E-Mail This Article to a Friend Dope on a rope Teaching an old man an old trick BY GEORGE GRATTAN

Whiff. Thwack. Thump. Whiff. Thwack. Thump. Whiff. Thwa —

"Damn it!" Pant, pant.

Whiff. Thwack. Thump. Whiff. Thwack. Thump.

These sounds and this rhythm have found their way into my life in recent weeks, as I’ve sweated, strained, and stumbled while forcing my body to do something it doesn’t know how to do very well. It’s exhausting: lots of up and down, an elevated heart rate, and serious strength needed in the legs and butt.

It’s jumping rope, and it’s like I’m a kid again.

Sadly, as a kid I was a lousy rope-jumper. (Jump-roper? I don’t even know the jargon yet. I thought "double Dutch" was a movie we used to rent in college.) Okay, I was a lousy almost-everything-physical as a kid; I never put much effort into learning to do something that, had I excelled at it, would only have conferred further ridicule on my nonconforming-boyness than my nonexistent jump shot, line drive, and spiraling forward pass were already doing. But, sure, I knew the basics: flip the wrists, clear the head (whiff), jump up just enough to let the rope hit beneath you but keep going (thwack), and land with the right timing (thump) to be able to do it all again the next time it comes around; repeat as desired. I even remember learning how to cross my arms, and thus the rope, on each rotation — though that level of skill seems Olympian to me now. The dim memory of what must have been a fever dream tells me that I even learned to get a double whiff-whiff (sans thwack) on occasion, jumping high enough and spinning the rope fast enough to let it pass twice underneath my little blue Zips. Ah, the mad exuberance of youth.

Some 30-odd years later, I’m not quite sure what possessed me to take this up again — except, maybe, an inflated sense of mortality coupled with a desire to be silly, wrapped in the trappings of macho workout culture. While my outer self was talking about the incredible health benefits of jumping rope, and likening my planned 10 minutes of "rope work" that first day to the routines of the princes of pugilism, my inner self was thinking both that I’d be middle-aged sooner than I’d ever thought possible and that it would be getting away with something to start jumping rope at 35. I suppose I was tired of running the same streets, waiting for the same elliptical machine, and swimming the same laps. My cardio needed some new heart — and this childlike jumping seemed to fit the bill.

So there I was, stealing a private moment in the YMCA’s all-purpose room, temporarily empty between rounds of Yoga for People More Centered and Supple Than Thou, Spinning Our Wheels Nowhere Fast, and Ab Attack (wasn’t Michael Caine in that?). I ducked in from the weight room and found a jump rope. Its blue plastic cord was a Proustian trigger, evoking sense-memories of back yards, Italian ices, and looking for ticks at the top of white socks. Perfect — I’d learned on one of these things once, however quickly I abandoned it, and I could learn on one again. How hard could it be?

Like the song says, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. I couldn’t get my wrists to twirl the right way. The rope seemed too short, and I kept hitting the back of my head far more than I remembered being standard practice. Worst of all was my odd insistence on doing a weird double-jump with each pass, my feet and legs going right back to the childhood pace and giving my wrists entirely too much credit. Whiff. Thwack. Thump-thump gets to be too good a workout faster than you can say "Miss Mary Mack." Cardio was becoming cardiac, and the rope was working me. There seemed to be no way I’d last my inaugural 10 minutes, much less ever work my way up to three sets. In desperation, I tried to one-foot it, thinking I just needed to find the zone that boxers and other tough guys find, but the result — while not wholly unsuccessful in the broadest sense — was more Michael Flatley than Mike Tyson. (Note to the YMCA: too many mirrors in the all-purpose room.)

I was on the verge of hanging it up and trudging to the ellipticals when a little girl’s voice said, as matter-of-fact as anything I’ve heard, "You’re silly. You’re trying much too hard." She was no doubt as amused by my efforts at this thing so distinctly hers as I’d have been to see her try to put on a necktie. Sweaty, panting, and frustrated, I turned to face my new coach head-on. "Sure is harder than I remember. Any pointers?"

She stuck out her hand and walked up to me; the rope was in her control before I knew I’d turned it over to her. "You’re swinging the rope too high, and you’re jumping too fast to start," she said, settling into an easy flow of wrists and feet and spinning blue plastic. "You don’t need to jump so high. Keep your hands still. It’s supposed to be easy." With that, she doubled her pace to whiff-whiff and soon threw in crossovers. Then she did crossed turn-arounds in the arc of the rope’s circuit, moving so quickly it seemed to be both below and above her at once, a little blue infinity, turned on its side, with a smile in the middle not the slightest bit out of breath.

"Got it," I said, "Thanks. You’re pretty good."

"I know. But I’ve been practicing a long time. Bye!"

Whiff-thwack-thump. Nice and easy, keep it simple, keep it fun. I’ve got my own leather rope now, and its handles fit my hands better. As the weeks go on, I’m finding a new sense of rhythm, new ranges of syncopation in my pulse and footfalls. Not too high, not too high. When it gets going right, the rope starts to sing. And I’ve got plenty of time to practice.

George Grattan can be reached at grattang@bc.edu