Pike jump in cheerleading: both legs straight to the front. Build-up after the toe touch, hip flexors and mobility, back protection, rules and typical mistakes.
The pike jump is a jump in which both legs are lifted straight and together to the front while the body bends at the hips. The rulebook describes the pike position exactly like that: body bent forward at the hips, legs straight and together [1]. It is the close relative of the toe touch, except that the legs do not spread (straddle) but go together to the front [1].
The honest answer to "Is that the harder toe touch?": not necessarily, but it makes different demands. For the pike you need mobility in the back of the thigh, strong hip flexors and enough height before the legs come up. And it loads the lower back: in a study of six adolescent gymnasts, the pike jump produced the largest lumbar flexion among the floor movements tested [4] — a transfer from gymnastics with a small sample, but it explains why trunk tension is no luxury here.
In the learning path the pike jump comes after the toe touch. The rules do not lock it by level, and in many teams it comes early in the jump series. How long it takes to a clean pike jump depends on your mobility; a few weeks of regular training is a rule of thumb, not study evidence.
The toe touch sits, the landing is quiet and on both feet. Milestone: ten toe touches with equally quiet landings (practice value).
Active leg lifts sitting with a straight back, plus a dynamic warm-up. Static stretching in separate sessions: in a review of 23 studies, static stretching improved flexibility by about 3 % but lowered performance in the short term by 0.9 %; dynamic stretching raised performance by 0.6 % — with mostly low study quality and data from gymnastics and dance [6]. Milestone: hold the legs together, straight and above the floor for 20 seconds.
From standing, you lift the straight legs to the front and let the position hold for a moment. Chest up, back long. Milestone: the position holds for 3 seconds, knees stay straight.
Jump up first, then the legs come forward at the top. Anyone who lifts the legs already at take-off jumps flat. Milestone: on the video you see the position at the highest point, not on the way up.
Before landing, the legs go down again, the chest stays up. Milestone: three sets of eight jumps, the landing is as quiet as with the tuck jump.
This guide explains and motivates but does not replace supervised training.
Film yourself from the side and watch the back, not the legs. If your back looks rounded at the highest point, your bottleneck is not jumping power but mobility or trunk tension. Then you work on that for two weeks instead of jumping higher. That is coaching experience, not a study.
A jump in which both legs are lifted straight and together to the front and the body bends at the hips. The rulebook describes the pike position as body bent forward at the hips, legs straight and together [1]. It counts as a jump skill.
In the toe touch the legs spread to the side (straddle jump), in the pike jump they go together to the front [1]. Both are jump skills and follow the same rules. The pike loads the lower back more, because the hips flex strongly [4]; so you need particularly clean form and trunk tension there.
In standing tumbling at ICU level Advanced and CCVD level 4, no: jumps in direct combination with a standing flip are prohibited, and the pike jump before a front flip appears in the rulebook as an example [2][3]. With handsprings, the combination is prohibited at level 2 [2][3].
There is no fixed number. Practice benchmark: sitting, you reach clearly toward the knees with a straight back. Static stretching raised flexibility by about 3 % in a review but lowered performance slightly in the short term [6]; so train flexibility separately from jump training.
Heel Stretch in Cheerleading: Rules, Prerequisites and Spotters