Cheerleading Safety From AACCA. Solutions to address the risks involved in cheerleading.

I’ve had the opportunity over the last 25 years to see a lot of cheerleading. One trend that stands out perhaps more than any other is the continued demonstration of poor technique in stunts, pyramids and gymnastics in order to try to hit skills that are more difficult.

As I watch safety videos and attend competitions, I am seeing more and more teams performing skills they have no business performing in the hopes that if they hit they’ll score higher.

Let’s put aside the obvious safety concerns for a moment because, well, they should be obvious.

To borrow a recent line made famous on American Idol, you look like a fool with your stunts on the ground.

Shaky stunts and frightened faces have no place in what cheerleading should be projecting. After all, cheerleading teams were originally created to promote athletic excellence and confidence! It stands to reason that in order to promote such characteristics, the cheerleading team should embody them.

So what is causing this trend? After all, cheerleading rules over the years have severely limited the height of skills that can be performed, where they can be performed and even how advanced those skills are. Theoretically, there should be a limit to what can even be attempted, right?

Of course, we know that while there are limits on pyramid height, gymnastics skills, dismounts and even equipment, there are also cheerleaders, coaches and choreographers out there every day creating new and innovative ways to get into, between and out of stunts and pyramids.

Even with the creativity and transition innovation, I contend that the problem is not with people “pushing the envelope”; it is with the coaches, judges and competition providers that do not penalize poor execution.

I believe it starts with competition and it starts with the coach. The drive to be better than the other team should be changed to a drive to be the best “your team” that your team can be. Instead of hoping that the third stunt group hits their heel stretch double full this one time, change the choreography so that this group is in the center, goes 2 or 4 counts earlier and singles cleanly while the other two groups double. Don’t allow your cheerleaders to perform tumbling that just “gets over” with their elbows bent and their legs apart or they will never strive to perfect their skills. Work on perfect synchronization and perfect body positioning instead of driving the team to do a skill one level harder.

The result will be a more solid routine that shows better execution. While you may miss out on two or three difficulty points, you can more than make that up in other areas. There will be fewer bobbles that affect your overall presentation. There will be better synch which will increase your scores in other categories. There will be less of a chance of having a deduction for a fall or bobble. In essence, you are trading a good chance at a 4th place for the high risk/reward of either placing first or second if the stars align or dropping down to 12th if you fall.

The other result will be that going forward, you’ll get better faster. Why? Fewer falls and better execution means more repetitions and fewer injuries – and that means faster progression to the skills you want to be performing.

Competition organizers have done a much better job recently of separating out difficulty and execution on score sheets. Some have even weighed execution higher than difficulty. Still, more can be done to make it clear that sloppy routines are not welcome.

Of course, the awarding of difficulty and execution points ultimately comes down to the judges and here is where the rubber meets the road. Judges must commit to the score sheet that they have been given and remove their own “feelings” about a routine. Yes, that all-girl team just hit five truly single-based Stretch Doubles, but in doing so, three of the doubles ended up landing on their stomachs or their sides in a “one and three quarter”. So, do you give them very high difficulty points and take off just a little on execution since they completed 7/8 of the skill? Or do you not count those dismounts at all since they weren’t completed? I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but I do suggest that their score should be lower than if they had completed well-executed single fulls.

And now back to safety. I believe with all my heart that the majority of cheerleading injuries occur when cheerleaders are attempting skills they aren’t prepared to attempt. This is different than most other sports. In football, injuries occur by the very nature of the activity – two human beings going at full force with the goal of running over the other. In soccer or basketball, injury results from “unintended” contact with another player or team member that ends up putting someone in a precarious fall. It can also result from the incredible forces placed on joints when making direction changes at high speeds. Improper technique can certainly play a factor, but most sports injuries are from playing the game itself; they aren’t the result of trying a play that was too difficult.

The good news is this: with proper training and emphasis on progression, we should be able to reduce the injury rate in cheerleading.

For the most part, every skill attempted should build incrementally on a previous skill that has been mastered. We often like to use the term “perfection before progression” but of course nothing is actually “perfect”. Consider the Olympian that has trained nearly all of her life and specifically on this one routine for the last several years and still ends up with less than a “10″. When we use terms like “mastery” or “perfection” what we mean is that this skill can be done over and over with very little chance of a fall or error. We mean that the skill can be repeated with confidence and with excellent execution. We don’t mean that it’s been performed once or twice or that they manage to hit it “most of the time”.

This doesn’t mean there won’t be falls and missteps as the new skills are learned, but with the fundamental skill having been mastered, the performer is given a better opportunity to correct flaws before they result in uncontrolled falls. With the repetition of lead-up skills, bases can developed the fine-motor skills of balancing and reacting to their top person, with less chance of overcorrecting.

Every fall that is avoided is one less opportunity for a catastrophic, live-changing result or even the inconvenience of a minor injury. When the tide shifts towards skills being performed dangerously, rules committees have no choice but to outright ban certain skills for schools or move them to a higher skill level for all-stars.

The drive to be the best, or better than you are, or just better than the team on the other side of town is strong. It is one of the things that have made cheerleading the exciting and entertaining activity, sport or show that it is today. It is what attracts unbelievable athletes to want to participate and want to continue cheering. But it must be tempered with an understanding of the difference between “what we are working on” and “what we are going to demonstrate in public”.

Practice skills in the proper progression and demand that they are properly executed before allowing progression to the next skill. Then practice that new skill until it has been mastered before putting it in a routine, or a halftime performance or a time-out cheer that ends up bobbling or falling. That would be foolish.