Photo: Snapped! by Becca Clark
TIPS FOR FLYERS:
1. Reach upwards more than you think you need to
Your toss will go relatively high by just putting your arms up and riding it until you hit the top, but you can do even more than that! As you lift your arms up to your ears, reach through your shoulders as much as possible. That way, you’re creating more lift in your upper body (compared to if your shoulders remained relaxed but your arms were up). Imagine you’re trying to grab a million dollars out of the air, or that ropes are attached to your wrists and are pulling you up to the ceiling.
2. Don’t forget to reach down
Not only do you need to reach up with your arms, you need to reach down with your legs/feet! The same way that you imagined ropes pulling your arms up, imagine there are ropes tied to your ankles trying to keep you on the floor. When you reach your hands and feet in opposite directions, more tension develops through your body, which means you naturally become tighter, straighter and easier to move through the air. You become more aerodynamic in a way.
TIPS FOR BASES:
1. Train upper body power
If you’re struggling to do fast, powerful tosses, start doing some upper body plyometric exercises. Variations of overhead medicine ball throws are great. You can even “customize” them for cheerleading by using basket toss grips to throw. The goal with doing power exercises is to create as much force as fast as possible, let yourself rest for a while to recover, then repeat the exercise again.
2. Prevent energy leaks
There are obvious basket toss tips like “use your legs” and “flick your wrists at the top” but those are only effective if other things are occurring as well. For example, you can use your legs all you want when throwing but if the energy created by that is not transferred up into your arms smoothly, you’re not going to see an improvement in toss height.
If you have a weak/unstable core (which most cheerleaders do to some degree), the power created by the leg dip will get lost in the middle of your body as you toss. You’ll have an energy leak in your core, which will prevent all the power from making it into your shoulders and arms to finish the throw.
So, if you’ve been told a thousand times to “use your legs more” but are still seeing no improvement when you do, this might be your issue. Some of my favourite core exercises for cheerleaders include hollow & superman holds, hollow & superman rockers, front/side/rear support holds and long inchworms. Note that this is not an instant fix – it’ll take time for this to develop, for you to apply it and to see results.
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