The Olympics are coming to a close in a few days and I have to admit, it has been exciting! With countless Olympic and World Records broken over the past 10 days it’s almost hard to keep track of. Below are a few of the stand outs and what they did:

  • Michael Phelps – Won 8 Gold medals in 8 events (most Gold medals in a single Olympics and the most overall Gold medals in Olympic history)
  • Usain Bolt – Swept the 100m and 200m finals (first person in history to set World Records in both events at one Olympics)
  • Nastia Liukin – 5 medals including women’s All Around Gold (only the 3rd US gymnast in history to take 5 medals in one Olympics)

There are numerous other Gold, Silver and Bronze medalists (82 total as of today) in countless events, but I wanted to focus on these 3 mainly because they’ve done something that is rather rare in competitive sports…they’re well rounded. It seems that most World Records and amazing accomplishments are done by a person that focuses on only one thing. I’d be curious to see how many people made it to the Olympics in only one event vs. those that are there for multiple events. I’m sure the single event people greatly outnumber the latter.

As I was thinking about this I couldn’t help but think back to my competitive rope skipping days when you had to have a combined overall score in 12 events to be the World Champion. Back then you had to be good at almost everything if you wanted a chance to win. You only had to be great in one or two areas, but you really had to work hard on your less than stellar spots if you were interested in going for the Gold. Today it seems that so many jumpers are only good in one aspect of jump rope, be it Speed, Single Rope or Double Dutch. It’s rare to find those that really take the time to train and master all aspects of rope skipping.

How well rounded are you? Whether you’ve been jumping for a week or 20 years, practice different areas of jumping so that you can get all the benefits possible from jumping. Each area works you and your muscles in different ways. Don’t miss all the benefits that rope skipping can give you.

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