The Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation has developed a program the Call PEP (Prevent Injury, Enhance Performance). The goals of this program is to help with the rising orthopaedic injuries that are occurring in young female athletes since the creation of Title IX. One major injury they try to prevent is a torn ACL. Their work focuses mostly on Soccer, but I think there work can translate quite effortlessly to cheerleading. I have seen several ACL injuries and heard of countless others, addressing knee strength is an important process in our growing sport.
There are several tenants in this program that I have seen emerging in the field of cheerleading over my career. I have been cheerleading for over 14 years and the process for warming up, stretching down, and strengthening is continuing to evolve. This program is quite similar to what I do when I warm up with the All Star program I’m on, as well as what my old college team is now doing to warm up.
The one thing I will say about their website is that does not have accurate pictures or videos of the exercises they want to you perform. Over time, I’m hoping to accumulate those resources here in the context of cheerleading (ie, running down the mats instead of across the field).