Chinese Jump Rope
резинки
Two players hold a stretched elastic with their legs while a third jumps set figures through it, raising the height with every clean pass.
Chinese jump rope is a game with a ladder. The elastic is held higher and higher, and the same figures that are easy at the ankles take effort at the thighs and become close to acrobatics at the chest.
So the game does not end in a victory over an opponent: the opponent is holding the elastic at the time. It ends when somebody is first to reach the top .
Holding is a role too
The two who stretch the elastic with their legs are not resting: whether the tension is even and whether the elastic is at the right height depend on them.
And that is exactly where a player who faults ends up. The penalty here is not waiting your turn but working for somebody else's pass.
Elastic
Under these rules: Laundry elastic three or four metres long, tied into a loop.
A length of laundry elastic tied into a loop and held apart by two players' legs.
Ordinary laundry elastic a few metres long, knotted at the ends. It has to stretch and come back: slack elastic will not let a hook do its work.
The rules of Chinese jump rope
Setting up
The elastic is tied into a loop. Two players step inside it and move apart, stretching it with their legs: two parallel lines result.
A third jumps between them and around them.
The heights
The ladder runs upward: ankles, knees, thighs, waist, chest, neck. At each new step the elastic is held higher.
The width changes too: wide, with the holders standing further apart, and narrow, with their feet almost together.
A pass
At each height the jumper performs the agreed : in and out, a turn on the spot, a bow, an envelope, a pass in one style or another.
Get through the whole figure without a fault, and the elastic goes up a step, and they jump on.
Faults
A fault is a wrong sequence, an unplanned , a step wide of the mark, or the elastic coming off the holders' legs.
The player at fault gives their place to the next in the queue and goes to hold the elastic themselves.
Winning
The first player through the whole ladder to the top height wins.
Worth knowing
The set of figures, their order and what counts as a faulty hook are fixed nowhere and belong to each company — they are agreed at the start. So is whether a jumper resumes at their own height on the next turn or starts the ladder again.
Glossary of terms
- Figure
- The agreed sequence of jumps and hooks to be performed at this height.
- Height
- The level the elastic is held at, from ankles to neck. Every clean pass raises it a step.
- Hook
- Catching the elastic with a foot in the course of a figure. An unplanned hook is a fault.