Heavy Rope is Better for Every Body that Swings a Rope
BY: Josi Flotron
Introduction
Where RopeFlow is good for the body, heavy rope is even better. It can supercharge your movement practice and get you deeply in touch with your body. Targeting your joints and fascia with heavy flow can be remarkably effective and easy to incorporate. It can improve everything you love about RopeFlow while potentially adding strength gains and faster recovery.
My Journey with Heavy RopeFlow
How did a chronically ill, exercise-avoidant, 40-something mom erase decades of pain and become known for the grace and power of her unique flow style? There’s no mystery to it; she started swinging heavy and discovered the best-kept secret in RopeFlow.
Before the flow found me, I was in the worst shape of my life and regularly threw my back out doing simple household chores. I was the girl who lived with so much body shame she would never willingly join a yoga class and couldn’t bear being seen in a swimsuit. Chronic illness made regular exercise impossible for 30 years. Two years into my RopeFlow journey, I find myself in love with my own body, not because I starved it into shape, but because I learned to listen to what it was telling me.
The Benefits of Heavy RopeFlow
Every body is different, but for me, Heavy RopeFlow was the magic wand I’d almost given up finding. I no longer wear knee braces to hike, and bouncing lunges are what my body craves. I train nothing but RopeFlow and credit it entirely with my reductions in joint and fascia pain.
My first heavy was 680g /1.5lbs, and 18 months and five ropes later, I’m up to a 2.6kg /5.7lbs and finding the deepest joy of movement I’ve ever known. I am strong from my toes to my nose in a way I never believed possible. Heavy ropes have transformed my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
Heavy Ropes are Rocket Fuel for Your RopeFlow Practice
Thanks to the genius of David Weck, the world now has both RopeFlow and the language for understanding rotational movement. As David teaches, becoming a master of spinal rotation and head-over-foot locomotion is a primary benefit of RopeFlow. In my experience, those same functional patterns can be ingrained even deeper in our cells when weight is added.
Heavy Rope is transformative because the weight demands efficiency. The more weight you add to your roll, the more your entire body must cooperate to move it. With a lighter rope, you can perform a Dragon Roll by relying primarily on your arms instead of the spinal twist that ideally powers the movement; a heavier rope will encourage your body to turn on your spinal engine and find the natural efficiency of movement that you are designed for.
Heavy ropes push you into the ground. You have to push back up to keep flowing. This naturally develops superior stability of movement. It’s more than just a vertical stability, it’s spherical. As the rope rotates, you are holding steady against forces that hit you from every angle. You train every plane inside the sphere; we call this Centrifugal Tension. It’s most visible in movements like fluid lunges where you’re relying on the momentum of the rope to partially power the movement. (SEE VIDEO SHOTGUN LUNGES)
This directly affects your flow with lighter ropes. Peacock (reverse Cheetah’s Tail) used to be my least favorite move; I could hardly keep it rolling for 15 seconds, it stressed my shoulders and tempted me into frustration. Today, I have a wickedly smooth Peacock, and I didn’t have to endlessly drill the movement to get there. My Peacock is a direct result of drilling anchored sneaks with heavy ropes. This is the kind of explosive growth that your flow practice can experience. (SEE VIDEO OF HEAVY ANCHORED SNEAKS COMPARED TO LIGHT PEACOCKS)
How NOT To & How To
I usually roll my eyes when disclaimers tell me to talk to my doctor, but this is critical with heavy ropes because they pose far greater risk than lighter flow ropes, no matter how strong your muscles are; it’s your joints at high risk here. Please always consult the health and/or fitness professionals in your life and NEVER try to unlock new RopeFlow patterns with heavy ropes— that’s a sure way to sprain a wrist or wrench a shoulder, especially if you’re hypermobile like me. Always listen to your body and respect your limits.
Heavy flow can be added to most RopeFlow practices, as long as you step up in small increments. Before rolling a heavy rope, you need to be proficient at the basic RopeFlow movements as taught by the WeckMethod (specifically Race & Chase and Matador in both Overhand and Underhand) and fully aligned with your Cardinal directions. You don’t actually need to be a master of the Dragon Roll, Sneaks, or any other patterns. If you already know them, you will likely improve them; if not, heavy rope can quicken your proficiency once you unlock them with a lighter rope. Your body needs to learn the patterns gently before you ask it to increase the load.
I recommend beginning your first heavy flow with a Race & Chase pattern. Whether this is overhand or underhand depends on what’s better for your body. Most people have a preference between the two, find your comfort level with a lighter rope and see if it translates to heavy. Underhand is always the easier direction for me; my wrists cast the determining vote from my body. You’ll want to pay close attention to performing transitions with heavier rope as the weight can alter the way your body (usually the wrists) adjusts inside turns. I tend to move my wrists less and my elbows and shoulders more with heavy rope as compared to light.
The first time you pick up a heavy rope, you might be tempted to stand still while swinging. I encourage you not to stand still too long. Be prepared to move your feet during flow. This doesn’t have to be fancy footwork; just one step forward and one step back will immediately help carry the increased load and allow the practice to work its magic. The more you move your body, the less you need to move the rope. With movement, we can more easily distribute weight through our whole body. If this seems too difficult at first, you can simply lengthen your stance; have one foot a short distance in front of the other and then allow the rotation of the rope to rock you front and back between your two feet. The stability of your lengthened stance balances you while the weighted rotation is trying to force you out of balance.
Finding the Right Heavy Rope
Globally, there isn’t yet a standard for the line between light and heavy ropes, plus it’s relative to the body that’s swinging them. I’m 1.7m /5’6ft and in an average female body. My first flow ropes were 450g /1lb or less. My first heavy rope was 680g /1.5lbs and tired me out quickly. The general rule that informed my progressive weight increases was that when I could flow for 10 minutes without effort, it was time to up the weight. Definitely seek advice if you’re not sure where to start or when to move up.
Heavy rope has been my greatest movement teacher. The challenge of moving fluid weight demands my body to be present in each moment; my mind goes quiet the longer I let the body move. I believe this practice has deep benefits and if it calls to you, I hope you answer.
Conclusion
If RopeFlow is in its adolescence, Heavy RopeFlow is in its infancy. Bodies of every shape, size, and strength are discovering how powerful a simple increase in weight can be, not just for their existing RopeFlow practice but for every level of what it means to be inside a body. Heavy rope helps you feel better, move better, and look better.
Josi Flotron is a movement and meditation coach who really, really loves heavy ropes. You can find her at MotherRope.com and on Instagram @MotherRope.