Weighted Cordless Jump Rope

I have been using a cordless jump rope that I bought off Amazon for years. Whilst it worked fine to begin with, I was finding it too light and it wasn't giving me the level of workout I was looking for, and it was starting to fall to pieces. I decided I wanted to try and make something that was weighted and that more robust.

Cross rope make something that fits the bill, but it costs £170 and requires an app to use. I didn't want to spend that amount of money on a skipping rope and I also didn't want yet another app on my phone.

I really enjoy trying to build things using standard parts that you can buy online and putting them together to make something robust and usable. I have already built an isometric trainer that works really well, so I thought I'd give the cordless rope a try.

I spent quite a while researching jump ropes on line, looking at how they were constructed and watching videos of people making their own.

The homemade ones either required a ridiculous amount of equipment like wood lathes and metal lathes, or were too rudimentary for me.

During my investigations, I tried getting parts 3D printed, but that didn't work out as the printer wasn't accurate enough, but I am quite pleased with the finished product and it seems to work really well for me.

Parts

1. 150 mm furniture bolts
2. 40 M8 bearings
3. 22mm diameter bike handle grips
4. Gas spring end fitting M8 female thread 8 mm hole
5. Some paracord (about 1m long)
6. 2 x 250g throwing bags (I bought some edelrid ones)
7. 2 x S carabiner

Tools

The number of tools you need is fairly limited as the vast majority of it is just made by screwing together the furniture rod to the gas spring end fitting, but I used the following

1. Adjustable spanner
2. 6 mm hex key
3. 3 mm hex key
4. 22 mm hole punch, or Stanley knife or craft knife
5. scissors
6. Lighter
7. metal file
8. needle files
9. emery tape
10. PTFE tape

The most complicated part of building the handles is accurately cutting the hole out the bottom of the handles. I was lucky enough to have a 22mm hole punch already and used that to punch out holes from the middle of the bottom of the handles. You need to do this in order to allow the furniture rod to sit low enough in the handle and for the end of it to stick out slightly to allow the rods to turn freely, otherwise they get caught on the silicone.

Next, slide 20 bearings onto each rod. This adds quite a lot of weight to the handles, so if you want them lighter you could add spacers. The minimum number of bearings you could get away with is three, one at the bottom and 2 at the top, but it is up to you. I wanted my handles to be suitably weighty, so I put bearings all the way up the rod.

Once you have all your bearings added, slide the rod and bearings into the handle. The bearings at the bottom should be flush with the bottom of the handle. This means that the hex head of the furniture rod will stick out ever so slightly from the bottom, but this doesn't pose any problems. There should be about 5 mm of bearings poking out the top, which is also fine and I quite like as it adds to the aesthetic. When you have them seated correctly, tighten the hex nut on the handles. The bearings should not move, but be careful as the rod could fall out.

Now roll PTFE tape around the top of the furniture rods. Make sure there are a few turns of tape at the top. You want to do this as you want enough friction so that when you put on the end fitting you can leave a small gap (less than a millimetre) between the end fitting and the bearings. This helps ensure that the rods turn freely when you swing the rope around and that the fittings don't come loose.

Screw on end fittings until almost tight. The handles should turn freely when you hold the end fitting and turn the handle (this might not be the case so much at first, it depends on how greasy the bearings are). Make sure that you can move the furniture rod up and down ever so slightly. This is really important as otherwise there will be too much friction for it to turn.

Once attached, you can use the file, needle files and emery tape to remove any rough edges from the holes in the end fittings. You want to try and round them off as much as possible as otherwise they will grind the carabiners down as they rotate (this is what I found when I first made it anyway).

That is the handles complete 😁.

Tie one end of the paracord to a throwing bag, then the other to the S carabiner. I used a larks head knot to attach the paracord to the throwing bag and then tied the loose end up. I then used a reef knot on the carabiner.

It is important to make sure to use a non slip knot as otherwise the bag could come off mid workout and hit something. This has happened to me a couple of times, you have been warned 😁.

You need to make sure that the cords are of the same length otherwise you could end up with an unbalanced skip. The length of cord is entirely up to you, mine happen to be about 22 cm from the top of the ring of the throw bag to the beginning of the carabiner

Finally snap the carabiners onto each of the handles, then lock them and you are done 😁.

You might find that you hear a grinding noise coming from one or both of the handles, if that is the case it is probably the carabiner against the end fixing. You just need to take them off and file them down a bit more to make them more smooth

I like this design a lot as it is easy to maintain and I can change the weights of the handles or the weights. Not only that, if I want to change it to a real jump rope at any juncture I can do so easily.

All in all I think it cost me about £40 in total to make, which I can't complain about. The most expensive parts were the throwing bags, everything else was sub £10 on Amazon.

I have found that they can give me quite a workout, which is exactly what I was after.

Hopefully you have found this useful.