How to do an Arm Stretch for Gymnastics

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Mandy Butler on behalf of Expert Village. I'm going to take you through a gymnastics class stretch and warm-up. Now I'm going to stretch my arms. This is really easy to do. I'm going to make nice, big forward arm circles. I'm really rotating my shoulders and getting them nice and loose, as well as my arms to get me ready for tumbling. I'm going to reverse that and do the same thing backwards. Then I'm going to scissor my arms. This really stretches out my shoulder blades in the back as well. I'm going to scissor with my left in front and then my right. Then I'm going to twist to stretch my torso out that last little bit. Now that my arms are ready I make sure my shoulders are limber. I roll them backward and forward. I shrug them and put them down. Now I've stretched every part of my body. But, it's very important that at the end of your stretch you take a couple of extra minutes to stretch anything you feel might still be tight. Only you can listen to your body enough to know what needs a little bit of extra attention. So, never feel like it's not OK to tell your coach or to give your athlete a little bit of extra time to make sure they prevent injury as much as possible. This is the gymnastics stretch."