Professional cheerleader Gabi Butler makes gymnastics look effortless—just take a look at her recent Instagram post. Butler, 26, shared a video of herself wearing shorts and a sports bra, performing an impressive backflip while being held up in the air. “Radio say speed it up, I just go slowaaaa,” she captioned the post. Butler has big dreams for her post-cheerleading future—here’s how the athlete stays fit, happy, and healthy.
1. Gym and Cheer Practice
Butler trains hard, both at the gym and at practice. “Right now my training regimen is basically just going to the gym,” she told Marie Claire. “Sometimes I'll go to the gym twice a day and I'll go for an hour and a half to two hours each time, so I'm in the gym a lot. I'm a workout fanatic. I also do stunts—anything cheer related. There's no better workout than a cheer workout because you cannot feel your body the next day.”
2. Coffee For Breakfast
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Butler starts her day with coffee. “I used to love breakfast, I was a super big breakfast person,” she told Marie Claire. “And now, I would say, I just drink coffee and that gets me together. And coffee—even though it's probably not healthy—it does get you full really easily, so I’m good for however long until I get hungry.”
3. Olympic Cheerleading
Butler wants people to understand how tough cheerleading can be. “I definitely hope that the series gave people the actual reality of how cheerleading truly is,” she told Cosmopolitan. “I honestly hope they make it an Olympic sport. I think it’s very, very hard. You’re doing a lot of acrobats, flips, tossing in the air, and spinning and controlling your body and all that stuff.”
4. Eyeliner Tricks
Butler has picked up a few makeup tricks on the way. “One of the coolest tricks I learned from one of my friends was to put tape underneath my lower eyelid to help keep my eyeliner straight and with a crisp edge,” she told Us Weekly. “Almost like how painters use tape to create a straight line. It works every time!”
5. What’s Next?
Butler has been thinking hard about her backup career. “ I'm not going to cheer forever and it's going to come to an end at some point,” she told Marie Claire. “But I would really love to still stay active. I've been thinking about becoming a dancer. Cheerleading, it is a lot on your body and it's very harsh, but I think dance—hip hop dancing, or just dancing in general—that would be a really good thing for me to get into because I do love dancing so much. When I feel in the mood to dance, I feel like I could be really good at it.”
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