Bearing Skipping Rope

Details

A speed rope on two sealed ball bearings, one in each handle, in machined aluminium. Bearing is the word that gets stretched here. A great many ropes advertised as ball bearing use a plastic or brass bushing, which is a sleeve rather than a bearing: it spins acceptably for a few months, then wears oval and the rope starts snatching at the top of the arc. A second version puts one real bearing in one handle and a bushing in the other, and describes the rope as bearing. Ours takes two sealed 623ZZ deep-groove bearings, 3 mm bore, 10 mm outside, 4 mm wide, which is a standard size any bearing shop in any town stocks for about the price of a cup of tea. Naming the size is the point: a part you can name is a part you can buy. The cable is the only consumable in the product. It clamps at each end with a grub screw and a 1.5 mm hex key, so a frayed cable is a thirty-second job rather than a new rope. Two spares come in the box.

• Two sealed 623ZZ ball bearings, one per handle, a size any bearing shop stocks
• Machined aluminium handles, 125 mm, cut knurl, no foam grip to harden and crumble
• Cable clamped on a grub screw at each end, 1.5 mm hex key included
• Speed cable is 2.4 mm overall: a 1.5 mm steel core in a PVC jacket
• Weighted cable is 5 mm overall on the same core, for conditioning rather than speed
• 3 m supplied, cut to your height, two spare cables in the box
• Free cables for three years, bearings sold as a pair
• No plastic bushing described as a bearing, no sealed-in cable, no foam grips
• A bearing rope is heavier at the handle and louder than a bushing rope. Both are real and neither goes away. What you get for them is the same spin in year three as in week one.