How to Be as Flexible as a Gymnast

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Part of the video series: Gymnastics

Summary: To be as flexible as a gymnast, warm up the body through cardiovascular exercise, stretch out each leg individually, and practice doing the splits on each leg. Keep the muscles loose and stretched to maintain flexibility with advice from a teacher and camp coordinator in this free video on gymnastics.

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By Shenna Vaughn
eHow Presenter

Shenna Vaughn has taught at Boys and Girls Harbor for more than 10 years. Boys and Girls Harbor runs a summer camp program for children each year. Vaughn is one of the camp...read more

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Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Marcy Thompson, head and instructor here at Lynbrook Gymnastics Facility and today I'm going to talk a little bit about how to be as flexible as a gymnast. Ashley here is going to help me demonstrate some some of these skills. In gymnastics, flexibility is very very important. It helps up gymnast prevent injuries during routines and skills. Ashley and I are going to show you how to stretch for a split in gymnastics. Very important before we get to the stretching, a gymnast wants to do some type of cardiovascular warm up such as jogging, running in place for about 5 minutes before they go on to the stretching exercises. This gets the entire body warm and ready to stretch. Okay, Ashley stand to begin by kneeling, taking her front leg and putting it forward, good, keepin' the back leg bent. So, we're preparing for the split. She's not going to go right into the full split yet because that's a major major big stretch. We want to make sure the muscles are prepared. So, Ashley I'd like you to reach down towards your ankles and hold that stretch for about 10 seconds or even longer. Very nice. Now, we're going to stretch the muscles of the back legs so Ashley is going to bend her front knee, good, straighten out the back leg and reach down to the mat. And she's going to hold that stretch stretching out this muscles right here up in front for about 10 seconds once again. Once this muscles are warmed up, we'll ask Ashley to demonstrate her full split on her left leg. In the split position, knees are pointed to the ceiling, toes are pointed forward, the back leg is straight, always pay attention to the ankle that it's also straight, good form with the upper body and again you can hold that stretch for about 10 seconds. Nice job and you can shake it off. In gymnastics obviously what's important on one side of the body is also important on the opposite side. So, once we're done with the left leg split, we would go to the right leg and stretch out the muscles and then have Ashley do her full split on that leg. If you want to be as flexible as a gymnast, you would practice these stretches everyday, remember to hold it for about 10 seconds or more and you will be as flexible as a gymnast."