It’s a sad however true fact that more and more children are ending up being obese. With fewer opportunities for exercise and a diet loaded with junk food, the number of obese children is steadily climbing.

Schools don’t have the resources to spend on fitness facilities and lots of parents are too busy working their butts off to spend time doing physically demanding activities with their children so, sadly, it’s all but inevitable that children are getting fatter.

However, if children need to do even more exercise and facilities are thin on the ground, why not motivate them to take up that old playground classic activity of using a jump rope?

Not so many years ago, you could all but guarantee you would see children skipping at break time in schools throughout the country so maybe it’s time that jump ropes were reintroduced to schools or, better still, made compulsory?

Regular schoolyard jump ropes were made of cotton and were simply lengths of rope cut to size. While useable, they weren’t really ideal for a good jump rope session as they easily tangled and were laboriously slow. Technology has leapt ahead enormously since those days of cotton ropes so surely that means jump rope technology has advanced too? You bet!

What is the most effective jump rope for children?

If your kid wants to get more active and develop a healthy and balanced fitness habit, they can now utilize a much better type of jump rope, a speed rope. While designed for adults, speed jump ropes are totally adjustable to suit the needs of a kid. These ropes are fast, smooth and very simple to use and additionally, look pretty awesome too.

Designed for boxers, CrossFitters and other hardcore fitness lovers, speed jump ropes are a joy to use and much easier to handle than the old cotton ropes. With a speed jump rope, your child can be doing tricks like double unders (2 rope turns per single jump) and cross overs in no time at all. Skipping is so much fun that it’s like exercise in disguise which makes it a perfect way to make children more active.

Kid’s jump ropes are usually not really up to the job they are sold for. Too light to turn at a decent speed and not designed for any type of serious use, it’s not surprising that they are marketed as toys instead of physical fitness activities. Instead of buy a kid’s jump rope, investing a little extra on a decent speed jump rope means your kid is a lot more likely to enjoy using it and as a result will keep using it for several years to come. And the fact that they are adjustable means you can alter the rope as your kid grows — upward that is, and not outward …

Skipping ropes are arguably the ultimate in childrens’ exercise tools to help stop the current rise in childhood obesity so why not do your bit by giving your kid the perfect speed jump rope.

Taking a stroll on a gold course can be enjoyable. But not during a thunderstorm. Your odds of being hit by lightning are around 576000 to 1. If you like to wander around in the rain, you radically increase your chance of being hit by lightning; it’s no secret.

However, if I saw you working out with a kettlebell, I’d come to the conclusion that your chances of getting an injury — perhaps a minor injury like a bruise, but it could be a more serious injury like a tweaked back — were much, much greater. Actually, the experts who hang out on the web’s number 1 forum for discussing kettlebells say that kettlebell beginners run a risk because, believe it or not, 1 in 6 kettlebell enthusiasts gets injured to the point of not being able to work out for a week or more.

Listen, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. Kettlebells, in and of themselves, are not particularly dangerous. The idea that I think it’s important you grasp is that old-fashioned kettlebell design isn’t as good as modern, refined design. Let me show you what I mean.

Everyone who starts a fitness program using kettlebells suffers from bruised forearms. Avoiding these forearm bruises is difficult (if not impossible), because of the way the ‘bell swings into the arm during overhead movements. Since the rounded surface of the kettlebell impacts your arm, it hits with more force than it would if the surface was flatter. Even if your kettlebell isn’t moving very fast, it still hits hard. It’s like getting hit by a rounded baseball bat, you can’t avoid bruising from even a moderate impact. However, picture your kettlebell without the rounded surfaces. Imagine instead that it had flat sides. Instead of feeling like you forearm bones got tapped by a baseball bat, you’d feel like the energy of the impact was distributed across a much larger area. It would feel like you were hit by the flat side of a board rather than by a rounded bat. Bruises would be a thing of the past.

The news is good. An adjustable kettlebell with a modern design like the Ironmaster kettlebell handle have flat instead of rounded surfaces. This makes your workouts a lot easier and more productive because the ergonomically-designed modern kettlebell works with you instead of against you. With a properly-designed kettlebell, you can go through your workout and not get bruised up as if you got smacked with a Louisville slugger baseball bat. .

People get injured when it’s really avoidable. Here’s another way this happens. Lots of kettlebell athletes get blisters and other hand injuries because traditional bells have large, thick handles that are not very comfortable to grip. I’ll tell you why this has happened…

In the past, kettlebell manufacturers made thick-handled kettlebells not because thick handles were what athletes wanted or needed, but simply because they made their bells from cheap cast iron that would break if the handles were thinner. You understand the problem now — in order to keep cast iron kettlebell handles from possibly breaking if they are dropped onto the ground, the manufacturers made the handles thicker than comfort alone would dictate. But modern times bring innovation, and these days things are better.

Modern kettelbells are built with thinner steel handles. Steel is forged instead of cast in a mold. It’s thinner and stronger, and it fits the hand properly.

Today’s kettlebells, like the Ironmaster adjustable kettlebell, are built with proper grip in mind. They don’t destroy the hands and palms like thick-grip bells. No matter how tight you grip it, it won’t cause as many blisters as older, thick handle kettlebells. And if you want to swing it or press it overhead, it’ll find its groove in your hand and go right where it should. Today’s modern adjustable kettlebells give you options, and they’re ergonomically designed. They blow stubby kettlebells out of the water. Say goodbye to blisters.

Do the sensible thing and leave the golf course when thunder makes itself heard in the distance. And just like you’d avoid lightning by taking prudent precautions, avoid kettlebell injuries by using sensibly-designed equipment like modern adjustable kettlebells. Today’s designs are better than their predecessors, and that means you’ll work out more often and more safely.