Jumps

Jumps create excitement on the sidelines and contributes to a big part of your scoring for competitive cheer. To get your jumps as high as possible and to help them look great, you have to exercise and stretch. Varsity's Ultimate Guide to Cheerleading has a list of exercises that will increase strength and flexibility. I tired these exercises out to help my jumps, and to see if I could improve my jumps.




Out of the three exercise, there was two that I feel I benefitted from the most. The first exercise was the sitting toe touch. For this exercise you "Lie flat on your back, feet together and arms near your ears. Then using your core, bring your upper body up while bringing your toes up and out, hitting a 'seated toe touch' position. Finally slowly lower yourself back down. Concentrate on keeping your legs straight and toes pointed" (Webber 64). I loved this exercise. It not only works your core to build stronger abdominal muscles, but you can also feel it helping make you legs stronger as you go. In addition to this building strength, the more you repeat this exercise the higher you feel your legs go, which shows its benefits towards the flexibility of you jumps.

The next exercise is the seated straddle lift. This exercise is great for your legs and hips. It makes your legs stronger while also working your hip flexor muscles. By working your hip flexors, it allows for more flexibility in your jumps and your legs to go higher up. For this exercise you sit in a straddle position with your hands on both sides of one leg, and lift your leg up and down. You  repeat this for both legs individually and at the same time (65). I could feel this exercise working the whole time in my hips. And after the exercise I got up and tried my jumps. When I did my toe touch I felt my legs flying higher then they were before.

Both of these exercises are super beneficial to your jumps, and after doing them I would highly recommend. So my question is, what jump exercises do you find most beneficial to helping your jumps?

Citation:

Webber, Rebecca. Varsity's Ultimate Guide to Cheerleading. Boston: Poppy, New York. Print.