What do you know about jumping jacks?

Mohamed Thabet
7 min readJan 20, 2022

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What are Jumping Jacks?

Our topic today, my friends, is jumping exercises, which is a type of cardio exercise known. We will go deeper into this topic with all the details you are looking for!

Jumping jacks, also known as star jumps, is an effective full-body workout that you can do just about anywhere. Exercises like this are part of what is known as plyometrics or jump training. Plyometrics combines aerobic exercise with resistance training. Exercises such as this work your heart, lungs, and muscles at the same time.

Can jumping jacks build muscle?

Jumping jacks stimulate all the major muscles in the lower body, strengthening glutes, hamstrings, quads, hips, calves, and shins. To increase the intensity and load, you can wear a weighted vest. With leg strength developed through jumping jacks, you can improve your squat, deadlift, vertical jump, running speed, and ability to climb stairs.

How to do jumping jacks?

Now, my friends, we will learn how to perform the jumping exercise in easy steps with the correct form:

  1. Start by standing with your feet hip-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Your shoulders should be directly above your hips with a neutral head and neck position. Your chin should remain folded throughout the movement as if you were holding an egg under your chin.
  2. Distribute your weight evenly and grab the floor with your feet to form a stable position. Keep your arms long at your side with a slight bend at your elbows. Tighten your shoulders and hips and engage your core. All repetitions must start from this position.
  3. Your feet should be outside your hips while you jump your arms overhead and land on the balls of your feet.
  4. While staying on the balls of your feet, jump your feet back to the starting position and pull your arms down by your sides.
  5. Repeat for the desired length of time or number of repetitions.

What are the benefits of jumping jacks?

Undoubtedly, my friends, doing lifting cranes is fun, and especially has many health benefits that we will look at in this section and we will talk about the level of its effectiveness and the extent to which it helps in losing weight.

Jumping Jacks Improve Cardiovascular Fitness:

Jumping jacks increase heart rate and breathing, which challenges your cardiovascular system. Performing extended sets of jumping jacks and increasing the duration of your sets will increase your endurance and aerobic fitness. To maximize your fitness gains, jump as fast as you can with good form while completing the full range of motion with each jump. Start with sets of 30 seconds and build up to several minutes.

Jumping Jacks Are a Total-Body Exercise:

Jumping jacks target virtually every major muscle group in your body. You’ll work your legs, arms, shoulders, chest, back, and abs. This makes jumping jacks an effective and efficient workout that simultaneously strengthens and conditions your body. Jumping jacks are an excellent warm-up exercise because they get your heart rate up, increase circulation to your muscles and connective tissue, and act as a means of stretching your hips, shoulders, and back dynamically.

Jumping Jacks Burn Calories:

Because jumping jacks involve nearly every muscle in your body, they are metabolically demanding and can burn quite a few calories, depending on your weight. Jumping jacks often can support fat loss, especially when combined with a healthy diet and a total-body workout routine.

Jumping Jacks Increase Bone Density:

As a form of plyometrics or explosive jump training, jumping jacks involve impact landing. As with other high-impact exercises, such as running, jumping jacks stimulate the bones to lay down new bone cells and a more dense matrix of minerals to withstand the stress. As you age, bone density reduces the risk of fractures.

Jumping Jacks Improve Mobility:

Jumping jacks allow several of your joints to move through a full range of motion — or nearly so — which promotes mobility. For example, your hips and shoulders both abduct and adduct (move outwards and backward) in the frontal plane, a direction that is not well represented in most exercises involving forward-and-backward movement (walking, running, rowing, hiking, squats, etc.). In addition to reducing stiffness and discomfort, maintaining mobility in these joints minimizes the risk of injury.

Jumping Jacks Increase Hip Strength:

An important component of developing an injury-resistant body is lateral training, such as jumping jacks. Due to the side-to-side motion rather than front-to-back, you’ll strengthen different hip muscle fibers compared to those used while walking or running, which can help balance the strength around your hip joints so you don’t get injured.

Jumping Jacks Improve Coordination:

Jumping jacks might seem simple, but they require a fair amount of coordination, so they help improve your brain. They also help improve your balance and rhythm.

Jumping Jacks Are Great for HIIT Workouts:

HIIT workouts that quickly raise your heart rate and engage many muscle groups work well because they can be strung together quickly for a challenging workout with little rest. The addition of jumping jacks to a HIIT workout is a great way to force your body to keep working at a high intensity and to push through the feeling of breathlessness.

Jumping Jacks Can Be Done Anywhere:

Jumping jacks require only your body, meaning you can perform them anywhere without needing to step into a gym or buy gym equipment.

Jumping Jacks Reduce Stress:

Roll your chair aside and do some jumping jacks for a minute if you are feeling stressed at work. Jumping jacks reduce cortisol levels and provide stress relief.

Jumping Jacks Are Fun:

Jumping jacks make you smile by the end. Maybe it’s the nostalgic memories of playground fun, or maybe it’s the rush of endorphins from heart-pumping, a total-body exercise that does it. However, a vigorous bout of jumping jacks will almost certainly boost your mood.

What precautions should be taken when practicing jumping?

Jumping jacks are a great exercise that has a multitude of benefits, but it is advisable to take a few precautions to ensure you’re executing them properly. You should use a flat, even surface instead of an undulating one that could interfere with the impact. Avoid cement if possible. Wear shock-absorbing shoes.

Don’t let your technique slack when you’re tired — instead, take a break, restart if necessary, and listen to your body. If you have pain or injuries, you should stop the exercise and seek help from a qualified trainer.

Can you get abs from jumping jacks?

As a matter of fact, jumping jacks can help build muscle strength effectively, especially the muscles used in doing jumping jacks, such as calves, hip abductors, core muscles, abs, lower back muscles, and shoulder abductors. Jumping jacks are often incorporated into high-intensity interval routines for this reason.

How many jumping jacks should you do a day?

Jumping jacks can be incorporated into a daily workout regimen that includes both cardio and strength training. You can break them up into smaller sessions during the day or do them in bursts during interval training so that they become more accessible and reachable.

A balanced diet would enable your body organs to work efficiently, thereby supplying you with more energy to engage in your workout. You will achieve better results if you combine your workout with a balanced diet.

Beginners should begin by performing a daily set of 10 jumping jacks interspersed with other exercises, while more advanced exercisers can aim for 25 jumping jacks daily.
As a result, you should add jumping jacks to your regular workout routine to tone, tighten, and burn calories.

What does 10 minutes of jumping jacks do?

Like I told you before my friends, you’re more likely to lose weight if you’re bigger. You also lose more calories working out for a longer period. For example, we showed you how many calories you’d lose doing jumping jacks for five minutes (5):

If you are 120 pounds (5):

  • For 5 minutes of doing a jumping jack, you will lose 38.
  • For 10 minutes of doing a jumping jack, you will lose 76.
  • For 20 minutes of doing a jumping jack, you will lose 153.
  • For 30 minutes of doing a jumping jack, you will lose 229.
  • For 60 minutes of doing a jumping jack, you will lose 458.

Are Jumping Jacks hard?

Jumping feels difficult because of the high forces generated by muscles. Landing from a jump puts a lot of stress on the joints and muscles. Even landing when running uses two to three times your body weight, so jumping is greater than three times your body weight.
Because most people haven’t trained their muscles to be that strong, they don’t have strong, powerful muscles.

What are the different types of jumping jacks?

Jump jacks are often associated with activities people did as a child, similar to jump roping. Although that is true, jumping jacks are still considered great cardiovascular exercises.

There are nine different types of jumping jacks you can use to add some variety to your workouts. Some are more difficult than others, but most are suitable for all fitness levels.

  • Standard Jumping Jack.
  • Modified Jumping Jack.
  • Cross-Jack.
  • High Knee Jack.
  • Split Jack.
  • Squat Jack.
  • Hop Jack.
  • Plank Jumping Jack.
  • Push-up Jack.
  • Burpee Jack.

Originally published at https://stepbyfitness.com/ on 20 Janvier 2022

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