This year, our show consists of A LOT of fast runs with single independent stroke (using only mallet 2 and 3) and I was wondering if there were any exercises that can build those chops? We also have a lot of two mallet runs as well.

Right now I'm just playing crazy green and slowly working my tempo up. Even though it's a great exercise, I do get bored of it.

LASTLY, are there any stretches I can do? I know a few stretches for my hands but they just don't seem to stretch the forearm.

As boring as they may be, scales are probably your best bet when it comes to exercises to help runs with single independent strokes. Work on majors, minors (melodic, harmonic, and natural), and chromatic. If this starts getting really boring, perhaps modes will be more interesting.

As for stretching, a few years ago, Andy Harnsberger wrote an article for PAS that talked about some good stretching. It just so happens that innovative has it on their website. It does not have a whole lot of arm stretches but at least it is something. Hope this helps.

http://www.innovativepercussion.com/pages/files/Stretching_for_Pain-Free_Performance.pdf

Thanks for the website! I need to read it more in depth but just looking at it, it seems like it would help lots!

Question on "modes"... I feel dumb for asking but... what are they? Is it like different variations of the scale?

Modes were medieval "scales". Our major and minor scales are forms of scales.

Have them play green, using only the right hand, then only the left hand. Start at 140 or so and go to 200 (It's really the tempos of your choice).

Another one that you could do, which isn't as boring as green, is one we call Gallop. Sorry if I don't explain this well, as I am just a student, but, you take the arpeggio of C and do a double stop on C and C then do it on E G (I believe E and G are called the "thirds"? . Then go up to D flat and do the same, playing D flat in octaves and then F and A flat. We normally play one arpeggio three times. So we'd play CC EG CC EG CC EG and then move on to the next one. You can switch it up and start from the thirds, do descending, it's up to you. Hope I helped!