Ways to improve my pike and toe touch in cheerleading?

Question

Ok my toe touch is ok but not AMAZING like in competition cheer. It's acutally quit bad once you think about it. And my pike is HORRIFIC. Seriously. I barley get of the ground and my legs barley get up. But when I stretch in the pike position I go all the way down. I dont know.

So how do I improve my jumps?

Answer 1

Well conditioning always helps.

For your toe touch you could try doing these stretches.(If you cant already do them)

Sit in a straddle and lay your stomach on the floor between your legs also lay your stomach on your right and left knee. The bigger the straddle the better.

If you and already do that try middle splits with your chest on the ground and your arms in a T.

I would hold each stretch for a minute or longer every day or every other day.  

Probably one of the best things you can do is using ankle weights and doing your jumps on the tramp. 10 or 20 of each jump trying to get them as high as possible. Once you take them off you will be surprised by how much better they are.

I really hope this helps

Answer 2

It helps a lot to work on leg and stomach muscles, mostly leg though. So squats, leg lifts and crunches help a lot. You should do quite a few of them when you do conditioning and your jumps should improve over a small period of time. Don't worry too much about it, but if you work on them a bit they should be perfect in no time! Hope I could help!

Answer 3

For your toe touch:  

Steps

    * Start by sitting in the butterfly stretch position to stretch out your inner thighs.

    * Then stand up an slowly slide your legs apart until you can’t go down any lower. DO NOT TRY TO STRETCH ANY FURTHER THAN YOUR BODY WILL LET YOU! Hold that position for 30 seconds. (To help yourself stay balanced, lean over on your hands.}

    * Then slowly sit back on the ground while still maintaining the straddle position. Reach out in front of you as far as you can and hold that position until it doesn’t hurt anymore.(Usually 2-3 minutes.) Slowly bring your legs together.

    * Reach your arms out and hold them to your toes for 30 seconds. (You should be in a pike position.)

    * Now that you are fully stretched, stand up and start by doing just the arm movements of the toe touch. Then do your toe touch 10 times.

Tips

    * Take breaks in between jumps to avoid getting too tried.

    * You may want to do the jumps in front of a mirror to see exactly what you are doing wrong.

    * Ask someone to critique your toe touch.

    * Make sure you point your toes.

    * Turn your hips under when you jump. This means that you kind of “sit” or rotate your hip under your body rather than just keeping your hips straight. Don’t rotate so much that you fall! This will make your legs go much higher.

    * Do lunges or some other kind of leg strengthening exercise to heighten your jump.

    * This takes TIME. Don’t worry if your toe touch doesn’t look good after only a week. Just keep working on your toe touch and it will get MUCH better.

Warnings

    * Avoid over stretching your legs because you can really hurt your muscles

    * You may be a little sore after the first few times you perform these exercises.

    * Be safe! Know your limits. Don’t kill yourself by doing a million jumps at once.

    * -Don’t stretch too much. Gradually increasing your flexibility is the best way to go.

For your pike:  AB STRENGTH...can't stress that enough. Ab strength and flexibility. Without those, you won't be able to do anything in cheerleading, really. Work with crunches, stretches, everything. Whenever you can. V-up's work really well. Lay down on the ground(or floor), with your legs straight down. On counts, bring your legs up into a hyper-extended toe-touch position (or the pike position), at the same time bringing your body into a sit-up position. hold for two counts, then go back to position A. repeat and work up to more reps. So (floor)1-2(snap to position)3-4(hold)5-6(snap back down)7-8. Really emphasize getting your body tight into position and snapping back up and down. It'll be hard at first but it'll pay off so much. This works the core areas you need for jumps really well.

Hope this helps! :)