🛒 Which rope should you buy?

Five rope types, what each is actually for, and the honest verdict. No affiliate fluff — we make a counting app, not ropes.

The licorice-style rope from any sports shop. Light enough to be safe when you whip your shins (you will), cheap enough to not care, and honestly all you need for your first three months. Pick one with bearings in the handles if you can.

Verdict: Start here. Upgrade only when the rope is what's holding you back — it usually isn't.

Plastic beads over a cord. The beads add just enough feedback that you can hear and feel every rotation, which makes timing dramatically easier to learn. The freestyle and crossover community jumps almost exclusively on beads.

Verdict: The best learning tool in the sport, and the most fun per dollar.

A thin coated steel cable with ball-bearing handles. Spins far faster than your arms can — great for double unders, brutal on mistakes (cable whip stings). Needs precise sizing: use a rope about your height plus 2 feet, and trim it.

Verdict: Buy when double unders become your goal. Size it with the calculator below first.

Weight in the rope (not the handles) forces full shoulder engagement and slows the rotation down — which counterintuitively makes it EASIER for beginners to time, while tripling the upper-body work. Crossrope built an entire ecosystem on this.

Verdict: The best 'workout feel' per minute. Heavier ropes also smooth out your form.

Sensors in the handles count rotations precisely (Tangram SmartRope, Crossrope AMP). The catch is the software: handle-counters live and die by their companion apps, and several big names have weak ones. If you already wear an Apple Watch, a counting app gives you the same numbers on hardware you own.

Verdict: Skip if you own an Apple Watch — that's literally why this app exists. Counting is free with us.

Wrong length is the #1 reason beginners trip. Thirty seconds fixes it.