Jump Rope Tricks & Freestyle Flow with Davy Stahl (Ep. 42)

Dizzy Skips (00:45)
Davy Stahl, @davy_jumps on Instagram. Thank you for joining me on The Jump Rope Podcast, man.

Davy Jumps (00:51)
Thanks for having me. I’m very happy to be here. I’ve been wanting to join for a while.

Dizzy Skips (00:53)
Yeah.

Well, I’m so glad. that you were able to come on and super happy to get to meet you in Chicago earlier this month at that at that jump rope meetup. I my God, I had so much fun.

Davy Jumps (01:01)
Yeah, that was fun.

Yeah, that was great. I’m happy I finally got to put some faces to some names that I see online all the time, get to learn about like their backstories and who they actually are and not just a jumper.

Dizzy Skips (01:08)
Yeah.

Right, yeah, that’s one of the great things about the podcast and about meeting people in person is you get more than that little 30 second snippet you get in a reel on Instagram. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (01:24)
exactly. mean, that’s the

that’s like my best of best. Like when I post on Instagram, I try to keep it like pretty clean. ⁓ So I get to see everybody like who they actually are. So that’s nice.

Dizzy Skips (01:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, it was really cool to see that the people that I had been watching on Instagram in person were the same people and exactly as supportive and loving and kind and yeah, and just chock full of skills. Like I learned so much from watching people at the meetup. That was great. I know it’s already come up on the podcast at least twice. Like the kickback that you taught the group and we’ve all been

Davy Jumps (01:53)
Definitely.

Dizzy Skips (02:00)
practicing and I know Tracy and Nikki have both been doing kickback stuff. I’ve been messing with it here and there. Nowhere near as smoothly as you. It is,

Davy Jumps (02:06)
It’s a fun move. It’s a fun move. I don’t know. I just watch a lot of videos, a lot of jump rope videos from other people. And I just take little snippets of what everybody’s done and I go out and try it for like an hour and I just come up with something.

Dizzy Skips (02:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that’s a special one. That’s a, it’s a lot of fun. So tell me, Davy, where, where are you at geographically?

Davy Jumps (02:30)
Thanks.

Yeah, so I’m in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Been here all my life. I’m only 23 years old, grew up here, grew up in the same house. So never really moved out, yeah.

Dizzy Skips (02:42)
Okay.

Wow.

Nice. And what do do for work?

Davy Jumps (02:50)
I’m a medical device sales rep. I sell orthopedic and sports medicine repair kits. So if you ever need a knee, all you jumpers, let me know.

Dizzy Skips (02:58)
Got it, okay, so if I need a drop-in knee replacement or whatever, I know a guy. All right, cool. So, well, that sounds exciting. Do you have other hobbies or fun things that you do outside of jumping rope and selling medical devices?

Davy Jumps (03:03)
You know, guy.

Yeah. ⁓

I’ve been making tables for a while. I do custom woodwork. Yeah. And I also rock climb. So those are my two hobbies. Yeah. I go bouldering. I have a rock climbing gym near me. So I just started about a month ago ⁓ climbing on and off. My cousin, he’s been a big climber for probably like 10 years. So he came in for my sister’s wedding and took me and I kind of fell in love.

Dizzy Skips (03:16)
Really?

Rock, rock climb. Cool.

Cool.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (03:39)
It’s like another jump rope thing. It’s another task that I start out bad at, but I have to get, I got to go through that process to get to where I am. Cause you don’t just start at something. So.

Dizzy Skips (03:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, right, right. That’s definitely

something you learn through jump rope too is just showing up and being bad at something and trying and trying makes you good over time. It’s just the showing up, right?

Davy Jumps (03:53)
⁓ yeah.

Definitely

like if you take the time and you scroll all 400 videos down in my profile, you’ll you’ll see where I started I haven’t deleted anything everything’s there. So

Dizzy Skips (04:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

It’s a good reminder even for yourself. I know for me, like just looking back a year and going, wow. You know, like it wasn’t like I didn’t have any skills, but my skills have refined a bit and it’s, cool to see.

Davy Jumps (04:21)
Totally.

Yeah, it’s a different skill set. It’s definitely a different skill set. It’s not to say you weren’t skilled back then because at the time you felt like the best version of yourself and you were, but if you just keep on that path, you really get to see your full potential and to where it can go. And we’re still not done. We’re still learning these things every day, which is good. So I like to just keep going.

Dizzy Skips (04:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I got

the rest of my life ahead of me and yeah, every day is gonna be a learning experience, I know. Yeah, and even when not learning new things, there’s so many things you can get crisper and smoother at, right? Yeah.

Davy Jumps (04:48)
Right?

Totally, totally.

Whether that’s like the simple cross, like I think I get better and better at the cross every single day. And it seems like a move that you master like way back in the beginning, but you don’t really master it until you start to like improve on other moves that cause you to incorporate that. So like I noticed it today, even my basic jump, like I’m just getting better at it.

Dizzy Skips (05:02)
Yeah.

Yep.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. was watching, I produced a little video for Instagram earlier today. And at one point I was watching like, are my feet actually even coming up off the ground? Like how does the rope pass under them? Whereas some of my earlier videos, you know, there’s four inches of me jumping off the ground. I was putting a lot more energy into it than I needed to. Yeah. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (05:28)
Right?

Yeah, exactly. I noticed

that a lot of that’s like one of the first thing people say to me when they see me jump is like when I’m not doing my crazy big tricks where I’m really jumping off the ground. They’re like, you don’t even look like you’re jumping. And I’m like, I’m not. I’m skipping. ⁓

Dizzy Skips (05:48)
Yeah. Yeah,

right. Yeah, that’s really cool. So furniture… How did you get into woodworking?

Davy Jumps (05:56)
So 2021, after my freshman year, I just saw this YouTube video online. And I didn’t have much work to do in my internship. It was a lot of just follow along, get the experience. Because in medical device, there’s not many, there’s no tasks that you just sit down in an office and just like crank out work.

Dizzy Skips (06:07)
Mm.

Davy Jumps (06:16)
So I’m always in the hospitals and I’m always doing that kind of stuff. So for the first year, I would just follow my boss around and go to surgeries, but that left me with a lot of time. And I was like, you know what? I saw this guy online and he made a really good video on how to make a table. So I was like, I’m just going to try it. I’ll throw a couple hundred bucks in and if it doesn’t work, you know, at least I got the experience. And it ended up turning out really well. It took me like three months to make three different tables.

Dizzy Skips (06:24)
Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (06:45)
that all like matched, it’s like a matching set. And I made one that summer and it took me so long and so much money that I just was like, okay, I’m going back to school. I’ll let it go for a year. And then the next summer came around and I was like, I still have the same internship. I have the same amount of time. I’m gonna do it again. And then I started to post on Instagram. So I have another Instagram.

Dizzy Skips (06:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Davy Jumps (07:10)
just like DaveyJumps, but it’s called @1of1stahl so that’s all my art that I do. Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely.

Dizzy Skips (07:12)
Yeah.

Okay, cool. I’ll have to check that out. That’s

cool. I’m wondering with your rock climbing, like I grew up mostly in Alaska and my physics teacher and PE teacher in high school taught me how to ice climb. in Alaska or in Anchorage, all of the waterfalls around Anchorage are named after like cheap wines like Ripple and Thunderbird or whatever. And so

Davy Jumps (07:28)
wow.

Dizzy Skips (07:38)
They took me out and we climbed frozen waterfalls. And I remember hanging off the front of a frozen waterfall with ice picks and crampons. And I asked my physics teacher, like, what is it about this that you love so much? And he’s like, when I am hanging off the front of a waterfall, I can’t think about grading your paper or that kid who was smart enough in class the other day. I’m, I’m thinking about staying on the waterfall. And it just clicked in my head. This is his meditation. And, and I,

Davy Jumps (08:03)
Exactly.

Dizzy Skips (08:05)
And I bet with rock climbing, it’s the same sort of thing. Like you get up there and you get that same sort of head clearing benefit that you get from the jump rope, or at least that I get from the jump rope.

Davy Jumps (08:15)
Totally, I get the same feeling from jump rope, but for me, jump rope is only, I lift as well. So jump rope, I really only spend like 30 minutes a day jump roping. I’m not jumping for a very long time. In the very beginning, I did, but then it transitioned, like COVID went away and we can like go back to the gyms and stuff like that. So ⁓ I started to lift more. so jump roping is really my warmup and then I’ll go lift. But then after a while I found

Dizzy Skips (08:22)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Davy Jumps (08:44)
rock climbing and that’s, lifting is kind of mindless to me. Rock climbing is more like jump rope to where I get to think, I get to like pause and I have to think through the moves and the sequence that I’m going to do. like I’m, there’s nothing to think about. There’s absolutely nothing to think about when you’re doing jump rope and when you are rock climbing. So I understand what your teacher’s saying. Like it’s fully, fully the way I think about it as well.

Dizzy Skips (08:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It’s a puzzle.

Yeah.

Yeah, That’s cool. how many days a week do you jump rope?

Davy Jumps (09:13)
it’s it’s with my job. It really depends because there’s days where I work. I get up at five in the morning and I’ll work from six a.m. till 11 a.m. and I’m done for the day. And then there’s days that I’m at the hospital from six forty five until four o’clock in the afternoon. So when I get home, I’m like already beat and I don’t really want to go jump rope. So I would say like three days a week, three days a week. I jump.

Dizzy Skips (09:18)
Okay.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay.

And what does a jump session look like for you? Do you have like warmups that you do to get started? I know you said jump rope was warmup for lifting, but.

Davy Jumps (09:44)
Yeah, so.

No, yeah. So I don’t lift every day. So like there’s days that’ll just jump rope. Um, you know, it’s super easy to get it in like in 30 minutes. So I can just go out in my backyard and jump rope. So a lot of the times I am just jump roping, um, my warmup, you know, I go out there and I, um, I just stretch a little, and then I have a sequence that I do to start off every single jump sesh. Um, I was taught this by Lewis Hamilton. He is head of the jump rope committee.

Dizzy Skips (09:53)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Okay.

Davy Jumps (10:19)
federate or I forget what it’s called, but it’s, it’s like, yeah, like the largest jump rope federation there is he’s like the head of it. And he was, he was a teacher at my college. So he actually was my advisor for my jump rope club that I had started. And he taught me this, this jump rope sequence that you should do every single time before you start jumping. So when I start, I’ll jump.

Dizzy Skips (10:22)
The American Jump Rope Federation

wow.

Davy Jumps (10:44)
I’ll just do like 10 normal jumps in a row just to get like the feel of the rope going. But then I will slow the rope down and I’ll really focus on like keeping the structure of the rope around my head and I’ll do two jumps in between each jump. So you know how you jump it’s like one jump, one jump, one jump. I’ll just do two small ones, slow the rope down and I’ll do that for 10 in a row. And then once I hit 10, I will do 10 regular jumps in a row. And then I’ll do nine double jumps, nine

Dizzy Skips (10:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, double jump.

Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

so you do a ladder, like a downward ladder? Okay.

Davy Jumps (11:14)
and then I’ll just go all the way down. Yeah, definitely.

And it gets the calves burning and it definitely gets the blood flowing without me risking anything, like getting hurt. So it’s good.

Dizzy Skips (11:23)
Yeah, I suppose

that’s a timing thing too, or like it because you’re kind of switching pace, right?

Davy Jumps (11:27)
Definitely.

Yeah, so I still struggle to switch when I get to 10 to do the regular jumps to like tell my brain, okay, my wrist need to move faster and I gotta jump all at the same time. It sounds easy, but it’s not easy.

Dizzy Skips (11:39)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So much of the benefits that come from jump rope seemed to me to come as a result of tuning that timing, you know, like tuning that ability to perceive timing. like you’re saying, people say your feet aren’t coming up off the floor, you know, well that’s timing. That’s because you’ve moved that rope around you a million times and you’ve, you’ve been practicing a long time. You know where that rope is.

Davy Jumps (12:09)
Exactly.

Dizzy Skips (12:11)
So when you do jump, like, do you have favorite places to jump? Are you jumping in the gym or at home?

Davy Jumps (12:16)
Yeah, I love jumping outside. Outside there’s nothing that beats outside. That’s also the best thing about jump rope is you can take it anywhere and you’re not confined to one’s place. So I just like to go in my backyard. have, my dad has like a trainer, like a bike trainer back here and it rides on this like mat. So he didn’t want the mat anymore. So I jump rope on that mat. It’s like a very small thin mat. And it, just.

Dizzy Skips (12:20)
Totally.

Right? Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Davy Jumps (12:41)
Take it out in my backyard, that’s my favorite place. I used to like going out in my front yard, but I found that making videos is kind of tough with the cars going by. Like if I want like an ASMR video where you can hear my rope a lot, it’s better to do in the backyard.

Dizzy Skips (12:48)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, you don’t get the Oldsmobile driving in front of the house, sputtering.

Davy Jumps (12:57)
Yeah, but

I do like being in the front because I have a lot of people that walk around in my neighborhood and they like to see me jump. ⁓ So they’ll come around and they’ll be like, I didn’t see you today. And I’m like, man, you’ll see me tomorrow. So that is a benefit of being out in the front.

Dizzy Skips (13:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Did they ever come stop and like ask to jump or ask for advice?

Davy Jumps (13:18)
Yeah, definitely. I have a video, I think it’s my three year. So if you see in my profile, I have all my transitions like pinned my year like year anniversaries. So on my third year anniversary, that entire video is me in my front yard in different clips of people coming up to me and like saying things. So like it’s just over the year of how many people have came up to me and like, so yeah, you can see that up there.

Dizzy Skips (13:26)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

That’s awesome.

That’s super fun. That’s great. ⁓

Davy Jumps (13:50)
At first I didn’t like

it. first I was a little self-conscious because I wasn’t as good at the very beginning. So I kind of was just fumbling around. But now that I’ve gotten better, like, I feel pretty confident now.

Dizzy Skips (13:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know what you mean. One of the things I’ve wondered about, like, I guess, when I’ve talked to some people who are not jump ropers, or who I would say are civilians, they look at what we do and they can’t discern the difference between what I do and what you do, or what I do and what Nikki does. It’s all jump rope, you know? It’s all rope spinning around doing stuff.

And so I suspect that even those people that might have walked by when you were in your first year or whatever where you weren’t feeling as confident would still go my god, look at him with that jump rope, know Because they they can’t quite tell that it you know You’re not doing a kickback because they don’t know what that is. It’s just see the thing flying around Yeah

Davy Jumps (14:43)
Right. Yeah. I

think a lot of people like pass up the jump rope at like the gym or whatever, because they see it as such like an exerting exercise. And even though it’s such like a school yard activity, ⁓ they’re still like pushed away from it because it takes a lot of focus and a lot of rhythm to do that. They do appreciate it when you are kind of moving the rope like, and you’re doing at least

Dizzy Skips (14:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (15:09)
20 jumps in a row consecutively. So they already think like, wow, you’re pretty good, but they don’t even know what the world is like in the jump rope world. So neither…

Dizzy Skips (15:15)
Right. Yeah. And rightfully so, neither did I until I stumbled on like a Lauren video

and was like, holy moly, you can do that with a jump rope?

Davy Jumps (15:25)
Right? I

didn’t know that was possible. I just saw the jump rope dudes on YouTube, which are a part of Crossrope, and they were just jumping like normal and I was like, cool, like I can get fit while jump roping. So I didn’t even know.

Dizzy Skips (15:29)
Yeah, right.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, talk about your gear a little bit, like aside from the thin mat that you use, what kind of ropes do you use? Are you a beaded or a PVC guy? Look at you all propped up on your bike.

Davy Jumps (15:45)
I got all my ropes right here. Yeah, so.

So this is my go-to rope. This is my beaded rope. This is from, this isn’t, no, this is an Elite SRS rope, which is just an American company. It’s very similar to Elevate. Yeah, so my jump rope advisor, Sean Hamilton. He is friends with the,

Dizzy Skips (15:50)
Beautiful.

Okay.

They’re out of Washington.

Davy Jumps (16:06)
guy who started Elite SRS. So he was able to get me into contact and for my jump rope club, I was able to get like 50 jump ropes from them. So that’s when I got this one. I got this, I bought this for myself for Christmas just because I wanted to customize the rope. So this beaded rope is like my like go-to. I really like the Joker. So like it’s kind of Joker colors. Right? And then if I want to do something a little like faster,

Dizzy Skips (16:07)
Okay.

Nice.

Nice. It’s pretty.

Yeah, it has got some Joker vibes to it, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Davy Jumps (16:32)
This is my favorite rope.

Dizzy Skips (16:33)
So that’s PVC, is that six mil? Okay.

Davy Jumps (16:33)
This This is a five millimeter PVC so it’s kind of thin and

then this is by blue philosophy so blue philosophy is By Adam Banks. He’s a guy on Instagram that he started jump roping and created this gambit rope. ⁓ Like all PVC in my opinion are the same just depending on the thickness that you get whenever they say like non-tangle that’s

Dizzy Skips (16:42)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (16:59)
You throw them in your bag, they’re tangling like a pair of Apple headphones. Like, let’s be real. ⁓ It’s these handles. It’s these handles. So these are like normal handles that everybody has, but these handles have a little like ridge. So when I’m flinging this rope, because I don’t fling my beaded ropes this fast, but when I’m flinging this thing, it allows my hand, because I don’t hold my rope like this and I don’t think anybody does. I think everybody kind of holds it back.

Dizzy Skips (17:01)
Right, Yeah. Tangle resistant. Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Right,

yeah. Helped, yeah.

Davy Jumps (17:27)
this notch, I’m able to like have

my fingers there. So when I get sweaty, these ropes, the beaded ropes, I slip and I’m like, this, I have something to hold onto the entire time, which is why like, when I’m moving fast, I like this one.

Dizzy Skips (17:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s cool. I had a PVC like that that I picked up from a local sporting goods store. it wasn’t as nice as that. The, I think that the main PVC actually had like fishing line in it instead of an actual wire. And, um, I broke, I just shattered the handle trying to do a release one time or goofing up in some way. And I just let that one go. Cause it was a $9 one.

Davy Jumps (18:08)
Yeah, right. Yeah, it is.

Dizzy Skips (18:08)
But that ridge is kind of nice. Like I get very

sweaty. You probably see I wear gloves a lot because of that.

Davy Jumps (18:14)
Yeah, I

totally get that. I’ve definitely worn gloves before just like in the winter I find that it’s actually pretty nice wearing a thin pair of gloves. yeah, this thing is cool. And then, sorry, I got a lot of ropes. This is also by Blue Philosophy. is, Adam Banks is one of my sponsors. So I have Elevate and I also have Blue Philosophy. So he sent me

Dizzy Skips (18:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it.

huh.

Davy Jumps (18:38)
This rope is the exact same rope, but then I took the extended handles off of an elevate rope and put them on here. This is my rope that I use to learn, like that I learned the TJ. I don’t really do the TJ too often because it’s like an extremely hard trick for me to do smoothly. ⁓ Yeah, the TJ, yeah, it’s, let me get back.

Dizzy Skips (18:44)
yep.

Okay.

Can I ask you to describe the TJ for those of us who are not?

He’s

gonna do it right here.

Davy Jumps (19:07)
Okay,

yeah, yeah, yeah. So your hands, it’s a triple jump and you’re gonna, so it starts behind you and then the rope goes forward and you do, this is all in one jump, so you jump, you do a side swing and then your knee goes up and you go under and then release it. The reason I use this is because I don’t have to go over as far. So that’s why I do this.

Dizzy Skips (19:19)
Yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

Reach is hard. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (19:36)
I’m not very good at the TJ. I know a lot of like the pros are like you see them doing over and over, but this is like a training rope for me.

Dizzy Skips (19:41)
Yeah.

That’s great. That’s cool.

Davy Jumps (19:47)
What about you? What’s your favorite rope?

Dizzy Skips (19:49)
Man, I am, I would say 98 % beaded, like, and I’ve got a bunch of ropes, but the ones that are my go-to is now I’ve got one from Coach Chris with the thickened cable. And then, then there’s a brand called URope, urope.us. And I have a ton of ropes or not a ton. I’ve probably got eight.

ropes from them or something. I’ve bought several of them in duplicate so that I can have one to jump with and one for parts, you know, as I destroy them.

Davy Jumps (20:17)
Yeah, you said

you said jump rope Chris, right?

Dizzy Skips (20:22)
Jump Rope Coach Chris, yeah, the Jump Rope Company.

Davy Jumps (20:24)
Yeah, you said his are like thick. Like what do mean by the inside is thick?

Dizzy Skips (20:30)
So it’s the same thing with the you rope pro models that I buy the cable itself on a lot like I would the cable itself on a lot of standard jump ropes is like an eighth of an inch piece of nylon Yeah Yeah, so the thickened cables are a little bit thicker and a little heavier. So the jump rope has more weight to it and And that extra weight just gives you more feedback as you’re

Davy Jumps (20:43)
Like this.

Okay.

Dizzy Skips (20:54)
practicing and stuff. like with Coach Chris, if you go to the jump rope company, you can buy a beaded rope with a normal cable or the thickened cable. My advice is always go with a thicker cable because it’s heavier and you just feel more. And Coach Chris noticed early on that when he gave those to beginners, they learned faster because they can just feel the rope faster. Whereas like I’ve got a bunch of, you know, four and five mil PVC ropes.

super fun to jump with, but they’re more challenging if you’re a beginner because you don’t get that level of feedback. You have to be more conscious of moving your wrists, right?

Davy Jumps (21:28)
Exactly. I started one of my first jump ropes is one of those like speed ropes, like just the cable. dude, that was the first one I bought. No. And I used it. I’m like, I cannot figure out where the rope is the entire time. It like there’s nothing around you. So then I bought a one pound rope, the next rope and got it shipped like the next day.

Dizzy Skips (21:33)
Yeah. Yeah. I bought one of those from Amazon too. was like, wait, this is not how to learn.

I know.

Yeah, the complete other end of the spectrum

there. Yeah. Yeah, way easier. Yeah, you get those videos on Instagram every once in while with like it’ll be in, you know, China or Japan or whatever the speed trial thing where, know, they’re amazing, but but they never jump like straight up. They’re always hunched way over. And it’s like, yeah, it’s crazy.

Davy Jumps (21:54)
Exactly. It was way easier. Way easier.

they’re good.

Not the rope to learn on. FYI, for anybody watching, don’t buy those.

Dizzy Skips (22:20)
Right. Yeah,

if you wanna get your feet going fast, like spend a year or two with your beaded rope and maybe a PVC and then graduate to that, because otherwise you’re just gonna get really painful whips.

Davy Jumps (22:34)
painful. And they like, raise, like, ugh, it’s bad.

Dizzy Skips (22:36)
Yeah.

Yeah. It’s like, garroting yourself with a jump rope. So, when you skip, are you skipping to music? You always listen to music? Yeah. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (22:43)
yeah, I skip to a lot of music, always.

Unless I’m making a video, then I have no music in my ears. Which is like the complete opposite. Because I don’t do any of my routines to music. I do all my routines. All my routines are freestyles. So I don’t dance skip at all. Like it looks good with the beat. I’ll take music that has a really good like bass drop.

Dizzy Skips (22:50)
Interesting. Why is that?

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (23:08)
because I know that I’m going to do like one really big move, like the kickback. I like when the music is going up, up, bass drop, kickback, and then it goes to the rest of my routine. So I can kind of decide that after I have a general idea, like as I’m jumping, I’m like, okay, I like that kind of vibe of song, whether that’s like an EDM song would be really good for my like routine, like my footwork skills, like boom, boom, boom. But then sometimes an old rock song will look really good with like that.

Dizzy Skips (23:12)
Yep.

Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (23:38)
Boom, and the bass drop and everything, so.

Dizzy Skips (23:39)
Yeah,

yeah, the guitar solo wailing right at the perfect time when you land that trick, yeah.

Davy Jumps (23:44)
right as I’m going real fast. that’s

exactly so that’s that’s what I like to do. But I listen to music the entire time while I’m

Dizzy Skips (23:51)
Yeah, but you’re just not trying to sync what you’re doing with the music except in post.

Davy Jumps (23:56)
I’ve tried.

There are some videos where I have done that. ⁓ I found those very frustrating videos to make because I’m having to stop, rewind, listen to the same part like 30 times and by the end I’m just like exhausted and it’s so confusing. But I’ve always liked that freestyle like just go where my mind takes me and wherever the rope is I’ll figure out where to take it next and hopefully string together a couple cool moves and then

Dizzy Skips (23:58)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (24:25)
Once I get the idea, if I keep tripping, I will remember that freestyle that I just did in the beginning and I’ll do that same thing and go to the next move. So my freestyle, I’ll build my freestyle, which sounds like a routine, but it’s all coming just freestyle in the moment.

Dizzy Skips (24:32)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, you’re just kind of

crafting a combo out of freestyle. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me. So we met at the Jump Rope meetup in Chicago. Was that your first meetup? Wowza. What was that like for you?

Davy Jumps (24:46)
Totally, totally.

That was my first meetup. Yeah. It,

I wasn’t supposed to go actually. I was out of town. was in Wisconsin and I had said I couldn’t go like a couple of people had asked me and I’m like, I can’t make it. I’ll be out of town. But then I decided, I was like, you know what? Like I’ve never going to get a chance like this where I don’t really have to travel much to go to a meetup. I can’t, I like came home a day early for my trip.

Dizzy Skips (25:02)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (25:20)
And I drove pretty early from Wisconsin straight to Chicago to get here in time. And luckily it all worked out and everything and I was good. But that was so fun. I would love to do it again.

Dizzy Skips (25:25)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Me too, man. I’m itching. I told you, I talked to Sarah earlier, Sarah Caldwell, who was at the meetup and was telling her, can’t wait another year for that. We got to do this again pretty soon because it was amazing. Yeah. So was it what you expected the meetup or did you have expectations?

Davy Jumps (25:45)
We have to. Yeah.

It was better than I expected.

I had really no expectations, but it was better than like my initial idea of it. ⁓ I wasn’t expecting as many people to show up like at all. And I just loved how everybody was super like supportive and encouraging. And there was no, there was no really competition to where it was like grudges like, like

Dizzy Skips (25:59)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

No, there’s no ego kind of stuff, yeah.

Davy Jumps (26:17)
I don’t like you or whatever like that. Like, like you’re

better than me. So it’s like, no, or like, it’s more like, I know this move. So I’m going to help you learn this move and then bring you up here. Like now you know this move. So it’s more like, I like to share the moves that I know. I like to learn moves from everybody else. Cause all the ladies taught me all the footwork. I don’t know footwork at all. So like going up to them and they were like, join this like routine with all of us. was pretty intimidated cause that’s not my style.

Dizzy Skips (26:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (26:44)
But

they were very supportive and there was no rush or anything. So it was nice. It was really nice.

Dizzy Skips (26:49)
Yeah, that’s really cool. It’s interesting when I went to the meetup, in my brain, everybody else knows more than I do and is a better jumper than I am. And, and to get there and have people who I know have been jumping longer than me and are wicked great at what they do.

ask me for like advice on how to do something with footwork or whatever was just so weird and it was it was really cool and like you said there was no ego like and it doesn’t matter how long they were jumping like I was impressed with everybody but the amount of talent that showed up I left there thinking I could have learned so much more I could have talked to more people but it

This is why we need to do it again, because there’s not enough hours. know, like we need to have like a camp or something, you know, a couple of days of this where we can all blow out our shins.

Davy Jumps (27:26)
That’s the thing, yeah. I agree. Yeah, when I went there,

when I went there, I was super like, oh, there’s going to be so many people that are way better than me, blah, blah, blah. But when I got there, it wasn’t like that people were, there was like one person that was just way better than everybody else. It was more like every single person had their own completely different style because

Dizzy Skips (27:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (27:52)
If you

think about it, we were never jumping together from the beginning. So we didn’t like adopt the same style. Like if you were on a team, you might like be taught the same things and practice and end up like the same jumper. Like, but you and I complete opposite jump ropers, but very good at our own things. So like, I liked that we all learned by ourselves, adopted what we like to do that matched our skillset and then brought it to the meetup. And everybody was able to learn from everybody. So that was.

Dizzy Skips (27:58)
Right? Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

Davy Jumps (28:22)
That was awesome.

Dizzy Skips (28:23)
yeah, that was really neat. So when did you when did you start jumping?

Davy Jumps (28:27)
Oh, I started it back in 2020. So five years ago, I

Dizzy Skips (28:31)
And

was it a COVID thing? Was it the gyms are closed, now I gotta find a way to keep fit?

Davy Jumps (28:34)
Yeah, yeah.

Gyms are closed, find a way to keep fit. I was up really late, it was like two in the morning, and I found this video on YouTube, and it was from The Jump Rope Dudes like I talked about earlier. They are affiliated with Cross Rope, the weighted ropes. And it was like 30 minutes of jump rope can do the same workout as a gym.

Dizzy Skips (28:47)
Yeah.

Right.

Transform.

Davy Jumps (28:59)
At 2 30 in the morning, I went on Amazon and I bought that tiny little jump rope that I had talked about. And when it arrived, I quickly like got the larger one, the weighted one, um, because I wanted to emulate their videos, uh, because they were using the Crossrope but I didn’t want to pay a hundred dollars for a Crossrope set as my first jump rope. Um, so I did that for a while, that, that one pound rope and

Dizzy Skips (29:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (29:28)
I beat that, I bought like three of them, I like tore them to shreds. And it wasn’t until I learned how to do like the cross that I decided to like take a video of myself. And that video is up on my Instagram, it’s so funny. I have a tiny little ponytail on the top of my head, I can’t stay in the frame. And I like fail right away. So yeah, it’s been five years.

Dizzy Skips (29:31)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

So how long after that did you graduate away from just the weighted rope? Like you went from speed, you know, the wire speed rope to weighted rope. When did you decide to move to beaded or PVC?

Davy Jumps (30:01)
three years, two or three years after I started jump roping with a weighted rope. So I have four sets of Crossropes. So I started out with Crossrope. That’s like, once I got really good with my weighted rope, I was like, okay, like I’m gonna, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna invest. So I bought that rope and I was like, whoa, like these are really like professional. I don’t know if I’m here yet.

Dizzy Skips (30:05)
No kidding.

Okay. Yeah.

Now I’m gonna invest.

Davy Jumps (30:28)
So I stuck with the weighted ropes for a long time because like during COVID, like I’d gained like 15 pounds and the Crossropes helped me like get back to like my original weight that I had wanted to be at. And I was like, okay, like these Crossropes are nice. They kept building muscle. I still don’t have access to a gym. And in my mind, weighted jump rope meant this is like the best jump rope because it’s heavy, it’s resistant. And that’s what I thought jump rope was.

Dizzy Skips (30:35)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right.

Davy Jumps (30:56)
until I met Sean Hamilton and he told me there’s a whole different side of jump rope and then I got the beaded rope.

Dizzy Skips (31:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. And so what did you notice? I mean, aside from the weight difference, what did you notice different about the beaded rope when you started using it?

Davy Jumps (31:14)
I could do tricks. I didn’t know that tricks were even like a big thing in jump rope. I thought it was the cross and the side to side swing.

Dizzy Skips (31:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, so did you get addicted

to what the trick did?

Davy Jumps (31:24)
Yeah, it was the tricks. Like immediately I realized that like, hmm, there’s this is like a little lightsaber I’ve got going on. I couldn’t do this with a weighted rope. And then it left from like the, I need to like be fit with this weighted rope. That completely left my brain and the tricks sparked another side. was like, oh, there is a lot of fun to have.

Dizzy Skips (31:34)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, Davy is on fire! Yeah.

Davy Jumps (31:52)
Right? Like

if you look at the beginning of my profile now, complete opposite jump.

Dizzy Skips (31:57)
Yeah. Yeah. So go ahead.

Davy Jumps (32:00)
And I didn’t

want to adopt the change. I was very stubborn. I was like, I will never be a trick jump roper. That’s like, no. And I really was only weighted until like my mom or dad bought me, they bought me a jump rope for Christmas. And it was from Elevate, cause I had just become a sponsor. They just sponsored me. So they like got me one of their ropes and I was like, okay, like I’ll try it.

Dizzy Skips (32:09)
Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s cool. So once you started with the beaded rope, then what was the first trick that you really went after, or the first tricks you went after and landed?

Davy Jumps (32:35)
A

lot of Toads, like lift the leg, go under the leg. A lot of those, that was like my favorite thing to do. The Awesome Annie. Because I couldn’t do that before with a weighted rope, so there was like never that freedom of movement. I saw, I think I saw Lauren Jumps to like one of the cool awesome Annies that she does.

Dizzy Skips (32:39)
Really?

Interesting why what about it? Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (33:00)
And

I was like, oh, that looks really cool. So I started to do that a lot and under the leg movements, because I always thought under the leg meant like really cool move. And it is a really cool move. So I just honed in on that and just learned that.

Dizzy Skips (33:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So when, once you got the beaded rope, like, did you have a specific method for learning? Like, were you just combing Instagram or did you ever get a coach or get an app or something like that?

Davy Jumps (33:26)
I learned everything just on my own. ⁓ I just watching YouTube videos, watching Instagram videos and literally having the phone up while I’m outside and working out, seeing this amazing person jump rope. It’s not even a tutorial. It’s just this person’s like jump rope routine. And I’m like, okay, pause that. I’m going to try to do that. And then that’s how I learned. And just trial and error over and over.

Dizzy Skips (33:28)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. So you’ve never really had a coach or something like that.

Davy Jumps (33:55)
In college,

once I started that club, he started coaching me and he taught me that I can do bigger and better moves than I was doing because it’s all technique and it’s not really like full, like you have to be a pro to do this. No, it’s just technique. So he taught me a different mindset.

Dizzy Skips (33:58)
Yep.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, were there certain physical things that he taught you that upped your game?

Davy Jumps (34:15)
That was…

Yeah, hand placement. Definitely hand placement. A lot of my videos where I am like teaching a trick, the jump rope position, the handle position is like the most important thing when you’re doing a trick because you always want your handles to be pointed where you want your rope to go. And previously, like for doing like a cross, I would just bring my hands over and my hands would be like this. But now I bring my hands over and now my hands are like this.

Dizzy Skips (34:19)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Right.

Davy Jumps (34:45)
So it made everything a lot easier.

Dizzy Skips (34:48)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s crazy how sometimes, I mean, in that case, it could have been an adjustment of one inch or very, you know, a little twitch of the muscle that actually just opens up a whole world of things for you or just makes them so much smoother. Like I know for myself, when I was first working with crosses, just basic crosses, you know, the times where I would whack myself in the back of the head.

Davy Jumps (35:04)
Totally.

Dizzy Skips (35:13)
were either times where my arms were out too far, so I had shortened the length of the rope, or there were times where I would do the cross, but I wouldn’t scoop. I would do kind of what you said. I would cross my arms and then rely on the rope’s momentum to carry it over my head. And that’s not always the right choice, right? You gotta scoop, you gotta keep that rope moving. And that little thing made a big difference to me. Coach Chris talks about the ice cream scoops.

Davy Jumps (35:34)
Yeah, I like to… ⁓

Yeah,

that’s a good way to put it. I always think like put my hands in my opposite pockets. Like that’s how I always say like I’m digging my hands in and then following with the rope. like that scoop like dig in and scoop out. Like it’s so right.

Dizzy Skips (35:41)
That’s how you visualize it.

Okay.

Yeah.

that’s a good

visual. Like when I’ve got change, but I’ve got change in my left pocket, but my left hand’s full. You gotta get it in there and pull it up. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good visual.

Davy Jumps (35:57)
⁓ You got right and you do that exactly No, that’s that’s

and it’s true with all tricks like that doesn’t just hold true to the cross like that holds true to the south paws like the way I explain it to people it’s like You got to point your hands where they’re going, but I also like to say you’re driving a car Like you’re going sideways you’re going to and you never cross your hands when you’re driving a car. So just keep them like that so

Dizzy Skips (36:18)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah,

that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (36:26)
It’s all hand positioning.

I think majority of it’s hands rather than feet.

Dizzy Skips (36:31)
Yeah. So, you said you’re jumping for about a half hour at a time when you jump. And do you go in with an agenda? mean, I know you’re a freestyler, but do you like, do you have a, a mental or a written list of like things that you want to learn or, here’s where I’m, what I’m going to do when I go out and jump on Tuesday.

Davy Jumps (36:35)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nah.

Yeah, so usually if I see a trick online that I’ve never seen before, that person made it look really easy. ⁓ I’ll have that trick in mind and I’ll do my normal warmup and then once I’m fully warmed up to try the move, then I’ll do that move for probably the entire workout and I’ll make a video attempting that move or whatever and that’s kind of what I go on. I go in with one trick in mind. If I’m feeling really bouncy,

Dizzy Skips (36:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (37:18)
and really, really wanting to jump, I’ll do a kickback in a video. If I’m not really feeling like I can’t jump today off the ground, I’ll do more of a footwork routine or just some quick movements.

Dizzy Skips (37:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, where you’re still jumping. You’re just not levitating like you do when you do the kickback thing Yeah Because I I would guess that I saw you do that on the beach in Chicago a hundred times and each time You were eight inches off the ground when you did the kickback like and it was smooth as hell. It was so fun to watch Yeah

Davy Jumps (37:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

That’s actually not my move. I’m not gonna steal that move. so I made it the way that I made it, which is completely different from the first ever video that I saw somebody do it. And he’s still to this day the only person I’ve ever seen do this move besides me. His name is Chris Skips (@chris_skips). And I think he’s on the, he’s got like a blue background. He’s got like 50,000 followers. He’s really good.

Dizzy Skips (38:08)
Yeah.

seen.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (38:17)
But his

kickback is lot more scrunched up. ⁓ So I saw that move and I tried it. And my first iteration of that move was so hectic. And when I got it, it took me like a week of an hour and half every day trying to get that move. And when I got it, it was the messiest thing. But I got it on video and I was like, yes, I’m done and I’m not trying this again.

Dizzy Skips (38:21)
Okay.

Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hahaha

Davy Jumps (38:47)
That’s it.

So I got that move when I was a junior in college. and I was stoked. I was like, I just did the craziest thing in the world, right? I’m done. I capped out. ⁓ but then after, after college happened, like once college was over, I decided to go back to that trick and I was like, there’s gotta be a better way to do this with less effort.

Dizzy Skips (38:54)
Yeah, goal achieved. Yeah.

Right.

Davy Jumps (39:11)
And I just have to slow down and think about it. Okay. So I went out for another week and all I did was practice the kickback, but I practiced it the way I taught it to you guys rather than jumping. So just a quick turn, feel my foot, kick it back. And I would do that rotation over and over again until I was like dead set a hundred percent of the time. I will kick this rope back.

Dizzy Skips (39:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Davy Jumps (39:40)
So I learned that if this is the floor, this is my foot. That when you’re kicking it back, you don’t just kick back, you have to drag your foot so then when the rope comes around, it can’t go under, it has to hit. So then I felt that and I kicked back over and over again. And then I went back to his original video and saw him do the kickback. And I was like, he’s in the air. I gotta do it in the air.

Dizzy Skips (39:51)
Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (40:08)
I can’t let him be the only person do this. So I was like, I’m gonna do this. So I went to the gym and I found out that along with your foot, it’s all your hand placement. And I know you said earlier when you were doing the cross or whatever it was where your hands are too wide and it shortens the rope. So I actually use that in a positive way.

Dizzy Skips (40:11)
in the air. Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Right.

Davy Jumps (40:34)
So I shorten my rope on purpose when I’m doing this kickback so I can kick it in the air. Because when I jumped and I’m doing the kickback like normal, like how I taught you guys drag your foot, if I jump up, now the rope is going to go right under my foot. So I was like, okay, now that I’m in the air and I have the same movement, how do I get the rope to hit my hands? And every time I was taught, never shorten your rope, you’re going to trip on your rope. And I’m like, I need to shorten my rope.

Dizzy Skips (40:36)
so that you can kick it. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Going under you. Right.

Right.

Right.

Davy Jumps (41:04)
So

I just push my hands out as soon as I’m going back. I push my hands out ever so slightly so the rope shortens, hits my foot, and then comes back. So that’s how I learned that move.

Dizzy Skips (41:06)
Yeah.

Yep. And you bring it back over. Yeah, that’s cool.

Yeah, that’s really cool. So Kathy Jumps I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her do the kickback, but she does that rope direction change with her feet, the kicking so smoothly where she goes forward, kicks it, hits her back foot, and then she kicks it forward again. Then she’s in jumping. But she.

Davy Jumps (41:28)
yeah, looks so good.

I just

saw that video.

Dizzy Skips (41:36)
She does it so smoothly. She’s not shy with doing it. Like she does it in a lot of videos, but it’s so smooth and it just looks so, so killer.

Davy Jumps (41:45)
It gives me a tennis, like a tennis effect. she’s playing tennis with the rope with her feet. It’s so cool how she can do it. Like when I do a kickback, I do one and then I continue my routine. She does it, she’s quick with it. She goes back and then is able to like, it’s impressive. It’s really nice.

Dizzy Skips (41:49)
Yeah, yeah, ping pong ping.

Yeah. Yeah.

I know it’s like a

slap, slap, slap.

Davy Jumps (42:04)
Yeah, and you’d think like, okay,

the ropes going forward, I’ll just stop it and bring it back. But a lot of it has to do with being able to slow the rope down.

Dizzy Skips (42:13)
Yeah. And, and like you said, make sure that you catch it with your foot. And like, I I’ve tried to do that and then, you know, it’s gone under me or I catch it with the tip of my toe. So there’s a little bit of art in getting the rope to the right length so that you can connect with it and, and also make it smooth so that like, when you watch Kathy do it, the rope doesn’t look chaotic at all. Like you see some people change direction and the rope sort of bunches up or something in that, but no, that stuff is smooth. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (42:40)
Her rope is like perfectly,

it’s so satisfying to watch. When I saw that video, I watched it probably 10 times and I was like, I’m gonna do this next time. Like this is gonna be my trick.

Dizzy Skips (42:46)
I

I know, I know. Her

skills plus her just cheer and community love is just, you gotta watch her. She’s someone you can’t miss.

Davy Jumps (42:57)
yeah.

She’s definitely one of my favorite jump ropers to watch just because of her like facial expression and her positivity is just so like contagious. I find it really, really hard for me to keep a positive facial reaction when I’m jumping. So like I try like when I, I am like, like dead set. Like I’m not doing anything other than focusing on this rope. But then when I watch people like, like at the jump rope meet,

Dizzy Skips (43:06)
I

Yeah. Do you get serious face?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (43:25)
There were so many people that were like smiling and jump roping and I’m like, this is a happy thing. I didn’t realize it. Cause if you look at my video, you think I’m a grump. It’s like, no, it’s not. Super concentration.

Dizzy Skips (43:29)
Yeah.

I know. No, you just have concentration face. That’s yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I know several people who get that. And then I was joking with Eilidh when she was on, she gets, she gets concentration face too. And then sometimes like the tongue does things, you know, where you’re not paying attention to it. It happens to me too, or, or I stick my tongue out at the camera when I’m thinking really hard or whatever.

Davy Jumps (43:56)
Yeah, and like my mouth is just open sometimes. like, and I’m like, what am I doing? Like, I don’t realize it.

Dizzy Skips (44:03)
Yeah, I’ll tell you what broke me of that, Davy. Here in Minnesota, especially this time of year, we get these rains and then we get these clouds of bugs. And in one of the parks that I jump at, you’ll get these little clouds of gnats. And I have been on a limestone bench jumping my little heart out and then realize, you know, I’ve got an open mouth and I suck in gnats or I’ve had them fly up my nose and my God, nothing worse than having to like snot out gnats in the middle of a jump rope session.

Davy Jumps (44:27)
Thank

I don’t have that issue, but I get it. I understand.

Dizzy Skips (44:35)
Yeah, I was,

do you have mayflies in Chicago or have you seen mayflies before? we have mayflies and I didn’t really, I was not aware of these bugs before I moved to Minnesota, but here in Red Wing, so mayflies are very short lived. They have like a 24 hour lifespan and they’re, they can get big. mean, they can get an inch or two long and they’re dumb insects. Like they, they go to light bulbs and whatever they land on, they just cling on and they’re gross.

Davy Jumps (44:39)
No.

Dizzy Skips (45:02)
And, and we have mayfly outbreaks so badly that there’s a bridge here in Red Wing that goes from Minnesota to Wisconsin and they keep a snowplow nearby so that when there’s a mayfly outbreak and they build up on the bridge to the point that it’s dangerous for cars and motorcycles, they plow the bridge of bugs. Isn’t that crazy? It is. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (45:22)
That’s nasty, that’s crazy. Yeah, we don’t

have that issue.

Dizzy Skips (45:26)
I was in Lake City at the Marina and the guy’s like, yeah, they get really bad. Like when they fly up your nose, I was like, my God, if one of those two inch things ever flew up my nose while I was jump roping, I would never stop screaming. I would just die screaming right there. Like a two inch bug. I think these gnats, they, they hit your epiglottis in the back of your throat and make you gag, but a two inch bug.

I would die.

Davy Jumps (45:49)
Yeah, I’d stop jump roping for the day.

Dizzy Skips (45:51)
Yeah,

that’s right. Break time! And now I gotta go gargle Listerine and some gasoline. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (45:54)
Yep, going out.

Yeah, right? Exactly.

yeah, we don’t have that issue here. No bugs.

Dizzy Skips (46:01)
Well good,

yeah. They’re not a fun pest.

Davy Jumps (46:05)
I do have cicadas though. Cicadas drown. They… If I’m trying to make a tutorial and I’m talking, those cicadas in the background are the most annoying thing ever.

Dizzy Skips (46:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they can be quite a choir, can’t they? So can you talk a little bit about, like, aside from the puzzles and the challenge of jump roping, you’ve talked about, like, the clearness of mind that, or we’ve talked about the clearness of mind that jump rope and rock climbing can get you. What are some of the other benefits that you’ve got from jump rope or that you’ve noticed as a result of jumping rope?

Davy Jumps (46:38)
so I, in high school, my senior year high school, I partially tore my deltoid ligament in my ankle, which is like on the inside of the ankle. And I didn’t like go to the doctor because I, it was my senior soccer season and I was trying to go play, college college soccer. So I was like, have to play. and then after the season, I decided, I was like, you know what? I’ve already done all my college visits and talked to the coaches. just.

Dizzy Skips (46:48)
Ugh.

Davy Jumps (47:05)
I want to be a student. I don’t want to play. And then I went to the doctor and they said like, you have tendonitis in your Achilles and all this like gunk in your ankle. So like you need physical therapy, cortisone shot, all this stuff. And I’m like, like that’s brutal. So I went through like months of physical therapy and all these, you know, shots and everything. Nothing worked. The cortisone shot, nothing helped my ankle.

Dizzy Skips (47:19)
Hmm

Davy Jumps (47:32)
And they said, you just need to like, it’ll be take time. It’ll always be in pain. And I’m like, my gosh, like I’m so young for this to happen to me. Like, come on. So then I started jump roping and a couple of months after I started jump roping, pain went away. Like completely. Yeah. So.

Dizzy Skips (47:40)
Mm-hmm.

No kidding. Like,

was it really painful while you were jumping?

Davy Jumps (47:52)
In the beginning, there’s some videos of me with an ankle brace on and a knee brace because I partially tore my deltoid ligament on my ankle, but I also partially tore my MCL in the same season. So my leg was bionic for a while. But it was never to the point where I needed surgery or anything. It was just like, it’ll take time. And I’m like, damn. So I started jumping and both pains went away. And I definitely noticed when I started,

Dizzy Skips (47:55)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ good lord.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (48:18)
my knee pain, like, like, you know, like the, like right under the kneecap, like the patella tendon area, that pain, I don’t know if other people get it when they jump, but like if I jump for an extended period of time, like I’ll, I’ll start to get some pain there. ⁓ but after a while, it just went away. I just kept jumping and the pain went away. So I’ve noticed that has been a huge benefit. ⁓

Dizzy Skips (48:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve

had the same exact thing and that specific pain you were just mentioning, I would feel going downstairs. Like that’s where it would, that’s where I go. my gosh. Yeah, that doesn’t feel good. But I think building up the muscles and just keeping stuff moving down there has helped. yeah.

Davy Jumps (48:43)
Yeah.

yeah, totally.

Mm-hmm.

helped.

Another thing jump rope has shown me, a lot of people find great joy in watching you jump rope. I’ve had plenty of friends just ask to come to teach them how to jump rope at school. And I was like, okay, yeah, can teach you how to jump rope. So I’ll take them for an hour and…

Dizzy Skips (49:14)
Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (49:20)
I’ll notice them taking breaks and then they’re like, can you show me that trick you did online the other day? And I’m like, yeah, sure. so they’ll watch me and they’re in such awe. And I’m like, it’s not that hard. Let me just teach you that. And then I’ll teach them and they’ll be like, my gosh, no way. I did it. So I have some videos back when I’m at school. You’ll see me in a studio with a bunch of random people every time. And that’s just a different group of friends that have asked to go jump roping with me.

Dizzy Skips (49:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s so cool. To me, jump rope means so much, and I get so much from jump rope that the idea of giving it away to other people or to spark some excitement in someone that’s kind of like what I had just feels like magic. Like, if I could give this away, I would do it all day long, you know?

Davy Jumps (50:07)
Exactly. I’d be giving away for free. So that’s why I started my jump rope club. So in my freshman year of school, I had a group of friends that were just videotaping me watching me jump rope. And they were like, so many people want to learn. You should teach them. You should start classes. And I’m like, OK, I’ll start a class. And the university, I went to them. And I was like, I want to start jump rope classes. I’ll be your instructor. And they said, no, you have to be certified. You’ve got to work for the school, blah, blah, blah.

Dizzy Skips (50:11)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Davy Jumps (50:34)
And I

go, okay, I want to start a jump rope club. And they go, okay, you can do that. And I’m like, cool. Sounds good. It takes away all the complex parts and I still get the club. And I didn’t care about the money. Like, cause if I was going to be a trainer, I’d get paid. And I’m like, nobody’s going to want to pay to learn how to jump rope. Like, come on, let’s do it for free. I don’t care. I’m going to be here every single day for an hour. So might as well have it, make it a club. So I started that and like 70 people joined like right away.

Dizzy Skips (50:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

70? Wow. Sure. Sure.

Davy Jumps (51:05)
And yeah, but not everybody came to all the jump rope like things. There was

like a couple every class. Um, but I had a couple of classes that had like 25 people in them and it felt really cool. It was really, it was super exciting for me to be able to share the joy and see somebody like get really excited for learning how to do a cross. And I was like, I remember that same feeling. Like I get it every day. I love this.

Dizzy Skips (51:16)
That’s amazing. Yeah, I bet.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There’s something special too, when you’ve been through that and you had that feeling when you landed the cross, as messy as it may have seemed to you or as it may have been, just that feeling of accomplishment. Like, I don’t know, there’s something special about seeing that light go on in other people. Like I understand why teachers do what they do even without getting paid much because

Davy Jumps (51:52)
Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (51:55)
The reward of seeing the light go off and spreading the good news, so to speak, is just so amazing.

Davy Jumps (52:03)
It’s the most gratifying thing ever. so like along with like starting my club, I also met my girlfriend through jump roping in a way. So yeah, so like I had a big crush on her and I didn’t really like, I was never like the most confident like to go out and like ask her out or whatever. So I was like, she saw my jump rope videos and stuff and I was like, like, you ever want to come be in a jump rope video with me? Like I could teach you how to jump rope. And she was like, yeah, sure. So.

Dizzy Skips (52:11)
Wow.

Sure. Yeah.

What a great pickup line, Davy, I love it. Hey, you come be in a jump rope video with me?

Davy Jumps (52:31)
I taught her how to write.

Yeah. Right. So, but that was like my easiest way. Cause I’m like, I have a bunch of other people that I take. So it’s not weird. Like I’m not, I’m, don’t want to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like normal. So I was like, yeah, come jump rope. So it was on a Thursday and then she was like, do you want to do it next Thursday? And I was like, yes, please. So then we, we started to do jump rope classes or like.

Dizzy Skips (52:42)
Right, right. Yeah, it’s a group thing.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (52:58)
go jump roping together every Thursday for a while until we started going out and I was like, wow, jump rope, I can make friends and I can get a girlfriend. Yeah, right? So you’ll see her, there’s a couple videos of her in it. She’s pretty good, I got her a jump rope. Yeah, she loves it, but she likes watching me do it too, so yeah, it’s cool.

Dizzy Skips (53:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Cha-ching!

Cool.

That’s amazing. That’s great.

That’s so cool. Like where would you be without the jump rope community? Or what has the jump rope community meant to your learning?

Davy Jumps (53:24)
Yeah, I would still be on the basic jump in the crosses with a weighted rope if there was no jump rope community. I would never have seen all of these tricks and all the inspiration from routines, video style, because a lot of it comes from like, a lot of my video editing and how I do things. I’m not the best editor, but even just like the smallest transitions, all of them I get from other jumpers. So they taught me.

Dizzy Skips (53:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Davy Jumps (53:53)
how to be a jump roper on Instagram and to do the tricks that I do and it’s great. It’s super wholesome and super exciting. All the group chats that we’re in online, ⁓ they’re really helpful. And I just love seeing somebody like get really excited when they crush a move that they’ve been trying. Like when Miss Nikki Skips like posted online and she’s like, “Davy, I finally did it!” was like, like that feels so good. Like that’s awesome.

Dizzy Skips (53:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (54:17)
Yeah, like that’s it’s amazing and now I

feel a lot closer with a lot of you guys ⁓ Now that I got to meet you guys like I feel like I was on the outskirts a little because I was never super active I never really talk to my camera And I just like was you know, just making videos and going on my merry way But now that I met everybody it feels like I’m getting a lot more like engagement and it’s a lot more

Dizzy Skips (54:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Davy Jumps (54:43)
fun to post something because I know that you guys will like say something super encouraging and it’s just awesome.

Dizzy Skips (54:48)
Yeah.

Yeah. And you have more, there’s more weight behind those comments. Cause you’re like, Hey, Davy just said I had good footwork and I was just, and I saw him and his footwork and yeah, like these are real people. They’re not just, you know, bots on Instagram that are very polite.

Davy Jumps (55:00)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Right? Yeah, so now that I actually can like, like I’ve met you, so when you comment on my Instagram, I’m not like, thanks. It’s like, like dude, like, like I know how you’re saying it. I know how you’re coming across. Like I understand, you know what I’m saying. am like, so it’s a lot more. Exactly. So it’s a lot, it’s a lot more fun. It’s yeah.

Dizzy Skips (55:14)
I know that guy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I can hear your voice in my head when I’m reading your comments. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, speaking of fun, this has been a ball and like, I’m so thankful I got to meet you and learn from you at Concrete Beach. And we’re going to have to set up one of these jump rope meetups again before too long. I’ve talked to several people that went to the jump rope meetup in Chicago about it and have a whole bunch of people in. So I just need to figure out schedule and see if I can get a few other people on board and we’ll set something else up so that we can, yeah, so we can get back and jam at it again. Yeah.

Davy Jumps (55:50)
I’m in.

That would be super fun. ⁓

was a pleasure being here. I love talking to you for the hour. I never get to talk about jump rope for an hour. So, you know, it’s always a pleasure. So thank you.

Dizzy Skips (56:01)
I know, I know, it’s so fun to nerd out about this thing that I love so much. yeah. Thank you so much for your time, Davy. This has been amazing.

Davy Jumps (56:07)
my gosh. Yeah, it’s amazing.

I appreciate you having me.