That’s right - cheerleading and regular physical activity in general contributes to enjoying a healthy, strong, and fulfilled life. 

The Women’s Sports Foundation has reviewed all of the existing research on the links between sports and physical activity and the health and well-being of American girls and women.  The new report includes the following:

• Research affirms that engagement in moderate and consistent levels of physical activity and sport for girls and women is essential to good health and well-being.
• Although more research needs to be done, early studies examining the connections between physical activity and academic achievement show there is a positive relationship between the two in girls and women.
• Emerging research in prevention and training practices show that gender-conscious approaches to physical training and conditioning for female athletes help to reduce the likelihood of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries and concussions.

As if that weren’t good enough, their research also shows:

• Breast Cancer Risk: Based on the findings from 23 studies examining the effect of moderate and vigorous physical activity during adolescence on cancer risk, those who had the highest physical activity during adolescence and young adulthood were 20% less likely to get breast cancer later in life.
• Osteoporosis: A study following pre-pubertal 10-year-old girls for 20 months found that an exercise program (engaged in three times a week for 12 minutes per session) led to an increase in bone mass.  This result was not found for the girls who did not participate in the exercise program.
• Educational Gains: Females who participated in high school sports were more likely to complete college than those who did not participate in sports.

Thanks to Greg Webb of the Organization for Spirit Industry Providers (OSIP) for sending this information to OSIP members.

In my last post I wrote about the negative impact of multitasking on your brain. Knowing how hard it is to change behavior, I realize that some of you will choose to ignore my suggestion that you focus on only one thing at a time (what a concept!).  

Okay, if that is the case, at least try to take a few minutes out of your day to try to reverse the damage to your brain.  How? Read on… 

If you can spare 5 minutes a day (come on, anyone can do that!), find a quiet place and close your eyes.  Now focus only on your breathing, noting the rhythmic rise and fall of your breath.  As other thoughts arise (and they will!), simply notice them and let them go. Then return to focusing on your breathing. 

The above exercise will help to train your brain to focus and to let go of irrelevant thoughts - essential to good cheerleading!  If you can stretch this out to 10, 15, or even 20 minutes, so much the better. 

Here’s another one… 

Periodically, take a mental break by gazing at the sky or even an expanse of a blank wall.  Don’t try to focus on any one thing, allow your eyes to simply take in the bigness of what you are seeing.  Alternatively, you can close your eyes and imagine you are gazing at the sky or the sea.  

This will give your brain a nice little rest to refresh you.  A refreshed brain is a healthy one!

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.

Remember the news reports exclaiming that cheerleading is the most dangerous sport?  Well, it turns out that is not true.  Just goes to show you can’t believe everything you hear or read. 

A new report submitted by the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators (AACCA) challenges the assertion that cheerleading is more dangerous than sports such as football and hockey. 

It seems that information derived from two sources - The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injuries at the University of North Carolina (NCCSI) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Emergency Room visit study (NEISS) was misrepresented.  When it comes to statistical analysis, such misrepresentation is not unusual but in the case of cheerleading, it led to sensationalized news reports and media coverage. 

What is the real story?  Well, the AACCA wanted to know this too and so they conducted their own study by analyzing the data from the NCCSI study and comparing it to the “injuries per 100,000 participants” for cheerleading to the other sports discussed in the study.  

You see, to determine the “danger” of an activity compared to other activities (cheerleading to football, for example), it is important to measure the actual “risk” of injury from performing the activity.  This is determined by calculating the number of injuries per athletic exposure, designated as “injuries per AE.”  So for each time someone engages in cheerleading or football, how often will an injury occur. 

The AACCA analyzed data from the CPSC study for other traditional female sports and used participation figures provided by American Sports Data to produce a measurable risk assessment. 

What did they find?  Because a typical cheerleading season is longer than that for other sports (ice hockey or soccer, for example), that needed to be factored into the analysis.  AACCA discovered that there are ten high school sports - including girl’s ice hockey, gymnastics, and soccer - with a higher risk of catastrophic injury than for cheerleading.  There are 17 high school sports with a lower risk of catastrophic injury. 

And what about football?  Contrary to earlier reports, it turns out that football is the leading cause of catastrophic injury in high school and college sports, with 63.5% of all catastrophic injuries. 

So why have there been an increase in emergency room visits by cheerleading?  Well, for one thing, there are more and more girls and boys who are participating in the sport.  Don’t forget that school-based cheerleaders only account for a portion of all cheerleaders. So when these emergency room figures were looked at again, it turns out that the incidence of cheerleading emergency room visits were lower than that of girls’ soccer, basketball and softball. 

What’s the bottom line?  Cheerleading is certainly not risk-free but the risks associated with it are in line with other male and female school sports and are much lower than the risks associated with football. 

Of course the ideal would be for there to be no injuries in cheerleading and while that may not be possible, it certainly is possible to reduce the number of injuries that do occur.

How?  All cheerleading coaches should be safety certified and should follow established safety rules.  All cheerleading programs should establish and practice an emergency action plan. 

As a mental game coach, I would add that a psychological readiness training program would benefit coaches and cheerleaders alike.  Training in ways to enhance focus and manage distractions (which can lead to making mistakes and causing injuries) would help a great deal.

It’s natural that cheerleaders want to look good.  You are in the public eye after all so of course you want to look buff and toned and healthy and…tan?  Well, maybe. 

You may think it’s odd that I’m writing about this topic now - as we head into the last weeks of summer. Many of you have gotten tan while you were at camp or at the beach or just walking around.  That’s fine - so long as you did it gradually and while wearing sun block. 

The real danger is tanning beds and some cheerleaders rely on tanning beds to give them that “healthy glow” they like.  If you are one of the many young people who use a tanning bed, please read on!

A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30!  

This analysis was  published online in the medical journal Lancet Oncology in July by experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization.

As a matter of fact, international cancer experts have moved tanning beds into the top cancer risk category, deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas. For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as “probable carcinogens.

Most lights used in tanning beds give off mainly ultraviolet radiation, which cause skin and eye cancer, according to the International Agency for Cancer Research.

People under the age of 30 are increasingly using tanning beds and because of this doctors have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of young people with skin cancer. In Britain, melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Normally, skin cancer rates are highest in people over 75.

Previous studies found younger people who regularly use tanning beds are eight times more likely to get melanoma than people who have never used them. In the past,  the World Health Organization (WHO) warned people younger than 18 to stay away from tanning beds.

So the next time you are tempted to spend you time and money on a tanning bed, please think about the potential impact on your health.  You may look healthy with a tan but looks can be deceiving!