Jump Rope Coach Chris, Autism Superpowers & Ice Cream Scoops (Ep. 33)

Coach Chris (00:36)
I travel a lot, and we can probably get into this later, but funnily enough, a lot of people from all over the country think I’m Australian because of the way I do this in my sentences.

And I think it’s from the amount of public speaking I’ve done that I’ve picked up a bad habit. And now I sound Australian, apparently. I don’t think I do. My friend…

Dizzy Skips (00:45)
and mm-hmm.

You can’t call it a bad habit or Peta’s gonna come for ya.

Coach Chris (00:56)
There’s not quite what I meant but I realise how that might come across.

Dizzy Skips (01:01)
Peta and Papa Joe, they’re, yeah…

Well, jump rope Coach Chris, thank you so much for joining me on the Jump Rope Podcast. I’m just thrilled to have you here. I have heard endless good things about you and your coaching and Tricktionary+ and so I’m just excited to be able to dive in and learn more.

Coach Chris (01:17)
Thank you very much, I’m glad to be here.

Dizzy Skips (01:19)
Yeah, well, first of all, I wanna say like hell yes to your mission. Like your mission on your website says you wanna bring Jump Rope and its benefits to as many people as you can. And I can’t applaud you enough for that. Like, knowing what Jump Rope does for me, the idea of giving it away to other people, it’s just, good on you, man.

Coach Chris (01:38)
Thank you. Yeah, I think that that keyword is that the giving I picked up jump rope nearly 10 years ago and I fell in love with it instantly. I tried many many sports before that and never felt anything that really clicked for me. And when I did find jump rope and I then discovered it’s not really a thing here in the UK. I was like, I need to I need to tell the people about this. I need to get it out there. I need them to feel how I felt. And it’s just been a constant downhill roll of how much more can I keep doing this and doing this and doing this.

Dizzy Skips (01:58)
Right.

Coach Chris (02:07)
That’s what we’re doing. Giving and giving and giving.

Dizzy Skips (02:08)
Yeah,

yeah. Well, you do a lot. I mean, I’ve heard a lot through meetups. Like you do a lot of in-person events. And I know a bunch of people that I’ve talked to on the podcast have attended some of those events and just talked about what a magical time it is to get together with other people who are like-minded. And you don’t have to explain like why you jump rope as an adult. You know, everybody knows that shit already.

Coach Chris (02:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, I love the meetups. I love bringing people together that are from entirely different walks of life that otherwise would not have interacted, know, their path would not have crossed, and they become the best of friends and it’s all because of a plastic piece of rope. And I find that really magical. And I enjoy just being a facilitator for these connections and

Dizzy Skips (02:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (02:52)
There’s a lot of learning of jump rope that happens, but there’s also lot of connections between people and it’s multinational, multi-generational. I love it. It’s so much fun.

Dizzy Skips (02:55)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I love this podcast is just to get to know people more than just that little 30 second window you get on Instagram every other day, you know? Yeah. So I’m curious, before we talk about like your coaching you personally and your own jump rope, like, do you practice?

Coach Chris (03:04)
Yeah.

Yep, yep.

Mm-hmm.

I would, I would call that a complicated question. ⁓ so, know how, they always say you should be careful that if you do something that you love as a job, it stops being fun and you have to be very careful. I went from jumping like four hours a day, for myself, working on everything I could imagine, you know, possibly imagine every day as my hobby. And then I started doing it as a job and having the company and the amount of time I would spend on myself went like,

Dizzy Skips (03:20)
Yeah, it is.

Right.

Coach Chris (03:45)
And you know, there was just other things. So I was always working on jump rope in different forms, whether it was theoretical or with clients and stuff and learning more things about jump rope. But my personal practical practice definitely took a hit at that point. And it’s been up and down ever since, something I’m still working on. But yeah, I just, I’m very methodical. So once I get things locked in, they do stay pretty locked in, but that’s not an excuse for not doing it as often as I would love to.

Dizzy Skips (03:49)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (04:12)
to do, you know, there’s never enough hours in the day is how I would kind of conclude that really.

Dizzy Skips (04:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know for me, like there’s magic in the bounce, know, like just being able to get out and bounce and flow to music and not necessarily have a specific agenda. But for me, it’s so important for my mental health. And you mentioned that on your website, like mental health benefits as well. And I wonder, like, if you don’t get that time for yourself to just go out and flow or work on your own stuff, do you still get that benefit

Coach Chris (04:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Dizzy Skips (04:42)
by teaching other people and being, I assume you’re jumping a lot all the time while you’re teaching too.

Coach Chris (04:47)
Yeah, so when it comes to teaching, a lot of it is very theoretical. A lot of clients come to me for understanding things on a theoretical, on a deeper level. So it’s a lot more conversational. And I get a lot out of that because I love really kind of getting into the nitty gritty. You know, it’s the same when you have people in fandoms that like to discuss things at such a deep level. I get a lot of benefits from that because I really enjoy sharing it and seeing that connection the other person makes with it. And then, you know, the meetups.

Dizzy Skips (04:57)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (05:16)
There’s the much more practical approach to coaching, which I also really thrive for. I love coaching. When you go to a meetup and you look over to wherever, wherever I happen to be nine times out of 10, I’m either trying a new trick or I’m just coaching people because I just, I thrive on that as much as I like to see them thrive. So, it benefits me in different ways, depending on the way in which I’m engaging with jump rope, you know, whether it’s personally or for the benefit of other people, but it’s always positive, which is the thing I love the most about it.

Dizzy Skips (05:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s the amazing thing about the community in general, right? mean, like Jump Rope itself is so positive, but the community is magical. Like the amount of love and support.

Coach Chris (05:49)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah,

I love the fact that when I was growing up, that there was this kind of stigma about not being too much online and that it’s harmful to be engaging online, especially with strangers, right? That was a big thing when I was growing up. And now we actively welcome strangers into our little community. And it’s really positive. It’s really good for us to be engaging and spending this much time online.

Dizzy Skips (06:08)
Mm-hmm, right.

Right? Yeah.

Coach Chris (06:19)
with each other and I think it’s actually beautiful that we can take something that seems dangerous and actually just be adults about how we engage with it, know, don’t treat it toxically. And yeah, it kind of circles back to the meetup thing because that is what leads to people finding other people offline and building real connections and it’s beautiful.

Dizzy Skips (06:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think there’s something so special about that positive approach. it’s like you go in, patting people on the back, you know, getting encouragement from other people. There’s something really great about the positivity. And, and I think because there’s not this worry about policing and stuff like that.

Coach Chris (06:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yup.

Dizzy Skips (06:58)
the whole community rises, you know, like it’s like the rising tide floats all boats

Coach Chris (07:03)
that it’s welcoming to those sort of beginners so they can feel like they can approach anybody. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re an athlete or a coach or just a massive enthusiast, people just love to share what they’re learning, what they’re working on and what’s their favorite thing. So people can just learn from each other and it’s really inclusive in that respect. It’s really positive, you know, we’re all hyping each other up online and offline. So I love that part about it.

Dizzy Skips (07:07)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, it’s, it’s so great. You have several things that you do now, like you’re doing coaching, you have the Jump Rope Company. So you’re, manufacturing and selling jump ropes. And then you also have the Tricktionary + app, which you can talk a little bit about. So do you sleep?

Coach Chris (07:36)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Dizzy Skips (07:46)
Do you have time to eat?

Coach Chris (07:50)
If you speak to anyone who knows me semi well, they’ll know that busy is like the… If you looked up the word busy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of me next to it. And if you saw the picture of the word sleep, you’d say the opposite is crazy. Yeah, I do work a lot. I’ve had to learn to work on that, ⁓ pun intended. But yeah, I’m very ambitious. So I like to have these different projects. ⁓

Dizzy Skips (07:58)
Got it.

Okay.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (08:11)
but it never feels forced, you ⁓ It always feels like it comes out of a need to do something that I think has a genuine purpose to it. So like, for example, with the ropes, there’s a few people who know that there was a time where I point blank, never intended or had anything in my mind about ever selling ropes. I never saw it as something that I couldn’t capitalize on. And when I kind of was teaching in schools just before COVID.

Dizzy Skips (08:13)
Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Coach Chris (08:36)
I was trying to get them to have beaded ropes and I started playing around with the thickness of the cord because I wanted, because obviously the rope is shorter, there’s less weight to it. The whole point of a beaded rope is it’s heavier. If you’re cutting half of the rope away, it’s no longer heavier. So was like, what if we just increase the thickness? That will kind of compensate for it being two foot shorter and the kids just learned so fast. So I stuck it in my own rope and was like, maybe this is good. And I just never looked back. So it kind of gave me this purpose that these ropes genuinely feel.

Dizzy Skips (08:44)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (09:04)
different to what’s already out there and they’re helping people in a very tangible way. So I want them to be in the world and everything I do in the business kind of centers around that kind of value of does this actually bring value to other people or it’s not a cash grabbed ton of business and that helps me keep the passion alive. So I don’t feel like I’m just working a job. I’m building something for other people.

Dizzy Skips (09:05)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. I love

that you brought up about the rope thickness because my friend and your friend, Sarah Marshall mentioned to me about the thickness of the cord and the ropes and because she knows that I like heavier ropes and she was like, you got to try one of Coach Chris’s with a thicker cord because it’s meaty. can feel it. And

Coach Chris (09:42)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dizzy Skips (09:48)
And for me, I love the added feedback. And I think that’s probably part of the reason that kids are learning faster or people are learning faster. But I wonder if you could kind of speak to that.

Coach Chris (09:57)
Yeah, for sure.

So yeah, so for the last 20, 30 years that beaded ropes have existed, they’ve always just been kind of the same. There’s never been this kind of huge industry for it to really need to evolve. was just, this is a beaded rope. And they always kind of came in at about 110 grams, maybe. That was just the weight of it when you added those particular materials together. And that’s better than a PVC rope. It always has been because it is heavier.

Dizzy Skips (10:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (10:24)
But yeah, when I started experimenting with the ropes for the kids because they’re shorter, I just bought a different material for the cord that was just thicker, so it kind of just fit through the beads. And yeah, like I said, I noticed how much more beneficial it was, how much quicker they were learning, so I tried it on my own rope. I loved how much feedback it had, how much smoother it was. So then I started kind of doing more research into it. So the one we ended up settling on.

Dizzy Skips (10:35)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (10:54)
in like September, 2020, was a material that’s entirely different. It’s very expensive to purchase, but it’s very dense. So it doesn’t kind of crowd the inside of the beads, like the inside of the hole. It’s nice and tight. Exactly. And it’s completely stretch resistant. It doesn’t get affected by water as much. And it is practically unsnappable. And the fact that in the like six and a half years I’ve been selling ropes.

Dizzy Skips (11:03)
⁓ Nice. Yeah, which can cause hangups and stuff when you’re spinning and…

Coach Chris (11:23)
I don’t think I’ve had a single person email me saying, hey, my rope snapped, like for the beaded, it’s just strong enough. So we’ve always been really a big advocate for it deserving to exist and needing to exist. And, you know, as you’ve seen in the community, a lot of people have learned significantly faster, I found, especially with working with clients directly and seeing it first-hand that they learn faster as soon as they get hold of that thickened cord.

Dizzy Skips (11:27)
Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (11:49)
And to

this day, it’s still the only rope that I use. So was in the gym earlier and I don’t touch any rope except for a thickened cord. I can’t. It feels weird now, you know, after so long.

Dizzy Skips (11:56)
Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Yeah, like

I have some ropes that I ordered from major manufacturers that I like and they make good ropes, but they use eighth inch cord and it’s really light. then it just like with a lighter PVC, you have to really concentrate on moving your wrists more, right? Like you have to, because you don’t have that same level of feedback.

Coach Chris (12:16)
Yeah.

And like, there is obviously a place for those types of ropes. For example, when I was training earlier, I had a four mil PVC and if you have the right finesse, you can get a lot out of it. But the context was always, you know, there’s far more beginners in the world than there are experts in jump rope. And that will always be true because that’s the same for every sport. So I prioritise focusing on those people, you know, and never looked back. So.

Dizzy Skips (12:24)
Sure.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (12:46)
I’m very proud that I made that thing happen. I brought out something into the world that was not there before. Exactly, yeah.

Dizzy Skips (12:49)
That’s so awesome.

Yeah, and it’s actually helping people accelerate. Yeah.

So do you personally design all the ropes?

Coach Chris (13:02)
So over the last five years, there’s been a lot of collaboration. I’ve had different employees at different times and best friends that have helped along with the business. So there’s always been a collaborative approach to make sure we take the best of the best ideas. Because I’m a strong believer if you’ve got one person making all the decisions, they’re going to be bad decisions more often than not. Because it’s always a good idea when it’s your idea. Authorship bias. So there’s different people all the time, whether it’s my partner or it’s my employees that help us.

Dizzy Skips (13:09)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Coach Chris (13:31)
come to the best decisions and with the ropes especially. Fun fact: I’m color blind, which is the most ironic thing about designing colorful ropes. So it’s very helpful to have other people’s input in designing them so they are pretty. I’m actually red green and a little bit of like the purples as well. So pretty much every color I confuse with some other color in some time or fashion. So that’s fun.

Dizzy Skips (13:33)
Yeah.

⁓ Yeah.

Yeah, are you red-green colorblind?

Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that’s fun. When I was young, I worked at a bookstore and my coworker was colorblind and we had green carpeting. And one day I said, my God, I can’t believe she replaced all the carpet with red. And he was like, totally. I don’t, she didn’t. Yeah. I was messing with him.

Coach Chris (14:04)
Right.

Yeah, that’s funny.

When we was in school, like in high school, we call it secondary school here, we had like these blazers and they were like a dark burgundy colour. Now, because I’m red-green colour blind, it means that the red receptor just doesn’t fire enough. So red looks darker than it should do. So I thought they were like practically black. And my best friend in like the last year of school became a prefect and got a black blazer and it took me like

Dizzy Skips (14:18)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (14:38)
half the school year to realise he was wearing an entirely different colour blazer. Because they look the same.

Dizzy Skips (14:41)
Hahaha

Yeah, interesting. That’s so interesting. So let’s talk about your coaching a little bit. do you do in-person and remote coaching?

Coach Chris (14:53)
Yeah, it’s a kind of mixture hybrid. the in-person coaching is a lot rarer just because of the nature of the business, because it’s so international. So when people happen to be in the right location at the right time, I love to coach in person. We obviously have done the workshops every couple of years. We’ve done like these big workshops and brought people together. And it’s a lot of fun teaching people in person like that. It’s very raw being able to help them and see the progress happen in front of you.

Dizzy Skips (15:00)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Coach Chris (15:22)
But the vast majority is online, which obviously makes it accessible to whomever, you know. So that’s what I tend to focus on most on the day to day.

Dizzy Skips (15:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Are there special challenges do you have to do anything special when doing remote coaching? I assume it’s over something like Zoom.

Coach Chris (15:39)
Yes, yeah, it is. So the biggest challenge is just that, let’s say someone’s in person, right, and you’re coaching and you say something and it doesn’t click. Now, the bad thing to do would just be to repeat yourself. The less bad thing would be to reword it. But sometimes the best thing to do is just physically come up to them and say, move your hand physically here, for example. And sometimes that tactile approach is what people need because it’s a very tactile thing that you’re learning. Not everyone can have

Dizzy Skips (15:46)
Mm-hmm.

Right, sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Coach Chris (16:06)
this kind of listening approach or this visual approach. I mean, we’ll need to move my hands here and this works. And for example, with coaching kids, that happens a lot more than online. So I don’t teach kids online as much for that exact reason. They need that tactile element. So when you’re coaching online, you have to think of clever ways to work around that. And a lot of clients will happily testify that I have some of the most ridiculous analogies.

Dizzy Skips (16:09)
Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (16:33)
for every aspect of jump rope. I have a ridiculous analogy for everything because if you remember and it sticks in your head, you then won’t forget it. ⁓ you know, like when you’re learning to cross, I always have this analogy of imagining a scooping ice cream, your favorite flavor, so that really gets you to dig your hands. Exactly. Now, right? So.

Dizzy Skips (16:41)
Right?

I’ve heard someone talk about, your ice cream scoops. That makes so much sense though, and actually it helped me because I found

I was tripping on crosses and it was because I wasn’t scooping, I was kind of like trying to let the motion of the rope carry it around, you know?

Coach Chris (17:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Some people just kind of hold their hands there. Some people flick up as well when they jump. So that scoop really gets you to go down because you can attach it to something you already know that you can’t forget. So I have all these like ridiculous analogies and it’s like, how the hell do you think of those? And it just helps give you a framework so it’s not completely abstract. And that’s how I’ve kind of gone through the challenge of it being through a screen, you know? Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (17:15)
Right.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm hmm. Sure. ⁓

and you also do, training through the Tricktionary + app, right? Or I guess you don’t do direct coaching. That’s more of like a lie. I don’t have trick Tionary plus yet, Chris. So forgive me, but I should, I have a few other apps, but, I understand it as a library of all sorts of tricks and then some community. Now there’s like some community generated or user generated content where

Coach Chris (17:36)
Yes. ⁓

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dizzy Skips (17:53)
Like

I was talking to Eilidh and she’s doing leg crosses like crazy and uploading videos and stuff like that.

Coach Chris (17:57)
Yep.

Yeah. It’s like a, it’s kind of like downloading everything that’s in my head that I’ve kind of worked on in the theory wise over the last half a decade. And I’ve just put it into this app so that people can kind of engage with it and the different parts that they want to engage at their own pace, significantly cheaper price. And it’s just always there for you. in your pocket. ⁓ And so there’s loads of all the coaching tips and analogies are in there. There’s demonstrations of

Dizzy Skips (18:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (18:25)
thousands of tricks that you can see on the left and the right. it can be on your favorite side. And as you mentioned, we launched a kind of community feed, which is like an Instagram inside the app, except without any of the ads or other content that’s not Jump Rope. So you can kind of just learn the combos from people that you’re wanting to find. So yeah, it’s been a huge undertaking and it really like we talked about earlier the different ways that I engage with the Jump Rope that benefit me mentally.

Dizzy Skips (18:29)
It’s so cool.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (18:54)
And

working on that as a project to again build something that’s new, that can help people ⁓ is another way that I enjoy engaging with jump ropes. Even if I’m not jumping, I’m just thinking theoretically about jump rope. I really get something out of that. And then to see other people then get something out of it, it’s really special. Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (18:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah,

when I talked to Sarah, this was almost six months ago, she was saying Chris likes to nerd out about jump rope. Like he likes the physics of it. And I was like, that is my man. that makes total sense to me. I love the physics stuff. And I could tell from your conversation that you think deeply about jump rope and how people learn jump rope.

Coach Chris (19:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

There’s a…

Yeah, I there’s two pieces to that because there’s the theory side and there’s kind of the math of jump rope and the physics of jump rope that I explore very deeply. And then as you just said, there’s also the how to teach it, how do people learn it? You know, for example, adults learn jump rope in an entirely different way to how children do. And I often compare it to language because kids pick up language by just being exposed to it. They don’t necessarily know what a punchline is or

Dizzy Skips (19:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (20:02)
things like that or lead up or set up, they just understand how humor works because they pick up on it. Whereas an adult when they’re learning a new language have to be given all the rules and the syntax and how does this work and that’s the same way they learn jump rope often. The way I’ve seen the most progress is by treating it as a similar sort of way and giving them the framework and then seeing them take that and run with it. So I love studying both of those two aspects of the sport.

Dizzy Skips (20:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

that’s very interesting. One of the things that you mentioned in your profile on the website is that ⁓ you have autism and that that’s part of your superpower because you kind of see things differently. And I would, I’d love to learn a little bit more about your autism and how it affects your daily life and then how it has become your jump rope superpower.

Coach Chris (20:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sure, yeah. So the autism is kind of interesting. didn’t know I had autism until I was about 20. So I spent a lot of my life, most of my life so far, having no idea about this kind of very important part of what makes up who I am. And when I found out, I remember the sort of social worker or the therapist that I was talking to was kind of like prefaced it saying, hey, this might be a shock or you might not like it.

Dizzy Skips (21:05)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (21:16)
to hear this. And I remember just actually feeling a lot of relief because it answered a lot of questions about things that didn’t make sense about how I saw the world or interacted with the world that seemed different from everyone around me. And it was like, ⁓ that makes a lot of sense. And I’m relieved to have an answer that yeah. And it kind of makes the puzzle piece fit properly, which would had always bugged me. but then as I learned more about it, and I learned about the things that I excel at in part because of how my brain is wired, I sort of

Dizzy Skips (21:28)
You can have a label.

Right.

Coach Chris (21:44)
tapped into it and like kind of doubled down on it. And that came, you know, I’ve always been very studious and always had a very good attention to detail and memory. And so I kind of applied that to my jump rope. Because like we said before about the whole giving and wanting to get it out there when I realized the jump rope wasn’t big in the UK, I figured I could use the things that I’m good at in my kind of areas of expertise with my memory and my kind of ability to nerd out.

Dizzy Skips (21:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (22:15)
Apply that to jump rope and then just kind of push it out the way I know how ⁓ And that’s how the kind of coaching has evolved and how I’ve been able to help as many people as I have because of my unique approach ⁓ Something that I think Challenges me in my day-to-day life that is different in my coaching in my role as Coach Chris is emotional kind of not regulation but like recognition, so, know

Dizzy Skips (22:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (22:40)
One thing that lot of autistic people have struggled with is being able to recognize, say, empathy, for example, or how someone else might be thinking in a situation and kind of interpreting emotions. And when I step into the role of Coach Chris, it kind of strips away because there’s a very clear goal and purpose to the actions and the conversation that’s happening. So when I’m with a client, I can kind of pull that away. And the sort of directness of the coaching is something that people appreciate.

Dizzy Skips (22:46)
Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (23:08)
because they know that that won’t be fluff, for example, or, you know, if something’s bad, I’ll call it out. And I’m not uncomfortable about doing it because it doesn’t even occur to me because of my autism. Do know what I mean?

Dizzy Skips (23:11)
said.

Right. Like you’re basically calling it like it is and you’re not like soft peddling it. You’re not, you’re right.

Coach Chris (23:22)
Exactly. And so when you

couple that with the nerdiness of the nerding out of it, it kind of forms this interesting dynamic to the coaching that allows people to really excel because we just kind of cut to it in the most kind of straightforward way. you know, so I find it, like when I step into that role, I have a lot of fun and I actually feel like some of the things that I struggle with in a more social setting, I stop worrying about because everything’s so much clearer in that, in that exact kind of setup.

Dizzy Skips (23:35)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (23:51)
that I’ve built around. Exactly, I have a framework where I understand what can be said, what should be said and how the role between the two people there works. So I have a lot of fun with that. And then you step out of it and you go into sort of Chris mode and the challenges kind of resurface again and it’s like you have to learn how to be a normal person.

Dizzy Skips (23:52)
because you have a framework, kind of.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was

curious, One thing I’ve seen in a lot of autistic people that I’ve known is social anxiety of some sort. And I wondered if that

affects you. mean, you’re known for organizing all these meetups and stuff. And I wondered like, are you an introvert or an extrovert or do you kind of force it?

Coach Chris (24:30)
So

yeah, I think part of it comes down to having a really solid network that understand me and are able to push me and help push me without it being obvious that they’re pushing me. So that’s a big part of that. But I think it comes down to these two roles, like the Coach Chris kind of character that I step into, the role I step into, and then the personal Chris. So the personal Chris.

Dizzy Skips (24:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (24:56)
suffers with a lot more social anxiety. know, for example, I went to the gym tonight at like seven because I knew we had this call and that’s something I would never normally do because it’s far too busy for me to be in a gym skipping, you know, very clearly making obvious that I’m there because of noise of the rope, for example. I always love to go gym at like 11, 12 in the night because I know no one’s going to be there, no one’s going be judging me even regardless of how cool or bad the tricks might look. So social anxiety is a big thing I do have to tackle. I always enjoy it.

Dizzy Skips (25:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (25:25)
smaller social groups, if there’s like say two, three people I can handle. As soon as it gets to sort of five or six, my anxiety kind of brings, it breaks me down a little bit and it’s a lot harder. Anyone who’s been to one of the meetups, what we’ve gone for food afterwards, my social batteries are already dead from being in that role and sort of masking. And I often do become quite nonverbal unless someone brings up jump rope. And then I sort of spring into the theory again. And then as soon as that kind of conversation dissipates, ⁓

Dizzy Skips (25:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (25:53)
go back to being nonverbal because I struggle with that part. So in terms of like organizing meetups and sort of also kind of being the center of attention when it comes to the public speaking aspect is very much the Coach Chris role that I’ve invented that helps me kind of circumvent it. And I do actually really enjoy that. Like I’ve learned to enjoy that but there’s still the other side where.

Dizzy Skips (25:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It’s so cool.

Coach Chris (26:18)
Yeah, he struggles, bless him. Like, the social anxiety, it’s a big piece. As I know it is for many people who have autism.

Dizzy Skips (26:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, I totally get it. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, me too. And I have some good friends, a couple.

and the husband is a doctor and the wife is a nurse and she is the biggest extrovert and he is the biggest introvert and he told me one time commiserating with my introversion saying you know we go to a party and we leave that party and I want to go home and grab a newspaper and not talk to anybody for the rest of the night and she wants to go dancing like she’s all jazzed and let’s go and so I could totally commiserate because I’m that same guy you know after I go to a conference at the end of the day I can

Coach Chris (26:36)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Dizzy Skips (27:00)
sit and watch cartoons and be happy as a clam, you know.

Coach Chris (27:03)
Yeah, I do get like that sometimes. I get kind of nonverbal and I just want to sort of zone in and I have my phone, which is often like my kind of comfort blanket. So I can just sit there and I can read or I can watch or whatever it is and just kind of shut out the world and attempt to recharge those batteries. Cause it is, it obviously is draining that masking. I don’t know if anyone’s familiar with that term, but like masking as an autistic person is trying to put in that extra effort to sort of go above and beyond to kind of fit into the social norms that.

Dizzy Skips (27:14)
Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (27:31)
you struggle so much with, or at least the one that you’re aware of, you’re self-conscious to. So that can often be more exhausting than the task itself.

Dizzy Skips (27:35)
Right.

It’s an act, it’s an

acting job on top of what you’re doing, right?

Coach Chris (27:42)
Exactly, yeah. So yeah, it can have a huge effect, especially after a meetup where there’s 30, 40, or 60 people in Paris, as is the case this last weekend. It’s crazy. Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (27:53)
Yeah.

That’s amazing, yeah. Well,

I can’t wait to see you at a meetup and I promise if we go to dinner afterward, I will nerd out with you until the cows come home.

Coach Chris (28:05)
Yeah, that will be awesome. I do enjoy it a lot. And we need to do more meetups on the other side of the ocean as well.

Dizzy Skips (28:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know you did one in Washington a couple of years ago, didn’t you?

Coach Chris (28:17)
Yeah,

I did one in New York and I’ve done one in California, in LA. Those are the two that I’ve done. And, and Vancouver, of course, can’t be forgetting Vancouver. So I’ve done two on one. Exactly. We had a few people actually from that sort of area drive up. So I want to do more. So we will cross paths, I promise.

Dizzy Skips (28:20)
Yeah. Like that. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, that’s close to Seattle, right?

yet.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m curious with regard to training people or working with adults who are just learning jump rope, what do you find are the top three things that people have to overcome or the top three difficulties that are kind of repeat things?

Coach Chris (28:47)
Yup.

So one big thing is, and it’s quite interesting, is their spatial awareness. I think it’s called proprioception, I think is the proper word for it. And to give an example, most people have no idea how far apart their arms are from their body when they’re jumping until they have a mirror and a video. And that’s such a core piece of how it affects how the rope moves, how long the rope needs to be, that that’s a big thing that kind of have to sort of nip in the bud.

Dizzy Skips (29:04)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Coach Chris (29:23)
early on to get them more aware of it. Sometimes there are tricks where your arms do need to be wider, sometimes there’s tricks where your arms have to be incredibly close. So building that ability to know where they are and understand where they are in other places around your body is a big thing that comes up a lot with newer jumpers because it’s not something they’ve had to experience before if they haven’t got a sort of training or a gymnastic background because why would they, you know? So that’s one big thing.

Dizzy Skips (29:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Do you make everybody

film themselves? Like as they’re practicing.

Coach Chris (29:50)
I don’t think “make them” is probably, it seems a bit strong, but I definitely strongly encourage. yeah. Even if it’s just private, you know, because it is one of the best ways to progress without any help from anyone else is just see it for yourself and kind of build up that mental image of what it looks like versus how it feels. Because overcoming how it feels versus what is actually happening is that big piece of the proprioception.

Dizzy Skips (29:52)
Yeah, right, that’s strong. Encourage, sure, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Coach Chris (30:16)
because it could feel completely right but it looks completely wrong and vice versa, you know?

Dizzy Skips (30:17)
Exactly.

Right, yeah, you could be telling yourself a story here and

your body’s doing something a little bit different. And I’ve totally had that happen where I keep whacking myself in the butt coming out of a cross and what am I doing wrong? And I watch the video and I’m coming out with my hands out too far and the rope’s too short and it has nowhere to go but my ass.

Coach Chris (30:27)
Yep.

Exactly.

So I think you’ve actually touched on the next kind of big thing, which is breaking down tricks. So the toe catch, and it would be working the example you’ve gave me, the toe catch is the second single biggest thing that I teach beginners again and again and again, because being able to stand still and not jump and move the rope around you and getting to a toe catch position nine times out of 10 means you can then look down at everything in sort of a freeze frame around you and study it.

Is this hand too high? Is it further from your hips? Is it reaching under all 10 toes? And most of the answers are there. But if you have that kind of new beginner habit of as soon as you trip, you just reset and you kind of don’t give it a second to like reflect, you miss that opportunity if you didn’t film it. But the benefit of doing it in the moment is you know how it feels because you’re literally in that moment. So you’re like, okay, that felt bad because it hit my ass on this side. So…

Dizzy Skips (31:20)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Coach Chris (31:31)
there’s something going on with it going this way and then that really informs you to train better and practice purposefully. So those are the two big things. I’m trying to rack my brains for a third because those two are so important. ⁓ I think the third thing is just, actually the third thing is more theoretical because those two are very practical. The third thing is that jump rope has a math to it. Math isn’t hard when taught properly.

Dizzy Skips (31:38)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (31:56)
I’m a big advocate that most people were just taught math badly. And so that’s why they don’t engage with it very well, because we use math in every part of our life all the time, but we just don’t think about when we’re doing it. And so in jump rope, there’s some very, very basic rules that allow you to sort of not feel so overwhelmed with the amount that there is to learn. Because when you boil it down to the absolute core kind of unique aspects, there’s actually very few parts to jump rope that you have to learn. They just build on each other very quickly to make complex things.

Dizzy Skips (32:00)
Yes, I totally agree.

Coach Chris (32:25)
but there are actually very few of them. So when you can kind of get past the overwhelming nature of seeing all these different tricks and realizing, like for example, all mic releases are glorified side swings, for example. And a lot of people find that kind of funny, but it’s completely mathematically true. So once you kind of get past that, the crazier mic releases don’t seem so scary anymore because it’s just the same thing you’ve already learned, but it just looks a little crazier, but it’s the same thing. that kind of, that kind of exactly, and that’s third piece is a big thing that.

Dizzy Skips (32:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s a variation. Yeah.

Coach Chris (32:54)
especially people who are very new to jump ropes struggle with because it is overwhelming seeing the vast array of things you can do, but finding out there’s a very small subset of things that they actually are, just lots of glitter and whistles and stuff added to them is almost reassuring that you’ve got a small way to go and then it just opens up and it’s not so scary. So that’s, I think the third thing for you.

Dizzy Skips (33:01)
Right? Right.

Right.

Yeah. Mm hmm.

Well, that’s, that’s really cool. So when you got started jumping rope, you said you started when you were 20. Is that right?

Coach Chris (33:23)
Yeah,

it was like a 20, 21, something like that. was actually shortly after I found out I was autistic. There was no correlation there, but it was around that sort of time in my life. And I just picked up a rope because I knew boxers did it. And I did a lot of outdoor working out. didn’t like going into a gym for the social anxiety aspect. So I did a lot of of park workouts and there was no cardio to do because you can’t, you know, wasn’t going to just run to each end of the park. You know, I wasn’t going to do that.

Dizzy Skips (33:32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

You know, it’s super boring,

yeah.

Coach Chris (33:51)
Exactly.

So I was like, I’ll try skipping. And I had two left feet and had no idea what I was doing. And it took me months to learn how to do a cross. And when I saw an EB for the first time, my head literally blew up. I had to put it back together again. I was like, how did their hand get behind their back? Like, what? So, yeah, it was a long time ago, but I remember vividly like those early days of discovery.

Dizzy Skips (34:06)
Right? Yeah, what the?

So what was it like, you said you had tried several other things, know, exercise wise or fitness wise, but jump rope was the thing that really stuck. What was it about it? Like, it just, was it fun?

Coach Chris (34:21)
Yo.

So there’s a few parts to it. I’ve always been very active, always been very into sports, but I’ve always been very into not necessarily the niche sports, but the ones where you can kind of add creativity to them. So before jump rope, the biggest thing that I was into was skateboarding. And I had a very unique style. I did a lot of old school ground style stuff, which was like very reminiscent of like Rodney Marlin.

Dizzy Skips (34:32)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (34:49)
So wasn’t very new generations skateboarding where you’re grinding off of surfaces and stuff. It was very flat ground. And so I often compare the two sports quite a lot because there’s a lot of overlapping similarities. And I think that’s what got me really hooked on jump rope because I loved skateboarding, but my body couldn’t handle it as a growing adult. You know, it’s fine when you’re like weighing 50 kilos and you’re a 13 year old and you can fall off. But when you get older and you’re heavier, it’s much riskier to roll your ankle. So.

Dizzy Skips (34:50)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right.

Hell yeah.

Coach Chris (35:17)
Yeah, so that was like the big part and I’ve always been into sports like solo sports or solo activities So like running swimming table tennis like single solo things. I’m not I’ve never really gelled with like team sports. I’ve always struggled with that I think it must be the social anxiety aspect Maybe of not really understanding what’s going on, even though no one’s discussed anything So they’re just as clueless, but they seem to still understand. So jump rope had that it had like the solo aspect of it, but it also had

Dizzy Skips (35:24)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sure.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Coach Chris (35:46)
the diverse creativity and you can kind of build a style and it just took me. It just took me.

Dizzy Skips (35:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (35:53)
I was hooked pretty like instantly. I used to do a lot of sort of gymnastic-esque stuff like calisthenics and I was learning both at the same time. And then I remember there being just one point where jump rope just began to take over after learning an EB. I think it was, was like, I need me some more of that. Like that, it’s addictive that learning tricks. So I learned that and then it just kept on going. I learned a double under and that was amazing. I learned a triple under and I was like, this is really amazing.

Dizzy Skips (36:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (36:22)
So

it just went down the rabbit hole, and I’ve never come back up to be honest.

Dizzy Skips (36:26)
Yeah.

So how far into your journey were you before you decided, Hey, I want to start as a fitness coach and I want to teach people to jump rope.

Coach Chris (36:36)
So I can’t remember like the dates or anything, but in the first couple of years of doing like the calisthenics and the jump rope at the time, I remember a specific occasion where I brought a friend to the gym. I get it like a late night thing. I just wanted to, he wanted to come see what it was about. And I remember teaching him some of the core movements for a couple of like ring based movements. And it sticks on, I don’t know why it sticks in my head so vividly, but he just commented on how

Dizzy Skips (36:40)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (37:06)
great I was at instructing him on this exercise. And he was like, you should be a PT. And I was like, I had not considered that. And in my day job at the time, I was an optician, which again is ironic given I’m colorblind, but I really enjoyed teaching staff and like instructing and building beginners into more competent members of staff. And so it was like, this, maybe this is a thing I could do. So I qualified as a PT over the next sort of year. And then that was kind of the point where I was like, right,

Dizzy Skips (37:09)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (37:35)
I need to distinguish myself because you can either just be kind of a bog standard generic PT or you can kind of make yourself unique. And there was actually in my gym, two or three PTs that were exceptionally unique and really doing well for themselves because they just, they took that approach of, right, this is what I’m going to do and I’m going to do just this. And so I kind of took inspiration from them that maybe I should do that for jump rope. And so I had my first few clients and then kind of made some connections with a few really amazing jumpers. So.

Dizzy Skips (37:40)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (38:03)
Mike Fry for example and Nate KG kind of on Instagram. And so I kind of lean into, right, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do this properly. I’ve always been someone who’s very like a methodical and wanting to do things the proper way. So at that point, maybe like a year or so later, I flew over to the US to LA and I spent like a week with the two of them and was like, if I give you some money in dollars, teach me everything you know about jump rope and how to teach jump rope. And that’s what happened.

Dizzy Skips (38:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (38:31)
So then I

came back and I was like, I need to just digest this and process it. And then my mission begins, you know, and that’s kind of what happened like mid 2019. And yeah, it’s just been going further down the rabbit hole ever since from that. And I’m very grateful for the time they invested in me back then, because I was even myself still very much a learner. You know, I had big ambitions. I was still very much like, you need to learn the basics. You need to master things yourself.

Dizzy Skips (38:41)
That’s so awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (39:01)
And I just had that studious, ambitious mind that they were like, right, we’re gonna feed this and see what happens. Hopefully it goes in the direction that he’s promising. And I’ve just trying to live up to that ever since, know, live up to the promise I made them.

Dizzy Skips (39:01)
Right.

That’s amazing, I love that story. I’m curious, as you were learning, what were the challenges for you in learning tricks? Where did you have trouble?

Coach Chris (39:22)
Yeah.

So if you scroll far enough back on my Instagram, and this is a long time ago now, you can see when there was a shift in my form. And that’s kind of point two and point one about like hand position and technique. And I struggled with the same thing. took me years before my correct, like proficient technique really locked in. And it was after spending time with Nate and with Mike.

Dizzy Skips (39:29)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (39:48)
going over the sort of the physics of how this actually works at a deeper level and you can see in the videos how my form went from like point A to point B to point C where it then ended up being like the best version of itself as I was kind of unlocking the understanding of my body so um see yeah

Dizzy Skips (40:04)
Mm-hmm.

What were the things

in your form that were tightening up? Was it hand position or was it?

Coach Chris (40:13)
So

one thing was hand position, so naturally everyone’s arms start out wide and in the videos one of the things I’m kind of smiling out because I can picture it is I have the hair right? So I would make the rope short so short that it would literally graze the bun and the only way to make the rope longer is to bring your arms in right? That’s why we make the rope shorter to force the arms in. My hands literally were touching my hips and I was like this

Dizzy Skips (40:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right, right, right.

Coach Chris (40:40)
They were down low, I’m not going to stand up, but they were literally hooked. I don’t know where my elbows went. They must have gone on vacation because they were so unimaginably close because I just wanted to get the form where I could force the rope the way it was. Now you can see in my videos, it’s much more relaxed. They’re where they need to be or where they want to be for whatever I’m doing. But I have the understanding of how to move the rope in this direction rather than I can end on a round motion. And it was because I just forced my hands in so far they couldn’t get any further in.

Dizzy Skips (40:41)
like hooked in your belt loops.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (41:09)
And it just looks ridiculous when I watch it back. ⁓ then a big thing aside from that, is learning how to hold the handles much more loosely. And this is a big thing. It’s a big tip. If I could give you a short tip is let go of your handles. Not like a mic, but like just don’t grip them for dear life. Because a lot of beginners learn that they want to go fast. They want to be powerful. They want to be energetic. So they hold on for dear life.

Dizzy Skips (41:09)
Yeah.

Hahaha

⁓ yeah.

Right.

Do you

see them doing this like holding the whole handle?

Coach Chris (41:36)
Not necessarily the shape of the grip, but just the fact that they’re gripping so tightly. And some of it is the whole arm being very tense because their arms out wide, so their arm locks. But even then it’s just having a tight grip. And I can compare this to badminton. I’ve learned badminton the last year or so, and I’ve had to learn that you hold the badminton racket with an incredibly loose grip and you use just the fingertips to control how you hit it.

Dizzy Skips (41:41)
Okay.

Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Yeah, it’s a tap.

Coach Chris (42:02)
Exactly, and it’s the same with jump rope. You pinch with your thumb and your index finger, the rest just rests on the handle. Even when you’re doing like a double under, you do not need to grip the handles. And learning that and realizing changes everything about how you jump. And you can see it when you watch certain videos of people. Once you realize how it makes the rope look, the way the rope moves looks entirely different when someone’s gripping the correct way versus inefficiently.

Dizzy Skips (42:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Doesn’t it look so much smoother? It looks more fluid when it’s done right.

Coach Chris (42:31)
Yeah.

So to give you the like best possible example is someone like Devin from We Jump Rope or Mike, people who hold the handles just the right way. And regardless of whether they’re going fast or slow, because some of their combos are very fast or very powerful, the rope looks like it’s effortlessly moving around them because what they’re doing is they’re letting the rope do the work. They’re guiding it rather than leading it. And that’s a big part of it, regardless of how fast you’re trying to go. They just, they have that finesse.

Dizzy Skips (42:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (43:01)
And that’s one thing I can remember really like understanding and unlocking at a certain point. ⁓ So it is like cringy watching old videos where like I thought my form was good and it was very like different to how it is now, you know.

Dizzy Skips (43:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I know what you mean. And I’ve done that same thing on back and watch old videos. And the one thing I will say though is a couple of years ago, I would have looked back at those videos and been embarrassed. Like, my God, I was so terrible. But the truth is I showed up and I tried and I was making progress and I’m a little bit better the next day and a week down the road and whatever. And so I got to give props to everybody who’s out there being hard on themselves. Like you are showing up. So

Coach Chris (43:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (43:44)
That’s important.

Coach Chris (43:44)
Yeah. I love that aspect of jump rope online that people document. They very much document, especially in their first like six months of jumping where it’s very much I’m showing up and I’m just getting it done. Doesn’t matter how bad it looks, how good it looks. We celebrate the wins. We celebrate the losses and we just get it done. And you can kind of see on their account how much they progress from just documenting. And it comes back to what we talked about with filming yourself and just being allowed to see it and not

Dizzy Skips (43:51)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (44:12)
be too uncomfortable with it. So yeah, I applaud everyone who not only is comfortable enough to put that on the internet and for keep going regardless of how slow it might feel on the journey, because it is a slow process, it’s a gradual thing. Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (44:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It is,

Do you have, like you’ve had those times, obviously you had them with Mike and Nate, where you have a period of time where you unlock several things or where all of a sudden that rope position makes sense, your hand position makes sense, and it’s like you hit another level, and then that makes all that other stuff that you were trying to do a little bit easier too.

Coach Chris (44:42)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. There’s

Dizzy Skips (44:55)
Those are magic times. love them.

Coach Chris (44:58)
There, they really are. I love that part of jump rope, how much it stacks. So when that happens, really, it really feels like you’re opening up and yeah, it’s incredible.

Dizzy Skips (45:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know I’ve had several times where I’ve been out jumping rope and sometimes I know it’s happened because I’ve been jumping too much and I’m tired. where I’ll feel myself bunching up and my grip getting tighter or my arms getting tighter. And that’s when I start tripping up more. And so my thing is stop.

Relax, breathe. Sometimes it’s sit down and meditate for 15 minutes, you know, like and focus on my breath and then get past this, you know, I got to control things and then just flow. sometimes, honestly, it’s the music track I’m listening to. I got to listen to something that, you know, flows.

Coach Chris (45:41)
Yeah, so

I studied music when I was like 18, 19 before I got into the opticians and I’ve really benefited from having that early experience with like feeling the rhythm because like almost exclusively all of my personal jump rope training is to music and it’s not like the music’s just in the background it’s like the music is paced at the pace I need to jump at for whatever I’m doing whether it’s speed, doubles,

Dizzy Skips (45:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (46:10)
or like tonight I was doing all these different crosses and I was just drilling them and it all was to the music because it allowed me to focus on putting in the right amount of effort and it just helps the session just flow because I just really love music and I’ve always got music on so it comes together these two big things for me music, jump rope and they just fit together like two puzzle pieces so yeah.

Dizzy Skips (46:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Me too.

Yeah.

I feel like we’re brothers from another mother. I’m the same. I’m totally the

same. In fact, I was driving around. I went to the park this morning to jump before our interview and I was using Spotify’s AI DJ and he came on and he’s like, hey, what’s up, dude? You, you listened to 5,144 minutes of music last month. And I was like that it’s largely jumping, you know, and like I listened in the car too, but I live in a very small town. So it takes me seven minutes to get to the park.

Coach Chris (46:46)
yeah? ⁓

Yeah.

I remember during COVID, where I was doing a lot more jumping than I have been in recent years, I remember my Spotify Wrapped being these completely random songs. And it was because I’d filmed combos to the songs, because they had the just right tempo. And I must have listened to these individual songs like a thousand times, more than anyone would ever want to listen to a specific song. And they would just rank there. And I didn’t…

Dizzy Skips (47:02)
So.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Right.

Coach Chris (47:26)
I was surprised, I like, I’d forgotten that this song had been jumped to this much. I was like, what? I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense, because I literally use that song in so many combos.

Dizzy Skips (47:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, I totally had that happen at end of last year too. It was like my number one song was Numb Encore with, know, yeah, it’s a good song. And then I had 99 Problems by Jay-Z as well.

Coach Chris (47:41)
That’s a good song.

I was listening to that earlier. I was doing some multiples. Yeah, that’s really, I love anything with like a really strong beat and that one’s really like, yeah, really raw. I love that one. Yeah. Good choice.

Dizzy Skips (47:49)
Yeah, it’s a fun one to jump to.

Yeah.

Yeah, I saw aaronjumps.365 jump

to it one time and I hadn’t heard the song and I was like, my God, I got to download that and go to the park.

Coach Chris (48:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. There’s a, I’ve got a playlist. So in the app, I have curated playlists for this exact purpose. They’re all different speeds. And so those are the ones I use for my workouts now because I’ve always tried to categorize and do it. And then I was like, I should put that in the app because it’s something I use all the time. So I know it’s helpful. So that’s what we did. And this is why I use it in every single workout now, because I know exactly what speeds I need for this exercise or for this like practice thing that I do.

Dizzy Skips (48:12)
Yeah! ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Anna was telling me about that on that last podcast, and I didn’t know that as a feature of Tricktionary + but that you had curated playlists that were curated by beats per minute, right?

Coach Chris (48:34)
and so ⁓

Yeah?

Yeah. ⁓

so we basically, basically, I use Spotify because they have like an API that you can, you can research with. So I built my own database of so many thousands of songs. And then we kind of hand picked all the ones that have like really good rhythm to them. Cause it’s important. They have the right sort of time signature and the right strong beat. And then we sort of curated like our own little playlist and we insert them in the app. So they kind of write him and

Dizzy Skips (48:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. That’s

so cool.

Coach Chris (49:08)
they go up every five BPM, which from coaching experience, at those sorts of speeds, five BPM is pretty much the minimum kind of threshold for noticing a difference. So if I’ve got one song that’s 100 BPM and a song that’s 101, you’re gonna almost not be able to differentiate when you’re jumping. So the songs in those playlists kind of float around that number. So sometimes they feel faster, sometimes they feel slower. But if you go up a playlist, you’ll notice that increment. So it’s really good for working out. I like to jump up this song, this playlist.

Dizzy Skips (49:20)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Got it.

Coach Chris (49:36)
I’ll bump up a playlist when I want to then just turn up the heat a little bit. And I, yeah, I just, I love it. And I recommend it obviously because I find it useful and it works.

Dizzy Skips (49:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I’m sure you’ll see my order for Tricktionary + come through soon.

Coach Chris (49:52)
I hope to see you on there.

Dizzy Skips (49:53)
Yeah, so do you have other features like planned for Tricktionary+ or what’s next for it? I mean, it sounds like you’ve just got a ton of content coming in too, right? From the community.

Coach Chris (49:59)
So. ⁓

Yeah,

it’s been, it’s been crazy. It’s there’s lots of different working pieces and it’s hard to pinpoint, like one new feature that’s coming or to tease one because so much of it is evolution. Like the way it’s I’ve introduced things, it’s kind of always been natural. The music was probably the most recent like new feature we added, you know? ⁓ So I’ve got a lot of other kind of tiny bits planned.

Dizzy Skips (50:13)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Coach Chris (50:30)
so I don’t want to spoil anything but there’s going to be a lot more features in there that kind of are tangential to the music. That’s all I’ll say but when you…

Dizzy Skips (50:32)
Sure, sure.

Okay. Yeah. I know one feature

that Anna mentioned that I thought was really cool was sort of like the gamification stuff, like the challenges where you have like a daily challenge, right? And then people can go on a streak with the challenge.

Coach Chris (50:47)
Yes. Yo.

There’s a kind of funny story, a history to that. So yeah, in the app, I figured that to stop it from being overwhelming, people love to be told what to do in pockets of things, you know, they love to just be given a direction because I myself am the same. If I don’t know, if I don’t get told what to do, I get overwhelmed with the choice. So in the app, there is a daily challenge and it’s one trick, one combo, which is a combination of two tricks. And then there’s one challenge, which is like a sequence or a combo in the traditional sense.

Dizzy Skips (51:02)
Yes.

choices, right?

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (51:20)
So you can kind of pick which one you want to do, or you can do all three, or you can do all three on both sides like some people do, which are crazy and fair play to them. And you can kind of build a streak and then you can earn badges if you, if you get to certain sort of milestones, like 30 days or a hundred days. There’s some people that have like 500 day streaks and it blows my mind because I don’t program what’s going to happen tomorrow in there. It’s completely random. Sometimes it is evilly hard. Like

Dizzy Skips (51:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (51:47)
And I’m like, I’m so sorry. And people just do it. And I’m like, fair enough, fair play to you for doing it regardless of, like one day it’s footwork, the next day it’s a mic release, the next day it’s like, okay, this is one handed wrap under your leg. And I’m like, what? I don’t remember filming that. That’s way too hard. But yeah, the idea spawned way back before even COVID. We had like a small group of us and we had formed a group chat on WhatsApp.

Dizzy Skips (51:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (52:12)
And funnily

enough, we’d called it Let’s Jump EU because of Let’s Jump LA, Mike’s name, because we’d all met Mike and we’re connecting with him. So we kind of named this group chat is Honor. And at the time I was probably the most advanced person within the group of like five people. So I was posting these little challenges in there of like showing people something I’d learned or something that I thought was worth sharing. And then people were trying them and then they started tagging me on Instagram at the time and other people saw it and were like…

Dizzy Skips (52:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (52:39)
Hey, can you share the challenge so we can try that too? And then it kind of the trick of the day concept kind of got birthed and then that lasted for some months. And if you go on my highlights, you can actually find the originals with my very weird form and sometimes wearing like my work uniform, cause I filmed it like a random time. And that’s where the idea came from. was like, people really engage with that. really were, they were willing to try it, anything that I put out and they were never really hard, but they were like different stuff.

Dizzy Skips (52:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (53:08)
You there weren’t stuff that you were going to just go, that’s just the same or same, there was always difference. So I really, I really realized that that was something people really engage with. And I wanted the app to be something that people could engage with on a, a regular basis and push themselves when they weren’t sure what to learn, because that’s a big part of learning is not knowing what direction to go in. So having someone to just kind of give you a nudge, I think it’s quite useful. and that’s what the app does.

Dizzy Skips (53:08)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, absolutely.

Totally. It makes me think of being a kid and literally go into like the quick stop or whatever, you know, with a dollar and I was going to buy a candy and then standing in the aisle for a half hour trying to figure out which thing to buy. Cause there was so much, so much easier when there were five choices, you know, like

Coach Chris (53:37)
Mm-hmm

Do you ever find on like,

yeah, we have like Lidl in this country in Aldi. don’t know if you are familiar with those brands. So the supermarkets are really like prided with, they have like one version of every item. They don’t have like five brands that sell the same source, for example. So they remove that element of choice and it’s really helpful because you can go in and you go jump, jump, jump, jump, jump and you’ve got your groceries. Whereas if you go to some of the other places, there’s like five versions of this and there’s 10 versions of that and you’re like, I don’t know what to do.

Dizzy Skips (53:52)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right, exactly. Aldi, Trader Joe’s, Costco, they’re all kind of like that, where they source good stuff and they have their brand or they have two brands.

Coach Chris (54:16)
Yo.

Yo.

Yep,

no, I like that. It’s kind like on Netflix. Do you ever have that where you spend more time looking for it to watch than you actually spend watching something?

Dizzy Skips (54:32)
Yeah, yeah, totally. And personally, like being a little obsessive, like I will watch the same thing over and over again, rather than make the choice of what to watch new. Because I know I’m comfortable with it, you know?

Coach Chris (54:42)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

That’s a big part of it. So yeah, the app does the opposite. It tells you a nudge and it gets you out of your comfort zone for that exact reason. It’s good for you, you know.

Dizzy Skips (54:54)
Mm-hmm.

So, aside from the challenge of the day, is there a pathway in the app, if someone were a beginner, is there a start here kind of like step one, step two, step three?

Coach Chris (55:02)
Mm-hmm.

So at the present point, there are two ways that like a beginner can engage with the app. So it depends on what way they like to learn. So if they like to learn by being given a clear like progression, then in the challenges section, there are challenges one to a hundred. Each sort of 15 challenges in any sort of segment are based on a different category of tricks. So they start with footwork, move on to swings and crosses, and they kind of progress through the different categories. So you learn a bit of everything and they…

Dizzy Skips (55:11)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (55:34)
also get progressively harder. So they start with the absolute basics and they build. So for example, challenge say 60 doesn’t include anything from the previous categories that wasn’t covered before you got to that point. So there’s not like suddenly five new concepts to learn. There’s like one new kind of concept each time and they each have like a movement pattern or a transition that is fundamental and important to understand. So even if you’re not being told what it is and why it is, you’re learning all these different things that

Dizzy Skips (55:38)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Got it.

Coach Chris (56:01)
will help you become more well-rounded without it being spelled out to you. So you can of just walk your way through them. The other way is that there’s a beginner section, which is just literally a list of all the tricks that are hand-picked as being very easy for a beginner to learn. you can just go through and you can pick whichever ones that you take the fancy of. You just scroll through and go, I fancy this, this, this, and this. And then you can kind of go at your own kind of direction. Because some people like to just kind of explore and some people like to follow a path, you know?

Dizzy Skips (56:07)
Yeah, that’s cool.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Coach Chris (56:28)
So there’s the two

Dizzy Skips (56:29)
Yeah.

Coach Chris (56:29)
ways you can engage.

Dizzy Skips (56:31)
That’s really cool. So when you’re working with, a coaching client in person, do you have a, Hey, first we’re going to get basic bounce and then you’re going to do boxer skip, and then you’re going to do, crosses or is there a sort of prescription that you have while you’re working in person?

Coach Chris (56:45)
so I have a loose like curriculum, maybe is the right word. And so after I sort of establish what it is that someone wants to get out of the coaching and out of jump rope, it then informs me what pieces of the curriculum we’ll kind of go through. So obviously like technique and form is one of the big pieces that’s like a non negotiable because it will make anything you want to do easier to achieve. And then from there, we kind of move into different directions. So

Dizzy Skips (56:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

right.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (57:11)
Typically people, because they know that I’m this kind of direct nerdy approach, they come to me because they want to learn everything and they know that I’ll be able to show them the doorways to most of those every things. So that we take them through the whole curriculum and then sort of spend more time in the places they seem to resonate most with. But there is a certain order to things that helps them build so that as they get to the more advanced things, they have everything they need already sort of learned. So it’s just introducing you to a new concept.

Dizzy Skips (57:22)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Coach Chris (57:39)
You don’t have to learn anything new per se, if that makes sense.

Whereas if you sort of jump around and you start with something that seems cooler, but is harder, and it has lots of these kind of underlying principles, you can either just go for it and then not really understand it and then potentially injure yourself, or you can kind of just get stuck in a bad habit. So there is kind of a curriculum to that that I give clients so that they can progress in the most helpful way possible. Because ideally,

Dizzy Skips (57:56)
Yeah.

Coach Chris (58:07)
the goal of the coaching is to no longer need me, know, be able to teach themselves because they have the understanding of the principles. So if they see something new that we’ve never talked about, they can go away and learn it and not struggle. And that’s the most successful clients I can think of can do that, you know?

Dizzy Skips (58:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s really cool. I feel like there, and we talked about this a little bit already, but I feel like there are, mean, I have so much to learn. It’s crazy. ⁓ But I feel like along my journey, there have been these points where, like, I have one weekend that I remembered last fall where…

Coach Chris (58:34)
Mm-hmm.

Dizzy Skips (58:43)
just like some things clicked and I was no longer thinking about moving the rope and getting my feet in the right place. That was just working and it freed me up to move my feet in different ways without having to think, you know, and getting that flow state was just sort of magic. I was actually in the park jumping rope and this couple came from out of town and they’re total, you know,

Coach Chris (58:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (59:11)
civilians, not jump ropers, right? They’re like, this is such a pretty park. And I was like, yeah, I come out here and jump rope all the time. And they said, there’s this British lady and she jumps rope. And this has happened to me so many times where I’m talking to people and it’s always Lauren, right? Because she’s been on like national news. And I happened to have the Fancy Feats app and I was doing a warm up and I was like, is it this lady? And he’s like, yeah, that’s her. The outfits, the music. It was funny.

Coach Chris (59:12)
Yeah.

Yup. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Wow.

That happens to me too sometimes. When I go to schools, for example, that’s where they’ve seen it happen most, because they’ve had TikTok or whatever. then I’m like, yeah, yeah, I know that person. Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (59:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

She’s been quite influential, in the community, inspired a lot of people as have you. So, I wanted to ask a couple of questions about Tricktionary + I think if I’m correct, you’ve got sort of a little special on the site where if you purchase ropes, you get a break on trixionary for a month or something like that. Is that right?

Coach Chris (59:50)
Yes.

You’re close. So if you purchase on the like a rope on the UK, US store, you can get one month for 70 % off. So it’s literally three pounds or like four bucks for your first month. So it’s like incredibly cheap. One of the big things I’ve always been an advocate for is accessibility because people talk about accessibility in general all the time, but often it gets forgotten about alongside the other benefits because you have to buy a mat and a rope and you have to go pay to

Dizzy Skips (1:00:11)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (1:00:34)
I learn or there’s all these different aspects that suddenly make it expensive like other sports not quite to the same degree But it can be inaccessible and the fact that there’s not Until you know more recently when I was learning there wasn’t easy places to go to learn which by definition makes it inaccessible, you know, so obviously To run it, it costs something. That’s why there was a subscription But I’ve always been very clear on it needing to be a very low price. So it is affordable regardless of what country you’re from

Dizzy Skips (1:00:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Chris (1:01:03)
and as

accessible as possible. So if you buy a rope and you’re investing in that rope, it’s like three quid for your first month. So it’s less than a cup of coffee.

Dizzy Skips (1:01:10)
Yeah.

Absolutely. mean, my gosh, it’s That stuff is expensive now. That’s really cool. And it gives people, mean, a month is plenty of time to experiment with the app and see what’s available and figure out if it’s for them.

Coach Chris (1:01:17)
Yeah, true.

Yeah, and we

actually recently, like if you’re obviously sharing online and you’re inspiring other people, we actually have now a referral scheme. So if someone signs up because they saw you and you inspired them, you both get 50 % off for a month. So basically the next time your subscription comes out, you get a 50 % refund.

Dizzy Skips (1:01:33)
Mmm.

⁓

Cool, so I should hit up one of my Tricktionary + friends and say, give me a discount.

Coach Chris (1:01:46)
Absolutely, yeah.

Don’t give me money. Save money. And then learn loads. Absolutely. You should ask Anna because she has it, or Sarah. Yeah. Whoever hears this first basically is going to message you. Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (1:01:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, Right, right. Use my code.

Yeah, well, that’s that’s really cool. So if people want coaching from Coach Chris, best way to engage, go to thejumpropecoachchris.com or how best?

Coach Chris (1:02:13)
Yes,

so either just drop me an email, which you can just find on the website, I guess. Or if you’re like absolutely sold on it and you don’t need to sort of have a pre-chat, then you can just go straight to the website and there’s like, you can just pay for the coaching. And then once you’ve sort of gone through that process and it’s completed, I reach out to you in a couple of days and we sort of get the dates and stuff like ironed out. So yeah, it’s just right there. But some people, know.

Dizzy Skips (1:02:19)
Mm-hmm.

Cool. So someone can just

buy online or yeah.

Coach Chris (1:02:42)
Exactly. Some people actually

do it as a gift. We had someone yesterday order it for their husband as a birthday gift which was really awesome because it’s the gift of a new skill that you’re going to learn which I think is really, really awesome.

Dizzy Skips (1:02:48)
That’s so cool. Yeah.

Yeah.

When I was talking to Kathy Jumps, she said, like, what other skill do you do as an adult where you feel proud of yourself? Like you learn these tricks and you have this, my gosh, I can do a release or I can do a cross. And that feeling that you had as a kid, when you were discovering stuff all the time you get as an adult, it’s amazing. It’s like a drug. I mean, it’s totally a drug.

Coach Chris (1:03:01)
Yeah.

It’s really euphoric, isn’t it?

Yeah,

it’s like, it’s a very healthy, safe drug. and we should say that now, but yeah, no, is really awesome. And it never stops. Like for anyone who’s listening that, is getting to a point where they feel like it’s happening less often, maybe they’re hitting a plateau. It never stops. I literally had it two days ago in the gym where I did like a weird multiple that I’d been working on and didn’t think I was going to get. And then I got it. And like we talked about earlier, it clicked and I got it and it was easy. And I was like, ⁓ my God, I felt really

Dizzy Skips (1:03:17)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Coach Chris (1:03:43)
empowered and really amazing about it and so never stops you know thank you but yeah it never stops mum

Dizzy Skips (1:03:44)
Yeah. Awesome. Well, congratulations. That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s so cool. That feeling is just amazing, right?

I’m sure you’ve probably had it happen too. I’ve had it happen several times where I don’t necessarily realize in the moment that I got it right. And then I go back and watch the video. I’m like, Holy moly, I did that. Like that was cool.

Coach Chris (1:04:01)
Yup.

Yeah,

actually that happened last week. So was at the Paris meetup and it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything properly in double Dutch because there’s no one near me. We can really practice it too much. So I did like a frog, like a handstand in the ropes, which I haven’t done for probably like two years in the ropes because it comes down to like the trusting of the two people turning. You know, it’s big thing. You’re to hit your face on the floor if you don’t get it right.

Dizzy Skips (1:04:17)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Coach Chris (1:04:33)
And

I didn’t like, cause there was so many people around me and I’m in Coach Chris role. I didn’t really stop and think how amazing it was to that feeling until I after maybe the day after I was like, actually that was really cool. I really, I’m really proud of that, you know? So yeah, man. Yeah. You’re, you’re absolutely right.

Dizzy Skips (1:04:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s an awesome feeling. So people can engage with you through the website. You’ve got a YouTube channel where you post a bunch of educational stuff as well. And then Instagram at @thejumpropecoachchris.

Coach Chris (1:04:57)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yes, yeah, can reach out to me there too, yeah.

Dizzy Skips (1:05:04)
Cool. Well, man, I can’t thank you enough for spending time talking to me. This has been fun to nerd out in just the short amount of time that we’ve had, but I’m sure we will connect later on and I can’t wait to talk to you again.

Coach Chris (1:05:18)
Thank you so much for taking the time and having me. It’s been a lot of fun.

Dizzy Skips (1:05:22)
Yeah, absolutely. And I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and my friends in the community for all that you do for the community. Like your mission is amazing and I can’t applaud you enough for it. I’m behind you. Anything I can do to help. Let me know.

Coach Chris (1:05:31)
Thank you.

Thank you

so much. I appreciate that a lot.

Dizzy Skips (1:05:37)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, cheers, man. I hope you have a great evening.

Coach Chris (1:05:42)
Take it easy.

Dizzy Skips (57:23)
Yeah. Likewise.