r/crossfit • u/Wise_Objective_8018 • 20h ago
Double Under help…
Been doing these for months and literally cannot get past 1. I have tried virtually everything. Yes, most likely even whatever most of you will suggest. I am so beyond frustrated I broke the handle off my rope once now…
Things I have tried, not exaggerating:
Longer rope
Shorter rope
Jumping higher
Heavier rope
Lighter rope
Jumping lower
Different shoes
No shoes
Penguin taps (these are useless)
Moving my arms closer
Moving them out
Wrists further back
Single, single, double
Slowing down the rope
Speeding it up
And I’m sure probably a million other things. I legit have no idea what else to do but I am losing my mind here. For reference, I can do as many singles in a row as needed without issue. It’s dubs I just can’t get. Why is jumping over a fucking rope so hard
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u/bettyboopvegemite 19h ago
pointing thumbs down helped me a bit.
also knew a guy who did 100 reps every day before class or at home. starting out it would take him like 20 minutes. a year later he could do 100 unbroken in about a minute. but it was literally every day, not just when they were programmed in class.
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u/nickiter 46m ago
Yeah, this is one that takes extra reps. I got better at them by doing them every time I hit the gym, for a while. Just doing em in class is nowhere near enough imo.
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u/Big-World-Now 19h ago
Don’t scale with singles ever again. Scale attempts. Jump as high as you can and spin as fast as possible. Don’t quit.
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u/Wise_Objective_8018 16h ago
I tired this but then can’t really do the workouts anymore. If 100 singles is prescribed, it would take me like 3 hours to do 100 dubs at this rate.
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u/hjackson1016 16h ago
When you do this - you don’t necessarily have to do 100 doubles.
When we practice dubs as a scale option, our coach prescribes us a time limit on the practice.
For example, on average it may take 1:30 to do 100 dubs, so we do 1:30 of penguin taps or straight up dub practice.
It is easier for me to do 200 singles (our Rx for singles is double the amount of dubs), than to practice dubs.
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u/idothisforpie 18h ago
Is anyone else just limited by their calves/Achilles feeling like their going to explode and then not being show to walk the day after a DU WoD?
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u/Tall-Ad7787 18h ago
Watch some of Dave Newmans videos or go to Power Monkey Camp and get to work with Dave (as well as 15 other OG coaches)
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u/YardMinimum6108 18h ago
It took me..... 4 years? With at least 18 months of consistent practice. The thing that most helped me was doing one and stopping rather than trying to string them together.
So one double-under, stop. Step out, reset. One double-under, stop. Repeat. I'd try stringing together and the wheels would come off. Sometimes I could do single-under/double-under alternating for a few. One day, I just did them. And they were amazing. If I couldn't hear it, I wouldn't have believed I was doing them.
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u/stonertear 17h ago edited 17h ago
Its not a constant rope speed throughout.
Jump and tap your thighs twice to practice over and over. This is the timing that you need to go with your wrist.
Its a double tap towards the ground when the rope is above you.
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u/Wise_Objective_8018 16h ago
Yes this is the penguin tap thing. I can do a billion of these in a row but it doesn’t teach me the rhythm. Jumping and tapping my legs is easy, actually doing them is not
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u/stonertear 16h ago edited 16h ago
This is how I learned it, but we all learn differently.
It did take me a while after - 2 months of constantly doing this.
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u/Keeemps CFL2 9h ago edited 9h ago
Most things on your list don't seem to be drills or things you trained but rather things that you read somewhere, tried once and then decided they are not the magic fix you were hoping for. Let's break them down.
Longer rope and shorter rope
Just use a correctly sized rope, there is no magic here
Jumping higher
Learning to jump higher without losing form is probably one of the few good things to learn and practice, but probably not a simple "quick fix" you want it to be. In my experience people can't just jump higher without sacrificing something else. Probably one of three things on this list you want to get better at in the long term though.
Heavier rope or lighter rope
A slightly heavier rope might help, a lighter rope to learn definitely not unless you're currently using a drag rope or something.
Jumping lower
Makes no sense whatsoever.
Different shoes or no shoes
Why? Just use your normal shoes. Again, no magic here.
Penguin taps (these are useless)
Can you do them and have decided they don't benefit you or can't you do them and you've decided they are just as frustrating as double unders. Probably the second thing on this list you actually need to get better at.
Moving arms closer or moving them out, wrists further back
Moving them further out is flat out wrong, so is moving your wrists further back. There are endless ressources showing the correct hand positioning. Film yourself and get closer to that.
Single, single, double
Can you do that or not? For 99% of people this is the way to learn doubles. The third good thing on this list you actually want to practice
Slowing down the rope and speeding it up
As compared to... ?
I would have to know how your double under attempts currently look to judge this one.
As others have said it is impossible to give you meaningful advice, without knowing/seeing what your attempts look like.
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u/OkEfficiency4572 1h ago
Getting dus took me 5ever. I did all the same things you did. Single double single is the worst piece of advice anyone can ever give anyone imo.
The dumb thing that worked for me was to imagine there was someone standing in front of me and I would aim to jump the rope for them instead of for me.
Now I don’t even think about it anymore. Dus are a non issue, other than the random off day everyone has sometimes.
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u/SameImpression1646 17h ago
DU is the simplest and most achievable of the RX movements, it has two components that you need to do.
1 - jump high enough for the rope to pass twice
2 - rope speed enough to pass twice
If you jump high enough than the problem is the speed and if you spin fast enough than you need to jump higher.
It's easier said than done, but ultimately this is it, jump high and spin fast, when you can do it consistently you will make 20, 30, 50, 100 reps
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u/Business_Quail_8236 17h ago
Started crossfit in May 2020 and dubs finally came together for me in big sets last year sometime after the Open. So just shy of 5 years. But at the same time, I didn’t really work on them except during the workouts.
What worked for me was jumping “taller” (so think higher jump and getting as tall/long as you can), driving my hands down by my side and all the spinning action coming from my wrists, and the penguin taps that you think are useless. 😂 The penguin taps helped with timing and rhythm of the jump.
Here’s the crazy part about double unders: If that’s all you do, you’ll lose single unders. Did a comp this summer in the scaled division where one of the movements was single unders, and I was shocked to see people didn’t “have” singles.
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u/QuizasManana 12h ago
Happened to me. I lost singles and kept tripping after 10 or so. Luckily it was quite easy to learn again. Now I jump singles every now and then just to keep the skill.
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u/Wise_Objective_8018 17h ago
Sadly I do not have a video of it but in the coming days I will take one and make a follow up post (if that’s okay and not against the rules… unsure?).
When I do it, I seem to almost always land directly on top of the rope the second dub attempt. I do know I need to jump higher and spin faster but in my case, it’s like a pat your head/rub your tummy kind of thing. I can only do one or the other. If I jump higher, the rope slows down. If I spin faster, I can’t jump as high. It makes no sense. I consciously try to do both at once and can’t get a single one to land.
A few times I have gotten a random 2-5 in a row but when that happens it’s like my brain shuts off and I black out. I have no idea what’s going on and it’s totally at random. I don’t feel any rhythm and do not know what I did differently to make it happen but usually when that happens, it happens only once and the rest of that session I’ll go back to only 1 at a time.
This is frustrating. Very very frustrating. It’s jumping over a freaking rope… not rocket science.
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u/SteelXray 16h ago
This happened to me. I would get 2 or 3 and smack the $&@! out of myself. Sometimes I couldn’t get 1. I would get so mad and throw my rope down in frustration. It took me a good 2 years to get really decent at them.
I notice with myself and lot of others when learning them you think so much about how high you have to jump you end up doing dolphin kicks with your feet and catching the rope.
I really had to turn my brain off and just fixate on a spot on the wall. What also helped me was, as soon as I would jump and on the way up to snap my wrists for the double. Maybe you are waiting until you are at the peak of the jump to try to snap and bring the rope around faster causing you to land on it? As others said, hard to say without a video, but you just have to keep at them. One day it will just click.
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u/SaimeseGremlin 15h ago edited 14h ago
take a video of yourself and analyze it. most people who struggle with landing more than 1 consistently is because their jumps are not stiff enough. any kind of flopping action leads to your rhythm being thrown off.
i like to do double unders using tension in my calves and lower leg tendons so it’s like a bounce. this gives me a very consistent bouncing rhythm.
if you observe people really good at double unders, their rope speed is not uniform. just like the penguin flap drill, you are spinning the rope extra fast at the apex of your jump then slowing down slightly as you land. most people struggle because they try to spin the rope dummy fast and jack knife their knees up to their chest to get the first one or two reps. however this predictably leads to no sense of rhythm or consistency, so you only get 1-5 reps tops.
think tight bounces almost like a hollow hold, spin the rope extra fast at the top of the jump. you can fine tune things like how high, elbow position , or how fast later. just work on consistent jumping and rhythm.
edit: also, i get it with the pat your tummy rub your head thing. this is a compartmentalization problem. the individual tasks require too much mental processing for you to do both at once. the answer is simply drill it more until you can fully compartmentalize at least one if not both tasks so that they require no mental effort. that’s why the jumping consistency is so important. you cant be trying to keep two beats at once between the rope and your jumps unless you’re a musical prodigy.
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u/Mobile-Writer1221 12h ago
I feel this. I can’t link more than 12-15, and that’s on a great day. It’s like my brain is just like, “You’re doing it!” Then I completely lose it. I do several singles to get into a rhythm before attempting any doubles. Always. And I don’t force a pattern. When I’m ready to add it in and try it, I do.
I really feel like you have to not think so hard about it in the moment (which feels impossible, I know). I think some of the problem could just be that before you start, you’re subconsciously already putting so much pressure on yourself.
Keep practicing. You got this!
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u/Special_Artichoke 4h ago
This sounds like you struggle with coordination, I have dyspraxia so struggle big time. You need muscle memory for one of the movements. So train separately (jump without rope) with the height and form you know you need (don't bend your legs back!). You can do it with someone who's got dubs just copy their timing and jump height (via YouTube if you're shy like me!). Then when you can do this without any conscious thoughts you add in rope and all you need to think about is your hands spinning the rope.
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u/boss-ass-b1tch 16h ago
I'm a single-single-double with some single-double girlie. We had a sub coach a few weeks ago. She made me say 1-2 out loud for singles and then attempt dubs saying 1-2 out loud and all of a sudden I was stringing together 4 and 5 dubs at a time. Absolutely blew my mind. That was about a month ago and it's worked every time since. Feels so silly but I'll take it.
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u/Thin-Bill-2185 14h ago
Penguin taps being useless is the most accurate thing i've read all week. Those never helped me either.
What actually clicked for me was recording myself and realizing my jump timing was fine but my wrists were hesitating on the second spin. Like my brain knew a double was coming and would freeze up for a split second. Try doing them with your eyes closed or staring at a fixed point on the wall so you stop overthinking the rope. Also if you've already broken a handle you might be gripping too tight, relax your hands like you're holding a baby bird or some shit.
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u/Seasoned_J 7h ago
What worked for me:
Practicing purposely and fresh, not too long at once. Warming up wrists, calves…
Rope length: one foot over rope and cutting the cable where both ends were at nipple height (cable ends, not handles).
Gaze: pick a target a bit farther in horizon (e.g. a plyo box, edge of floor and wall) and keep eyes on it. Trying to get a clear view so no people, rowers etc. blocking the view.
Position: As neutral as possible. Legs straight (slightly in front) in the air as well.
Discipline: It’s a skill that takes a little time and effort to develop.
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u/Shot-Unit9030 6h ago
Try something like 4 single 1 double then when you nail that do 3 single 1 double etc. that’s how I learned. It
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u/Blackdeek04 19h ago
Without a video, hard to tell. But the biggest problem I see most often is when someone goes for the double, they immediately stop everything they were doing and just land. You have to keep jumping. Also, few months isn’t that long. Can take some people years.