Jean Galea

As I continue to immerse myself in padel and strive to improve every year, I’ve taken it upon myself to really learn how the human body works, especially in relation to exercise and sport.

These are the best resources I’ve found to help me along this journey:

• Exercise Physiology: Theory and Application to Fitness and Performance
• Exercise Physiology: Nutrition, Energy, and Human Performance
• Physiology of Sport and Exercise
• Advanced Strength and Conditioning for Tennis
• Strength Training Anatomy
• Coursera course: Science of Exercise
• Coursera course: Introductory Human Physiology

Do you have any other resources to recommend? Let me know in the comments section.

Whenever you are practicing any sport in a serious manner, it’s important to undergo a medical test to make sure you don’t have any conditions that can endanger your health while practicing that sport.

Practicing a sport seriously usually necessitates pushing yourself to the max in order to improve your thresholds for power, resistance etc and thus make improvements to your overall performance. Having an underlying deficiency means you would be putting yourself at risk as that high stress can trigger a failure in that weak aspect of your body.

Sadly, we’ve seen many athletes over the years collapse and sometimes die while practicing their sport, and some of those incidents could have been avoided by better testing of the athlete and detection of underlying problems (usually related to their heart).

To keep on the safe side, I like to undergo a medical sports stress test at the start of every year so that I can set my mind at rest and also understand which areas I need to improve in.

My favorite test center is the following:

• Cipsa

Sanitas also offers some of these tests, you can find more info here. They have a Sport Medicine Unit in our Millennium Centro Medico Iradier. You need to contact them at 932 55 46 00 to have all details about the sport tests.

Here’s a good article about stress testing in sports.

I use jump rope training to improve my fitness and agility for padel.

A year ago I couldn’t even jump more than 5 skips and I did ridiculously huge jumps, which is normal for a beginner. I now can do the basic technique around 50x times continuously with no mistake. Unfortunately, it took me a while till I found a jump rope I liked, and I was also trying lots of other new things and ended up dedicating much less time than I wanted to this activity.

It’s important to get the rope sizing right before you start, so watch this video first:

Here’s the plan to follow if you want to begin with jumping rope:

Basic Jump Rope Proficiency

Bounce Step

This is the basic step for jumping rope that you’ve undoubtedly seen performed multiple times. Bounce only once per swing of the rope and make sure you’re only lifting your feet just enough for the rope to pass under them.

Alternate Foot Step

Begin by balancing weight on one foot, swing rope around and jump with opposite foot then alternate feet as if running in place. Make sure you don’t kick backwards or you’ll get tangled in the rope. Count only the right foot and multiply by 2 to get the total number of jumps.

Once you can do 140 jumps of each of these aforementioned techniques without error or fatigue, you’ll have achieved a basic jump rope proficiency.

Make sure you can do these two skills at different speeds and switch between them by doing 4 jumps of each before switching. You should be able to do 500 consecutive jumps while alternating these two techniques.

Intermediate Jump Rope Skills

High Step

Begin with the alternate foot step and lift your knee to the waist level and keep alternating your feet while keeping your back straight and landing on the balls of your feet.

Side Straddle

Start with the bounce step technique and spread your feet to shoulder width and back to original position.

Forward Straddle

Start with the bounce step stance and shift the right foot forward while the left foot shift back and vice versa to continue the exercise.

Skier’s Jump

Start with the bounce step stance, keep feet together and jump a few centimeters right on the first rope swing and to the left on the second rope swing and keep up this rhythm. It should resemble a ski slalom.

Bell Jump

Keep your feet together and jump a few inches forward and then backward. The movement should resemble the action of a bell clapper.

Half Twister

Twist the lower half of your body so that the toes land pointing 45 degrees to the right, then forward on the second jump and 45 degrees to the left on the third jump, then reverse.

Full Twister

Same as half twister but with no middle jump.

X-Foot Cross

Cross your feet under the rope.

Forward Shuffle

Made famous by Mohammad Ali, shift the right foot forward on the first jump and the left on the second jump with the knee extended.

Backward Shuffle

Low backward kicking motion like jogging on the spot.

Heel to Toe

Start with the bounce step, on the first jump hop on the right foot and touch the left heel to the floor in front of you, on the second jump hop on your right foot again touching your left toe to the floor next to your right foot, repeat on the opposite side.

Backward Jumping

Reverse the bounce step by looping the rope in the opposite direction. Remember to pull your shoulders backwards.

Arm Crossover

Start from the basic bounce stance. On the first jump swing the rope around and cross your arms at waist level while your feet jump over the rope. After the rope has passed under your feet on the first jump extend your arms to the sides of your body to uncross as if you’re executing the bounce step creating a wide loop to jump through on the second jump. The feet should be doing a jogging motion as in the alternate foot step.

I’ll continue with the intermediate level jump rope skills once I get to them and update this post.

This is a good shop for buying skipping ropes in Europe. In the USA they are really popular. If you want something basic, check out Amazon or Aliexpress.