that you do get better at it, in noticeable increments, every time you give 10 minutes to it. It is the only thing in my life of which this is true.

What I learned

From Brandon Epstein, one of the Jump Rope Dudes: keep your hands and arms tight to your body, and as stationary as you can.