Let me tell you why I love frog jumping. I love it because it’s fun, it’s crazy, it’s an incredibly effective exercise for the abs and quads, and it’s mysterious. Very few people know what it is. For example, today I called my friend, Khipra, in Rhode Island, and asked him if I could stay over at his place on my way up to Boston to attempt the frog jumping record. He said it was fine, he had a spare room, but he wasn’t sure where he would keep the frogs!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, frog jumping doesn’t involve any living creatures except human beings. It is an exercise in which you squat down and hop around like a frog. The thing that makes it difficult is that you have to hold onto your big toe with each hand and you can’t let go. The Guinness record is for jumping 10 meters (about 33 feet) in the fastest time. I don’t know why French people are sometimes affectionately referred to as “frogs”, but maybe there is a good reason. It was a Frenchman who hopped 10 meters in a blazing 11.58 seconds to clinch the Guinness record!
When I first started practicing this event, I could barely move an inch. I discovered that having to hold onto your toe and jump at the same time, somehow confuses the brain. It’s a weird sensation! Once I got the hang of it, I also quickly learned that you need to do this calisthenic on a soft surface like carpet or grass, or else you end up with bruised and battered fingers. I’m always into trying new things, so when it snowed a few weeks ago here in New York, I thought I might have really hit upon something big – frog jumping in the snow! Why not? The snow is soft and smooth and hopping on it would look really cool!
Well, make that really cold, like freezing cold! I forgot that it was 17 degrees Fahrenheit outside and, by the rules, I would have to jump in my bare feet. Also, it was slippery and the uneven surface threw me further off balance. In other words, it was a fiasco and ranks up there with such other of my “sounds good until you try it out” ideas as juggling while treading water and upside down pogo stick jumping!
But don’t be afraid to try frog jumping in the cold. A couple of weeks ago, I shoveled off the remaining snow on the sidewalk in front of my house and rolled down a 10-meter carpet runner. I had my friend, Ketan, time me with a stopwatch and, on my first hopping attempt, I did pretty well. Just before beginning my second attempt, I noticed a garbage truck pulling up alongside me on the street. I could tell the garbage man was watching attentively, although he pretended to be concentrating on his job. I managed a fast frog jump down the runner and, when Ketan announced my time, I let out a big whoop. Unable to contain my joy, I shouted out to the garbage guy, “Hey, I just unofficially broke the Guinness record by a quarter of a second!” After tossing a trash bag in the back of the truck, the husky fellow turned to me, gave me an enormous smile, then shook his head and said, “Better you than me, my friend!”
