Video:Cheerleading Jump Exercises

Transcript:Cheerleading Jump Exercises

Hi, my name is Saleem Habash, here at Premier Athletics of Lexington, home of the Kentucky All Stars for About.com. Today we're going to show you how to put together a basic jump tutorial.

Cheer Jump Preparation

To develop a good jump technique it's going to take a few things, but first you have to decide what jump you are going to use. Today we are going to use a low-clap to high-clap prep.

As you can see she starts in a low position, she's going to extend up through her toes, making sure she gets up on the balls of her feet. After the prep they are going to bend down into the athletic position, the important thing here is they don't break ninety degrees; they're going to push off the ground, exploding from their toes, hitting which ever trick, and then right back down to that same athletic position.

Cheer Jump Strengthening Exercises

To develop good jumps you are going to have to build various parts of your body. One of the key things is Plyometrics. The first one is the box-hops, and you notice here she's got her feet together, she pushes off her toes, her heels never touch the ground and she jumps as though she's moving from the four corners of a box.

Another exercise we use to develop their jumps is the side-to-side jump. Similar to the last exercise, except this time you are going to keep your feet together and hop side to side. Many times we do it down a line or you can just do it standing in place. In addition to this, we try to work on our core to develop a good jump.

One of our favorite exercises is the plank sequence. When doing the plank sequence, you want to be down on the ground, with your body nice and tight. You're really concentrating on pulling your belly into your back, and make sure to look at your hands that way you engage your core the entire time you do this exercise. You then role to one side, squeezing your core, putting your hand up on your side and sometimes you can extend it out, whatever works best for you. When you continue the sequence you want to get back down to looking at your hands, thirty seconds here and then back up to the other side. Staying nice and tight the entire time and engaging your core the entire exercise.

The last exercise we do to develop strong jumps is going to help develop your hip flexors. You can do this in many positions depending on what jumps you're trying to develop. You're going to get down on the ground, putting your hands nice and close to your body. You're going to sit in a straddle for a toe touch, and as you put your weight into your hands, you're going to lift your feet off the ground. Go nice and slow, controlling it and going up and down. This is going to help develop those hip flexors to do good toe touches. In addition to toe-touches, if you're working on a pike, you can do the same thing except place your feet in front of you. In addition to the technique, it's going to take a lot of these exercises. You want to build your jumping ability with your plyos, you want to build your core with the plank exercises, in addition to the hip flexors. If you follow all those drills, you can develop a good technique and jump like Whitney does here. And that's how you do a jump tutorial.

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