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The perfect basketball dance can be so elusive. As basketball teams begin their practices on the court, many basketball cheerleading programs are beginning their practices on the mats! So how can you and your squad develop the perfect dance for the sideline performance at the basketball game? There are several key elements which you can look for to help create the perfect dance.

Finding a Hot Cheer Track

One of them is to have amazing music. Having the track that was hot last year as your dance for this year is never a good look. You want to have the music which is the most recent epic dance track that you can imagine. And while it’s easy to look at top 40 hits to see what is going to be the song for your squad, it is often better to look to chilling dance professionals like your friends at CheerleadingMix.com to find that scorching track. The music producers at CheerleadingMix.com, like Cheer Music Pro (aka Patrick Avard), are the same ones who create the amazing music that you hear at the cheerleading world championships every single year! Those same unique tracks are available with CheerleadingMix.com‘s effortless user interface, for a fraction of the cost of what you see for those worlds mixes.

Formations and Levels

When you are looking at choreography, one of the most important moments is the use of the floor. All too often dance teams get trapped in one formation, and stay in that formation focusing on the individual movements rather than looking at their formations from a broader perspective. As you and your squad start to put together your sweet dance moves, think about how you can make full use of the basketball court. Multi-level formations moving in different directions help draw the eye in a way which a static formation often does not. Incorporating something as easy as a level change can often significantly change the way the audience perceives the dance performance.

Doing it Together

Synchronization is difficult. It takes hundreds of hours of practice for dance teams to get a dance routine that looks like everyone is moving as a single individual, reflected in mirrors. Luckily, there are many tricks which you can use to make it so that synchronization is not necessary. One of them is to use ripples, or contagions. Using a peel-off ripple or contagion can help let each person on your squad put their own unique spin on the dance moves, but because you are peeling off the formation everyone will do it in a way which seems more synchronized. It’s an illusion of the eye: seeing people move like that in different directions at the same time makes it hard to tell if someone’s individual movement is off. Think about trying to use a contagion next time you and your squad are putting together your dance routine.

There are real challenges to entertaining the crowd during timeouts and halftime at a basketball game. Maybe not appreciate the hours of work that it takes to put together a cohesive dance which can tell a story and keep everyone on the edge of their seats. However, if you and your squad can take into account things like having that epic cheer track and having complex multi-level choreography, then you can entertain your crowd as well as the best slam dunking player on your team!

Gymnastics is one of the most important elements in cheerleading, and it is one of the few that you can work on entirely on your own. While dance, cheer, and stunting require working with other members of your squad, tumbling is something which has to be learned and mastered individually. Tumbling lessons can be expensive, too, with private lessons costing $75 an hour or more! Becoming a better tumbler is not something that happens overnight – it takes years of practice to hone and perfect those skills. However, there are a few things that you can do on your own that will help you attain your tumbling goals faster. Whether you are working on a standing full or just trying to master a forward roll, these five fundamental exercises will make it easier for you to accomplish what you want.

There are literally thousands of exercises you can do to improve your gymnastics, but most of them require either an experienced coach watching over you while you practice or expensive equipment. These exercises have been chosen because they require little more than a six foot by six foot workout area, a workout partner, and a wall. No new gymnastics skills should be done without the supervision of a qualified professional, and you should trust your judgement when you start any new exercise regimen – if it seems unsafe please do not do it. This is no exception: if you have medical issues or concerns about your safety please do not try any of these skills until you have consulted with medical personnel.

These exercises are more advanced than the ones in our previous post and are intended to be a progression. Make certain you have perfected those exercises before you move on to these!

Free Handstand

Almost all backwards entrance tumbling is built around the handstand. In parts one and part two we discussed different ways that you could build up to a point to doing a free handstand. This is a culmination of those activities. It’s important to remember that holding handstands is so critical in something like a back handspring or even a roundup for a cartwheel. Well you might often only think about the end skills and tumbling past, like a layout or a full, if you have a bad back handspring or a bad round off you’re never getting to a point where you can execute those skills as cleanly as possible. Thus even experienced gymnasts spend a lot of time working on their handstands.

Once you reach a point where you can hold that free handstand you should be working on how long you can hold it and also working on blocking or shrugging drills while you’re holding your handstand. For the varsity variation, a harder version once you’ve fully mastered the skill, you can work on doing a shoulder touch, or you would hold your handstand with one hand while you touch the shoulder with the other and then quickly swap to the other side. You can see these walking type handstand drills all over the place. Still, you must walk before you run. So here is a short video explaining how to get into your free standing handstand.

Hollow Rolls

In part one we talked about the hollow hold, and in part two we talked about mastering the via. The next skill is going to be the hollow roll, which in some ways is a combination of a hollow hold or a be up with a back limber. You will start by balancing yourself in your hollow hole position, please go back and see part 1 if we learn more about hollow holes, and then you will slowly rotate to your right as you’re rotating try to keep your shoulder blades and your feet off the ground, eventually you’ll be in a belly down position keeping your chest off the ground and your feet off the ground creating a slight bow in your back.

Once you’ve gotten there you will continue to roll to the right until you’re backing your hollow hole position. Once you’ve completed that, try rolling back to the left. Working on this will help to contract your entire core, not only the abs which everyone is aware of in the front of your body, but even those key lower back muscles, your upper glutes, and the muscles along either side of your abdominal wall. Holding all of these together is how you’re going to strengthen your core and give yourself the strength you need to produce those high intensity backwards and forwards flipping skills. Here is a short video about how to execute a hollow roll.

Gather Step to Box Jump

The majority of cheerleading tumbling is backwards tumbling. Certainly there are some exceptions, like an arabian or a punch front step out, but most of the time we are talking about back handsprings, back tucks and fulls. As a result learning how to correctly do a gather step into a jump is important. To help you work on this we’re doing a gather step variation on a box jump. The idea is relatively straightforward: practicing stepping backwards to build momentum will help you especially when you’re doing a multiple back handspring to standing skill. Developing the coordination and power to do this in a consistent way will quickly improve your speed and your momentum in throwing these skills. Here is a video explaining how to execute a gather-step box jump.

Side-Leg Splits

Flexibility is a critical part of tumbling not just because of its importance in getting into skills like round-offs and cartwheels. But also because it helps to decrease the likelihood of injury. No gymnastics training is complete without a focus on flexibility. In part two we focused on forward split flexibility, here in part three we’re going to focus on sideways flexibility. By stretching your groin muscle and your hamstrings you will make certain that you can land more consistently, that your power from your round off and cartwheel increase, and that if something should go wrong you can avoid getting hurt. Consistent stretching is always important. This is how you work on your side split.

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Bridge Kick-Over

Central to a lot of chilling tumbling is the back handspring. The back handspring requires you to be able to bridge your back and then flip over. In order to do this, you have to have three key elements: back flexibility, the power to kick over, and the abdominal strength to pull your feet back down to the ground and underneath you so that you can stand up. The bridge kick over works on all of these skills. In part one (include link) we worked on the wall walk to get into a bridge. In part two (include link) we worked on how to do a bridge from a standing position. In part three we focus on how you can kick over once you’ve gotten to that bridge. Please make sure that you are completing all of the previous skills and mastering them before you move on to a new set of gymnastics skills. Here is how you do a back bridge kick over:

Important Things to Consider

Always remember, when beginning a new workout regimen, that you are taking the appropriate precautions to make sure you are doing it safely. You should be doing all of these activities with a partner, both for help in case a movie comes too difficult, but also to be there if something does go wrong. Working on these exercises consistently before you begin working on gymnastics will make a significant difference in how quickly you move through the progressions at a cheerleading or gymnastics gym. However, working on it everyday is critical. While certainly rest is an important part of it, and the occasional rest day is okay, only consistent work on the skills will help you get to your goals and the amount of time that you want.

Sometimes you need a little motivation while you are working through these skills. They can be difficult, and sometimes the idea of going through another workout can be daunting. One of the things that you can do to help keep yourself inspired is to listen to some of the hottest cheerleading tracks in the country. Listen to the music on CheerleadingMix.com to help you stay inspired and help you keep your eyes on the prize.

Competitive cheerleading has been around for almost 50 years now, and the transformation it has gone through has been truly incredible. When we think of cheerleading now we think of fast-paced, skill packed routines with some of the most amazing dances you’ve ever seen, all pumping to fresh, independent, and unique music. However, cheerleading was not always like this. The cheerleading routine evolved from the American aerobics and early gymnastics movements in the 1970s and early ’80s, into the complex competitive environment it is now.

The Birth of Competitive Cheerleading

The first collegiate cheerleading championships began in the latter part of the ’70s. The routines were long,  performed on a concrete floor or a basketball court, and the tumbling was minimal. Most of the gymnastics skills were limited to handsprings and walk-overs, and if people were throwing skills like a back tuck, it was considered exceptional.  Teams frequently even brought mini trampolines onto the floor to use in assisted tumbling and to tumble over pyramids. Even the stunting was different from what we think of in cheerleading today. Most skills were more closely related to dance lifts than true stunts. The toss chair was around, of course, but sailor tees and bridge lifts were also a big part of the routines. Here’s a routine from the 1978 Collegiate Cheerleading Championships.

1978 National Collegiate Cheerleading Championships

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHfdHRFr-Mw 

Cheerleading Finds its Legs

As the 1980s rolled around, cheerleading began to steal more and more from the burgeoning aerobics and acro0-gymnastics movement. Jazzercise elements became a significant part of the cheerleading routine and tumbling got significantly better; back handsprings and back tucks started to be executed on the floor and people were even throwing fulls, double fulls, and even double backs as they were tumbling on mats. The addition of mats not only made the tumbling better, it also allowed for more difficult stunts. Toss skills to extended positions like extensions and liberties became the norm, and pyramids began to become more and more complex. However, rules governing cheerleading had still not been truly formalized, so many of the skills they were performing look very dangerous to us today. Take a look at this performance from the 1984 NCA National Collegiate Cheerleading Championship.

1984 NCA Collegiate Championship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDTRhltsGP0 

Cheerleading becomes a National Phenomenon

By the 1990s cheerleading had truly come into its own. The rules have become more standardized, and double flipping skills were made illegal in both basket tosses and tumbling. Similarly, three high pyramids were no longer allowed; all pyramids were limited to a height of two and a half high. Additionally, cheerleading began to expand beyond just a collegiate level for competition. High school cheerleading competitions and all-star competitions began being hosted all over the country. Cheerleading was truly becoming a sport entirely on its own. The first competitive cheerleading dynasties began during this time. When we think of the 1990s we often think of the dominance of the University of Kentucky and Morehead programs in UCA, however there were many other programs producing fantastic cheerleading routines. For example, watch this routine from Alabama:

1995 UCA National Championship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0PhPU2JTUM

The Modern Cheerleading Routine

After the rulings of the 1990s became a little bit more strict, and catastrophic injuries were less frequent, cheerleading enjoyed a remarkable period of growth. All-Star programs popped up all over the country, and all-star competitive programs became as big or bigger than the collegiate programs. Significant changes were made to the collegiate rules that were implemented in 2005. These rules got rid of the double full as a tumbling skill, limited basket tosses to only two skills, and no longer allowed free flipping skills that did not start from the ground for stunting. These changes became the final big set of rule changes for collegiate cheerleading, and those changes trickled down into all-star as well. In fact since 2005, if athletes wanted to perform double fulls, they had to do it on the all-star level not on the collegiate level. Part of that is because all-star competes on a spring loaded floor, while collegiate cheerleading still happens on a hard mat. Still, look at the difference in timing and intensity of the skills when we look at Navarro’s most recent performance at the NCA Collegiate National Championship:

NCA Nationals Daytona 2022 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKqn0DtkLmU 

How Cheerleading Music has Evolved

The music in cheerleading routines has changed a lot over the course of the years. Notice how in the 1970s routine, the music was a long piece of instrumental music with minimal or no vocals or sound effects, and was only used in a small part of the routine. The rest of the time the cheerleaders cheered while they were doing skills. On the other hand, as it moved into the ’80s, you will see that they began to use edited popular music. These remixes of popular songs were typically only one artist and one track which were then lengthened or shortened for the routine. Sometimes sound effects and voice overs were added, but this was only for the best funded teams that could afford to have a professional music producer do the work. By the 1990s, the JockJams phenomenon had taken over the world. Music made specifically for athletics was the standard, and the advent of combining multiple songs to make “megamixes” became the norm. By the 2000s the transformation of digital music editing resources meant that now almost every cheerleading program had “megamixes” of popular songs, with voiceovers and sound effects. However, this was a violation of US Copyright Law and by the end of the 2000s the use of music which was the intellectual property of the musicians, and artist who originally wrote it, became illegal for cheerleading competitions.

The new rules governing the use of music in competitive cheerleading made it difficult to use popular music. Now most music is a collection of original compositions which were tailored to the needs of the cheerleading industry. Modern cheerleading music is made by music producers like the professionals at Cheerleadingmix.com who make music specifically for competitive cheerleading. In fact, Navarro’s routine was produced by the exact same producers who make the music at Cheerleadingmix.com! If you are looking for some of the hottest tracks in the country at a fraction of the price of custom music, Cheerleadingmix.com has the epic cheer mix that will put your routine over the top!