Featured Image: Action Moments for Inside Cheerleading Magazine

What Not to Do

Every team that I’ve ever been on throughout my cheer career has done the exact same style of warm up – running laps then sitting and stretching. Even though I’m not as involved in the “cheer world” anymore, I’m not surprised when a number of cheerleaders tell me this is still what they do!

This is the worst warm up you can make your athletes do!!!

Not only is it detrimental to your practice productivity, but it’s likely to cause injury and does not transfer to any skills your athletes perform.

Here’s Why:

1. It Creates an Opportunity to Socialize

Telling your athletes to “run 10 laps then stretch” gives them the freedom to chat as they do it. An unstructured and uninstructed warm up is basically an invitation to swap stories, gossip and chat about anything and everything unrelated to the warm up itself.

I once had an athlete tell me their coach only allows them to talk during warm up because it’s the “least important part of practice.” This could not be more wrong!!! If anything, the warm up is the most important part of practice. It sets the tone for the rest of training and allows for optimal mental and physical preparation when done correctly.

Therefore, using warm up as a time to socialize will prevent the athletes from mentally preparing themselves for the training ahead. If your team begins their practice in such an unfocused way, the remainder of practice is likely to be the same. So, if you find you have a hard time keeping your athletes focused for the entire duration of practice, I recommend changing your approach to warming up.

Another issue with a casual, socialization-based warm up is that the athletes don’t focus on what their bodies are doing, what they’re feeling and how they’re moving. Gauging how your body feels during warm up allows you to make note of any sore or tired areas. It also lets you figure out how you should pace yourself during practice. Consequently, being unaware of your body’s condition can lead to injury if you don’t train appropriately.

2. It Does Not Transfer to Anything Else

Focusing on the quality of movement during a warm up helps to develop body awareness, which will eventually transfer to tumbling, stunting and jumping skills. Just think about it… do you expect a flyer who bends both knees during front kicks in warm up to be able to stand up tall with straight legs during a heel stretch in the air?? There’s no way that would happen.

Athletes must move each joint, squeeze each muscle and place just as much focus on each step of warming up as they do in their bigger skills. For example, when doing arm circles, the reach upwards should be the same as the reach in a back tuck, front tuck, round off, etc. A dynamic warm up is essentially a broken down version of skills, the fundamental movements needed, and/or lighter reps of the same movements required in tumbling, stunting, etc.

Cheerleaders put so much effort into attempting to do skills but then put zero effort into all the other things that act as precursors to the skills. If time is spent on the small things, like drilling these same movements every practice in warm up, skills will start to come more automatically because athletes’ bodies will naturally start to move in the right way.

3. It Does Not Target the Right Areas of the Body

Think about how many ways the body moves during a cheer routine. Each joint moves in almost every plane of motion, so why are all these directions ignored during a typical run & stretch style warm up?

Take a look at the image below of the 3 planes of motion:

Transverse Plane

• Divides body into superior and inferior sections
• Ex: T-spine twisting (as warm up exercise), Russian twists
• Rotation, pronation, supination, horizontal abduction and horizontal adduction occur in this plane

Sagittal Plane

• Runs front to back/back to front through the body
• The most common plane to perform warm up exercises in (ex:
  running, squatting, lunges)
• Flexion, extension and ankle dorsiflexion &
  plantarflexion occur in this plane

Frontal Plane

• Runs left/right or side to side through the body
• Ex: jumping jacks, lateral lunges, pull ups, lateral arm raises
• Abduction, adduction and scapular elevation, depression & upward/downward rotation occur in this plane

It’s important that in warm up, your athletes take each joint through its entire range of motion in each of these planes.

Dynamic vs. Static

Now, you might be thinking that they do move in all those ways as they sit and stretch on the floor. That may be true, but a dynamic approach is also needed. By dynamic, I mean that they must actively be moving their joints in each way to reach their full range of motion. This will improve their active flexibility, fire up their muscles and stimulate their sympathetic nervous system for the activity ahead.

Some light static stretching is okay to do, but not for too long, as it triggers the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the system responsible for conserving energy, so sitting and doing low intensity stretching will slow down the heart rate and relax the muscles. That’s not exactly what you want during a full out!

What a Proper Warm Up Should Consist Of

1. Tissue Preparation

• Removes or reduces tension spots (knots or adhesions) within muscle tissue that negatively affect muscle contraction
• Use foam rollers and massage balls for self-massage

2. Aerobic Based Exercises

• Increase body temperature, heart rate and blood flow

3. Dynamic Movements

• Brings joints through usable range of motion
• Increases active flexibility and joint mobility
• Use “joint by joint approach” where some joints need adequate mobility and others need adequate stability (areas requiring mobility should be involved in dynamic warm up)

4. Specific Exercise Warm Up

• Use before stunting, tumbling or jumping
• Small basic exercises like straight jumps, hurdles, squats, overhead presses, etc.
• Some static stretching before performing skills that require large ranges of motion like scorpions, scales, heel stretches, etc.

What a Proper Warm Up Will Do For Your Athletes

• Increase body temperature, heart rate and blood
  flow
• Prepare all relevant joints in all planes
• Activate specific muscle groups
• Increase tissue quality via self-myofascial
  release
• Increase neuromuscular efficiency
• Drill basic technique
• Create “muscle memory”
• Develop flexibility and strength
• Build endurance
• Improve attention span, focus and body awareness
• Allow for mental preparation before training
• Prevent injury

FREE Warm Up

Now that you know all about proper warm ups, you may be brainstorming how to alter your current one to encompass everything discussed above… But don’t worry! No need for that.

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