Kangoo Jumps – the first 300 miles
May 12th, 2015
Music – Erire – Dusk ‘Til Dawn
It was as the line of cyclists passed me, one of them pointing and laughing at my progress as I bounced along the footpath, that I wondered if I had chosen the right way of getting fit and losing weight.
Chapter One – History
Nearly ten years ago I stood on an RAF parade ground in a crowd waiting for an aircraft to pass overhead and take our photograph for the anniversary of the Battle of Britain. To my embarrassment, while wearing a jacket and tie, I couldn’t do the jacket up, a situation that had been worsening for some time given a sedentary job, too many vending machines and too little self control.
Time passed and in 2010 I tried running on a local sports field. I started out slowly, increasing a little each day and quickly ran into injury problems without losing any weight whatever. What to do? I cycled more and walked more, I started a diet and lost some weight but the ambition to run remained with me because I realised and was told that forms of exercise that support your body weight e.g. cycling and swimming, are less effective.
More time passed and in the spring of 2013 I did a Google search for “boots on springs” and “bouncy boots” and to my surprise up popped the Kangoo Jumps website and a host of YouTube videos featuring scantily clad young women dancing to music, many of them in Romania. This is for me I thought. I watched as many as I could before falling asleep at the keyboard and decided this was what I wanted to do.
A few days later the boots arrived. A colourful cardboard box with two large boots inside. This was March 2013. On removing them from the box I quickly realised that the thought of being seen out on the street at a height of 6′ 7″ was more than my reserved temperament could handle and so into the loft they went while I thought about hours of darkness, secluded barns and remote sports fields where it might be possible to use them without being seen by anything other than something on four legs.
Some months later they came downstairs and sat in a box in the hall where my partner saw them daily but said nothing for a long time . . . until one day . . .
“What are they and when are you going out in them?” she said
“I can’t go out in them” I replied “I’m too embarrassed”
“If you did you’d look ridiculous” she replied
And so months passed as they gathered dust in the hallway.
Until one day I heard about the NHS Couch to 5k programme. I can do this I thought, and I will.
The NHS Couch to 5k programme is a schedule of gentle exercise with timed running to music designed to get even the most slothful person on their feet and into the local park. Which is what I did. In my Kangoo Jumps, early in the morning not long after sunrise, and ready to face the world. Or at least the dog walkers and the few other runners, none of whom incidentally were wearing springs on their feet.
Equipped with a cheap MP3 player with the nine podcasts on it and an equally cheap pair of headphones I prepared for the worst which didn’t happen. Nobody laughed, everybody looked, especially the dogs, one or two people politely asked questions but mainly not. Most people just glanced and walked on. So my confidence grew. Days grew into weeks and weeks became months.
The NHS course isn’t perfect and in Week Five there is a big jump from two 8 minute runs divided by a five minute walk on one day, to a 20 minute run in one go on the next outing, an increase I felt unwilling to tackle. So it was at this point I abandoned the course and started relying on the heart monitor, running until my heart rate had reached the maximum for my age (220 minus your age) and then walking until it had returned to a more reasonable beat and so on.
By then I was tired of running the same half mile circuit of the park and looking for pastures new but all credit to the Couch to 5k which had started me off and I heartily recommend it because it starts out gently, only running every other day, and builds stamina without you realising what is happening. I recommend a heart monitor because only then can you truly measure your progress as your heart gets stronger and looking back you can measure the increase in fitness you have achieved.
The day you run for 30 minutes without stopping is one to remember and by then you’ve finished the Couch to 5k course anyway however you’ve got there. I can’t say if it’s different on KJs than trainers because I didn’t try both but it works and the great advantage of the KJs is that they spare your joints and are therefore less likely to result in injury although I can’t claim the benefit of speed since each boot is heavy and you’re propelling these albeit spring assisted as they are.
Chapter Two – Basics
So it’s May and you want to get fit, lose some weight and have some fun but you can’t afford a gym membership, you get bored running on treadmills and you’d like to take advantage of the fine weather but had to stop running some years ago owing to injury?
I have the answer for you. Kangoo Jumps are running boots with a spring mechanism bolted to the sole plate of the boots designed to absorb the shock of each landing and returning the stored energy to you on the next step.
In a counter intuitive manner they are easier to stand on than they look.
“How do you stay upright on them without falling over?” people ask, and I can understand that because when I got mine I went out and paid £15 for a pair of walking poles from Sports Direct which I expected to need to keep me upright while learning. They are in the wardrobe as I write and they’ve only been out once to see how they work and back in there ever since.
Like riding a bicycle, ice or roller skating or skateboarding, what looks to be potentially dangerous at first sight is in fact easy to master once you’ve summoned up the courage to put them on, fasten the straps and start bouncing.
The users appear to be split into two camps from what I can see on the videos. At the start of this article you have the decorous East Europeans flaunting their long tanned legs and athletic ability in pursuit of entertainment and indeed part of the KJ website is taken up with talking about exercise classes in gyms on wooden floors but I never wanted any of that and indeed the more hard core use for them is running out of doors which inevitably leads to greater wear and tear on the soles but is to my mind more rewarding.
The best known YouTube exponent of KJs outdoors is a Dutchman who runs cross-country. That’s not something I would do for fear of twisting an ankle but he seems to survive, you can watch his video below.
That’s pretty extreme usage, I stick to footpaths and roads (of which more later) but judging by the mud he prefers country paths and fields. Less wear on the treads perhaps but more cleaning later too. The wear he shows is extreme, the treads do wear down and the one free at one end has simply come free from the band that secures it, there is one band at each end to hold it to the “shell” – that’s the hard plastic curved piece visible in the photos, and there are two of those identical, one bolted to the sole of the boot with two Allen head bolts and the other which carries the tread.
The two shells are linked by the spring of which there are two types or rather a basic type, the T spring and the modified T spring which has a steel coil spring as the centre section following modification.
Basic T spring shown above
There is a hole at each end of the centre strand, not visible in the photo, into which a steel coil spring may be fitted in place of the centre strand which is cut away with a pair of wire cutters resulting in a pair of boots that look something like the photo below.
Curious as ever to try these I waited until the T springs that had come with my own boots were reaching the end of their life (80 hours of use) and bought a pair of steel coil springs which I fitted as described.
The effect on running was noticeably different in that there is more of a return of expended energy than from the rubber spring alone and I found myself running not faster but a little more slowly because I was enjoying the uplift from each step.
In terms of wear and tear you do have to keep an eye on the treads and the bands that secure the treads to the shells. Over time both wear and it’s not much fun to be caught out a few miles from your starting point with a trailing tread. I would suggest you carry a spare tread and band with out but these require a sturdy screwdriver to fit (it can’t be done without tools) and so you’d be carrying that as well. On balance from experience I find it better to check them carefully before setting off and make any changes at that point.
Chapter Three – Q&A
Are they worth the money? My answer is yes they are. The boots themselves, the liners (what you put your foot into) and the shells and treads are robust. There are parts that wear out it is true but these are replaceable and don’t require much in the way of technical ability to replace. Neither the boots themselves or spares are cheap and it is an ongoing project of mine to research alternative soles to save money on road running repairs but for the time being they wear sufficiently slowly to manage.
How did I accumulate 300 miles on the KJs? That’s a sum total of many 3 mile, 6 mile and longer runs over several months. I have slowly increased both fitness, the distance I can run, and lost weight in the process although it’s true what they say that “you can’t outrun a bad diet” so running alone won’t shed those unwanted pounds.
But it is fun. There is a real element of pleasure to be gained from pounding along the city streets and pavements without what I might call “trainer impact”, the pounding of your heel landing and shock going up your spine. That simply doesn’t happen with KJs, the shells bend and the T springs absorb the deflection and return it to you on the next step.
Do people stop and stare? Sometimes, and drivers wave and toot their horn sometimes too, but most of the time people take no notice and just pass on by. Besides, as a runner you are soon past them and onto the next stage.
Can I think of any drawbacks? No. There is an initial investment it’s true, and an ongoing investment in treads and bands (the rubber loop that secures the tread to the shell), and there is the time spent checking them over for tightness and wear so that you don’t get stranded miles from home with broken boots but you would check a bicycle or car for the same reason so that’s routine.
Roads and paths
Earlier on I said I’d talk about this. You won’t notice it walking but when you run in KJs, and I don’t know if this applies to running in trainers or not, different asphalt and concrete surfaces have differing levels of impact absorption. If you are driving a car and you see a runner on a road beside a footpath, they are not doing it to annoy you, or to get in your way, they are doing it because they make better progress on the harder road surface than the absorbent not to say “springy” asphalt path which absorbs some of their effort.
If you don’t believe this then you’ll have to wait to try it but over miles it does make a difference, and moving from a soft asphalt path to a hard road surface can be like stepping onto a Travelator at an airport such is the gain in momentum. Obviously the runner doesn’t want to get run over by traffic but they have their reasons for being there and they are good ones.
Chapter Four – Diet
That four letter word we all dread. A couple of paragraphs ago I cited this article you can’t out run a bad diet from the Guardian which is rather scathing about attempts to lose weight by exercise but credit where credit’s due, they get it right about diet.
I am not a dietician or nutritionist.
Let’s get that out of the way at the start. Anything I say here is based on my experience as a lay person. If you’re taking up running to get fitter, fine, if you want to go running for pleasure then great, but if you’re going running in the hope of losing weight then you will have to start calorie counting there’s just no way round that. However it would appear it depends on what type of food you are eating and not simply the calorific value of the food.
This subject is complicated, after months of running and dieting I thought I had the answer then this:-
https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/06/the-calorie-theory-prove-it-or-lose-it/
Good luck in researching calories and weight loss, I’ve only cited my experience here and I’m not going to attempt to pass any more information your way because the subject is clearly way more complicated than I had imagined.
The video is interesting though, worth a look at least:-
A calorie is not a calorie and you’ll need the slide linked here:-
Unfortunately there’s more bad news. As you get fitter you will lose weight more slowly. There’s no way round this. You are likely to lose some weight and then hit a plateau where you have to both decrease your calorie intake and increase the distance you run to lose more weight.
This calculator produces a graph that shows this:-
As you lose some weight and run further you will feel better and while I just read somewhere that exercise doesn’t make you feel better I disagree, it has lifted my mood on many occasions and far from being a chore I look forward to the runs and think you will too.
[Distance run updated 25/5/15 when I reached 300 miles – Ed.]