I just came across this video of cheerleading stunts (below) on YouTube (where you can find anything!!) and thought I’d share it with you. It’s very impressive and anyone watching it would never ever doubt that cheerleading is indeed a sport!
Champion athletes know that winning is the science of being totally prepared. For cheerleaders who want to ace a competition, here is a technique called the Enders Practice Routine.
It’s based on a psychological learning theory called classical conditioning. The technique helps you to train your mind and body to respond in the way you wish. Each time you practice this you will be building the brain you want.
Here’s how it works. You begin with a relaxation exercise and then you say your “power word” to yourself to connect yourself to your ideal performance state. And then you begin to practice.
(A power word is a word or phrase that connects to the way you want to feel during competition. It should be meaningful to you. It can be something like “focused,” or “confident” or “doing it” - whatever works for you.)
Let’s say you are working on your tumbling; you would exhale slowly, call up your power word, and when you feel really focused, then and only then, begin to practice. As soon as you feel yourself getting distracted, stop everything! Then go back to your breathing, get focused using your power word, and then resume practice. Repeat.
Each time you get distracted, stop and repeat the breathing, power word, and focusing. You only rehearse or practice while you are in this positive mental space. This way, you are training yourself to only perform while you are in this ideal state and when you reach the actual performance situation, you’ll be in great shape!
Obviously this requires patience on your part. The temptation will be to rush ahead and just practice in the same old way but please - give this a try and you will reap the benefits!
ENDERS PRACTICE ROUTINE
1. Begin with relaxation exercise - exhale slowly several times
2. Once relaxed, connect with your Ideal Performance State
3. Say power word/phrase to yourself
4. Once firmly in “positive space” begin to practice
5. As soon as you notice you are leaving positive space, STOP EVERYTHING, then re-connect with positive space.
6. Once firmly in positive space again, repeat power word/phrase and resume your work.
7. Practice ONLY in positive space.
8. Important to strengthen association between positive space and practice.
9. At time of performance, exhale slowly three times and repeat power word/phrase to get back into positive space.
You say you want to place first at your cheerleading competition? How hard are you willing to work for it?
Successful athletes are single-minded in their focus and have crystal clear goals and expectations. This clarity helps them keep track of their progress and ensures they will reach their goals.
Since I assume you, too, want to be a successful athlete, here are some questions for you to help you organize your thoughts and create a winning plan. Remember - the more specific and detailed your plan, the better it will help you succeed.
And yes, this takes a bit of time and patience but a true champion is willing to do the work in order to win!
1. Can you envision your cheerleading goal? Can you describe it in detail? Good! Go ahead and write it in here and be specific!
2. What are the benefits or rewards you will gain by pursuing your goal?
3. What are the costs? (Such as time, money, forgoing other activities.)
4. What might get in your way? What challenges might you encounter?
5. How can you deal with these challenges? Who might help?
6. What specific steps do you need to take to reach your goal?
7. How will you be accountable? Who else will know if you follow through with your plan?
8. In the space below, write in the times during a typical week that you will devote to working on your goal. Include time for practice with your team and alone
Mondays:___________________________________________________
Tuesdays:___________________________________________________
Wednesdays:________________________________________________
Thursdays:__________________________________________________
Fridays:____________________________________________________
Week-ends:_________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
It happens every day. You, as a cheerleading coach, are constantly giving feedback to your squad as you observe them in practice. But did you know that the way you offer praise can affect the motivation of your cheerleaders?
Psychology professor, Carol Dweck, studied what happens when people praise others for ability versus praising for effort and the effect this has on young people’s motivation and performance.
The results showed that 90% of young people who were praised for effort (”you worked really hard on this;” “your persistence is helping you succeed,”) wanted to perform tasks which were challenging and from which they could learn (and not necessarily immediately succeed).
Two-thirds of young people praised for ability wanted to carry out a task which ensured further success; they weren’t as interested in being challenged.
When both groups were given a set of harder problems, the students who were praised for their ability (”you are so smart;” “you are really good at this”) reported the least enjoyment. They were also the least likely to take problems home to work on. Also, the students who were praised for their ability (not effort) demonstrated considerable negativity after failure (”I am stupid”) even though they had had a previous string of successes!
The group that had been praised for ability also showed a significant decline in performance compared to those who had been praised for effort.
The group that had been praised on effort continued to enjoy the task even when they encountered problems and they were more likely to persist when they confronted challenges. This group (effort) on the whole performed much better than the other group (ability).
How does this translate to cheerleading? Well, I would suggest cheer coaches will enjoy more success with their cheerleaders when they praise them for their efforts rather than their abilities. Why should this be true? Effort is something we can control. We either exert effort to learn, to improve, to refine, or we do not. It’s a matter of choice. Ability is innate; we either have it or not and thus we cannot control it per se.
So take note of how you give feedback to your cheerleaders. It’s fine to say, “good job!” or “great focus on that last jump” but be wary of saying, “you’re the best flyer we’ve ever had.” Even if this is true, add to this: “…your focus and practice time is paying off; you’re really enhancing your natural talent by all your hard work.”
Cheerleaders are busy people. There’s all that school work to get done on top of hours of cheerleading practice plus maintaining a social life. Many cheerleaders tend to listen to music while they study and in addition to that, they are busy responding to emails and text messages.
Of course, if you ask them how they can stay focused and get anything done, they will tell you they can manage just fine, thank you. But can they?
There is, at this point, a significant body of research on the impact of multitasking and the studies suggest that cheerleaders, like many of us, are fooling themselves into believing that they can get more done by multitasking.
Actually, pushing yourself to perform two or more tasks is extremely inefficient says David Meyer, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Michigan. Dr. Meyer and his colleagues found that people who toggle between tasks lose valuable time in the transitions.
You see, the brain has to refocus each time it switches activities and that time can add up over the course of a day. There is also something called “working memory” which is like “mental counter space,” says Dr. Laura Vanderberg, a biology researcher at Tufts University. There is only so much “mental counter space” and everything we do takes mental energy which takes up room on that mental counter.
Multitasking adds to the drain on the brain’s limited supply of resources.
So, what does this have to do with cheerleading? Well, researchers at Stanford University found that people who try to juggle things such as checking text messages while writing an email or studying, are unable to block unimportant information as well as those who consume one media stream at a time.
In other words, these people are distracted - all the time! They cannot stop thinking about tasks they are not doing. They have trained their brains to be unfocused.
The reason this is important for cheerleaders is because cheerleading - especially tumbling and stunting - require laser focus, meaning focusing on one thing only. A distracted cheerleader is vulnerable to being injured or causing injury.
So the next time you are tempted to do 3 things at once, remember that you are actively training your brain to be inefficient and distracted.
Many lucky cheerleaders are getting ready to go to cheer camp. It is a wonderful opportunity to learn new skills and strengthen old ones. Plus - it’s fun!
Like anything else, the time will fly by and before you know it, you’ll be back home. To facilitate your learning, here’s a tip for you.
Focus is essential when learning a new skill. Sometimes it’s tempting to rush into something and just do it. What I recommend is to slow things down a bit to allow your brain and body to develop a memory of what you re learning.
It may be helpful to think of how a camera works. If you just point and click you may get a picture but it won’t be half as good as it would be if you had taken a moment to compose your shot, check the focus, hold the camera still, and then shoot.
To help engrave your new learning in your brain, think of your brain as being like a camera - “see” it with your mind’s eye, “feel” it in your body, then do it. Similarly, when you observe your instructors do a stunt or a jump, imagine your eyes are a camera so, be still, focus, and take it in.
Elite athletes learn to sense how their bodies respond to all sorts of variables. They learn this so they can then adjust their bodies’ arousal level to match the moment. If they are too revved up, they can calm themselves down; if their energy levels are low, they can rev up a bit.
I hope you can see how useful it would be to be able to fine-tune your body to match and respond to the demands of the moment.
To help you do this, try this: Find a quiet place to sit and close your eyes. Slow your breathing down by exhaling slowly through your mouth several times, inhaling through your nose. Once you are quiet, with your mind’s eye, do a body scan, beginning with the top of your head and moving down to your toes.
Just notice if you are holding any tension anywhere in your body. If you detect tension, try to release it with your out-breath.
A typical body scan goes like this:
The above exercise is an introduction to your body, if you will. I realize that this is impractical to do on a regular basis but if you do it a few times, you will learn how to quickly identify and release unwanted tension in your body. That way at practice or especially at high stakes events like tryouts or competitions, you’ll be able to better control your body’s response to stress.
It’s not unusual for cheerleaders to experience fear when attempting to tumble or execute a stunt. I frequently get questions from cheerleaders who ask me how to “get over” fear of some kind. What follows is my response to a cheerleader who wrote saying she gets scared everytime she gets ready to throw something like a cartwheel or a forward roll. She said that she takes a step to do it and then steps back and repeats that over and over. Since this cheerleader’s problem is fairly typical, I thought I would share my response to her with all of you.
Here is my response:
Dear X,
Do you know why you get scared? Did you ever fall or injure yourself in any way? Or are you afraid that might happen? Since you didn’t mention an injury or a fall, I will assume you are afraid something might happen and that is what’s spooking you.
Many cheerleaders have fears and many learn how to overcome them. You can, too! Ready? Okay…if you’re really ready to work on your mental block, read on.
First – you must calm down and view this situation like a scientist would – objectively. Your anxiety is leading you to catastrophize and think the worst which only feeds the anxiety and makes it worse.
So, right now, as you are reading this, slow down your breathing by exhaling slowly – as slowly as possible three times. Ready? Go ahead and do it…take your time. Now do it again! (I told you this required patience.) With each out-breath, tell yourself that you are relaxing more and more.
Whenever you feel worried or anxious, slow down your breathing by doing this. When we are anxious we don’t think clearly and right now you need to think clearly, right?
Okay. Now that you are calmer, let’s look at this situation as objectively as possible. What are the facts? It sounds like you are somewhat new to tumbling and often when we try something new, it can be a bit scary. Your body hasn’t yet gotten comfortable with tumbling.
You may not remember since it was a long time ago but when you were little and just beginning to walk, that seemed hard, too! You first had to learn how to balance your head, then how to sit up, then how to stand up, then how to balance your body when you would stand up, then how to take that first step, then how to take the second step and so forth. ]
Now you don’t think twice about walking, do you? It’s the same with tumbling! Eventually, over time, as you practice more and more, tumbling will become almost second nature to you!
Be kind to yourself as you learn something new!
Now, you may want to try this technique which may help you to reduce your fear. The goal is to reduce your fear to a manageable level. And I assume you will work with your private coach on this. He or she can tell you when you are ready to move to the next level. Safety is important!
This visualization accomplishes several things. It helps you ease into the idea of doing your tumbling while minimizing your anxiety and it also engraves the successful execution of the move in your brain. You will be training your brain to feel and think in the way you want. You will also be learning how to control your thoughts and feelings rather than have them control you!
Now, one last thing; when you next begin to do your tumbling, take a moment to focus, exhale slowly, say your power label to yourself and see yourself executing the move successfully. Then go ahead!
I know this has been a long response but I wanted to be thorough. Change takes time and effort. If you want, show this to your coach so he or she knows how serious you are about doing well.
Good luck with this. I’m so glad you wrote to me about this. Please keep me posted.
And to all of you who read this, please let me know your thoughts and feel free to write with your questions.
It’s no secret that some cheerleaders experience injuries during cheerleading practices or performances.
One such cheerleader recently wrote to me after she fell on her head, asking me to help her cope with the stress of doing the stunt that led to her injury. This cheerleader fell on her head doing a 360 elevator/extension.
What follows is my response to this cheerleader:
How awful that you fell on your head! No wonder you are afraid!
First - I assume you got immediate medical attention, right? Any injury is serious business but a head injury in particular requires immediate and thorough evaluation. There is no way you should resume physical activity until you are cleared by a physician.
Second - has your coach been certified by an organization such as the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators (AACCA)? All cheer coaches and cheerleading squads should go through a safety course. Safety is fundamental and the most important thing.
Third - ask your coach and squad to review what happened in detail in order to determine what went wrong. Someone wasn’t doing what he or she should have been doing, right? A careful analysis sets the stage for a plan to remedy the problem to ensure it doesn’t happen again. This process will contribute to your feeling a bit more secure about future attempts at doing a 360 elevator/extension.
Fourth - once all of these steps are taken, you can begin the psychological recuperation.
You have experienced a physical and a psychological trauma and the reality of that needs to be acknowledged and honored. Of course you are frightened…that is natural. You will need to rebuild your trust in yourself and in your team-mates and perhaps in your coach, too. This is a process and will take some time. Ultimately, only you can decide if you wish to return to cheerleading or not. Do not allow anyone to force you into doing something that you do not want to do. It is your decision.
If you want to stay in the game, here are some things to consider: After a serious injury, we tend to get stuck on replaying the incident. This prolongs the fear and it also engraves the incident in our brains. The body does what the brain thinks so you will definitely want to stop this process. To do this, you can try some visualization. (Many pro athletes use this to help them recover from injuries.)
Here’s how to do it:
This visualization accomplishes several things. It helps you ease back into the idea of cheerleading while minimizing your anxiety and it also engraves successful execution of stunts in your brain. You will be training your brain to feel and think in the way you want. You will also be learning how to control your thoughts and feelings rather than have them control you!
Good luck with this. I’m so glad you wrote to me about this. Please keep me posted.
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Cheerleaders are not immune to experiencing mental blocks which can interfere with cheerleading performance. In my last post, I responded to a question I saw in the forum on Allaboutcheerleading.com in which a cheerleader asked for help in overcoming her mental block about throwing a full during a practice routine.
I encouraged this cheerleader to become more objective in her assessment and to embrace mistakes as opportunities for learning and not something to be avoided. I then reminded her that she clearly is capable of throwing a full under some circumstances so she needs to determine what factors are interfering with her execution some of the time.
Here is more of what I would say to this cheerleader: Good execution follows good thinking, clear thinking. Emotional upset creates fuzzy thinking so it’s important to step back and assume an objective stance - as if you are evaluating someone else who is seeking your help.
Take a few moments and clear your head. Close your eyes and exhale slowly 3 times. This will calm you down and when you are calmer your thinking will be more focused and clearer.
Now, with your eyes closed, think about the times you really hit it with throwing your full. With your mind’s eye, see yourself executing this move and nailing it. Allow yourself to see yourself doing this successfully over and over. Now, recall how you felt when you threw your full successfully. Notice every detail - how you focused just prior to execution; how you held your head, your arms, your stance; how you moved; how you were breathing; where your focus was - everything!
Next, still with your eyes closed, combine the whole thing - see yourself with your mind’s eye and experience yourself kinesthetically (your felt sense) executing the move over and over. Good.
Now assign a label or cue word or phrase for this successful execution. It can be anything. For example, you could simply call it “success” or “good move.” Once you have your label, visualize and feel the whole successful routine again only this time say your cue word to yourself. Repeat over and over. Each time you do this, you will be creating brain and muscle memory so that the next time you actually throw a full, you will be able to reconnect with this positive experience and success will be more likely!
More on this topic in my next post!
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