LAUREN MUTTY: This next segment is going to be on stretching. It's one of the most important things that you need to do before you start your cheerleading practice. Carissa here has already warmed up. She's done 150 jumping jacks, and she's now warm enough to stretch out her muscles. It's extremely important to stretch out your muscles because you don't want to pull anything or tear anything when you're doing stuff. And when you're kicking your legs around and throwing yourself around in tumbling, you need to be flexible. So our first basic stretch, Carissa is just going to reach down towards her toes, and she's going to stretch the backs of her legs. She's going to keep her knees locked, and she's just going to look at her toes and try and touch her toes. And if she touches her toes, she can try reaching past it to touch the ground. Okay? Now, she's going to stand back up, separate her legs. She's going to reach down towards her right foot and stretch. This is now going to stretch the back and the inside. She's going to hold all these stretches for about 10, maybe 15 seconds each. Before you go out on the floor, you only want to make nice quick little stretches. Now, she's going to go to the left and then down in the middle. You want to make sure that you stretch both sides of your body evenly. You don't want to just stretch one arm and your right arm and your left leg and not stretch your right leg and your left arm. And back up. Now, she's going to take a seat on the floor real quick in a straddle position, and we're going to reach toward this toe again and stretch and then up and over to this foot and stretch. You're going to feel this actually now stretching in your back too. And then in the middle. And if you can go up into a straddle split, you can go up into a straddle split. And now butterflies, you guys probably do these in gym class. Bottoms of your feet together, hold onto your ankles, and you want to try pushing this down by leaning forward, and it's going to stretch right on the insides. Okay? Now, stand back up again. She's going to do some basic arm stretches, and it's your arm over and you're going to pull right at your elbow. You're going to stretch right through here and switch and stretching right through here now. And then up and over to stretch your shoulders, up and over. That's much very nice. And pull on the other one down. There you go. You're just pulling gently on each elbow. And she's going to stretch her neck, arms down. Now, she's going to do right ear to right shoulder. She's not going to roll her neck all the way around, believe it or not, that really doesn't do anything in the world for you for stretching your neck. You just want to stretch it side to side and then look up and look down. And those are your basic cheerleading stretches.
