Jumping Rope on Stilts

I am now a double digit Guinness World Records holder! That’s right, this past weekend I broke my 10th title (and broke one of my previous records again). This time I set the record for completing the most skips on stilts in one minute. It took me quite some time to find the perfect set of stilts where I could actually jump on them. Check out the video and read on for some more info about the record attempt.

I had a show on Friday up in the Detroit area and decided to give Renee Nix a call (she is the coach of the Jumpin’ All Stars in Brighton). She was kind enough to let me jump in on their practice and set both records. She also rounded up the official judges I needed to be there so I could make this thing official. A big thanks to Renee for all her help.

I started off by getting warmed up and breaking the football juggling record again (more on that attempt in another post). After I shattered that record, I switched over to my warm up pants and put some pads on my legs. Why? The way that these particular stilts work is to have a strap that goes around your calf just below the knees. This strap digs into your legs and jumping with them on is quite painful. I quickly learned that I needed to have pants on to mitigate the pain and I found that putting some dish towels (I know…so classy) under the pants really helped out.

After I got everything on I headed out into the gym and got set to do the record. I took a few jumps to get situated and was ready to go. I’ve found that due to the weight of the stilts, it is best to minimize how much practice I did so I wouldn’t get too tired. Jumping for a minute with these things on my legs can be quite tiresome. On the first attempt I missed after about 10 seconds. We reset the clock and I was ready for a second go. I hadn’t really practiced much with the timer since jumping for an entire minute has been a challenge with this record. My goal was to keep a steady pace for the entire time and see where I ended up. I can happily say that I blew past the previous record of 120 and set the new one at 157!