Tumbling Cheerleading Move Mastery: Five Secrets to Success |

Tumbling Cheerleading Move Mastery: Five Secrets to Success

| By Roy Rasmussen | Category: Leisure

Mastering tumbling cheerleading move details is the key to success at competitive cheerleading. Many cheerleaders struggle with the back handspring, usually because they try to learn it too early without developing the underlying tumbling skills first. The cartwheel is another cheerleading move that sometimes creates challenges, for the same reason. The trick to nailing any cheerleading move is to master the underlying tumbling move first. Here are five tips on how to do that.

1. Conditioning

In order to do cheerleading moves well, you need to have flexibility in certain key areas:

Whenever you balance on your hands, your wrists need to be flexible enough to bend into the right position.
If you’re reaching sideways to do a cartwheel or round off, your sides need to be flexible.
If you’re leaning back for a walkover or handspring, you need flexibility in your neck, shoulders, stomach, and back.
If you’re going to do any kicks, you’ll want to be flexible in your groin, quads, and hamstrings.
Finally, anytime you land on your feet, you need flexibility in your calves, Achilles tendon, and ankles.

So altogether, a full tumbling stretching program should cover your:

Neck
Shoulders
Wrists
Stomach and back
Sides
Groin
Quads
Hamstrings
Calves and Achilles tendon
Ankles

In addition to flexibility, you also need strength in many of these areas. However, it is easier to develop flexibility first, and strength will come naturally from performing tumbling movements, so focus on flexibility.

2. Warming Up

In addition to developing long-term flexibility in each of the areas mentioned above, you should also get in the habit of warming up each of these areas before practicing tumbling movements or cheerleading routines. Exercising without warming up limits your range of motion at the beginning of your workout, which can lead to injuries.

Optimize your performance and avoid injury by taking at least 30 seconds to warm up each major body part you will be using. If you don’t want to watch a clock, a good rule of thumb is to keep warming up a given body part until it feels warmer and looser than when you started, which is a sign the muscle is starting to limber up.

Take extra time to warm up the main muscles you will be using during the moves you will be practicing. For instance, if you’re going to do cartwheels or round offs, take extra time to stretch your wrists, sides, and ankles. If you’re going to do back handsprings, stretch your wrists, stomach, back, and ankles.

For most moves, you will almost always want to make sure your wrists and ankles are warmed up, because those will be taking impact any time you balance on your hands and land on your feet.

3. Learn Rolls First

When you start learning tumbling moves for cheerleading, the first thing you should learn is how to roll. There are several reasons for this.

First, rolls are the easiest part of tumbling to learn and will build your confidence.
Second, rolls give you a safe way to learn about how to adjust your center of gravity when you are turning.
Third, rolls form the basis of a number of more advanced cheerleading stunts.
Fourth, learning how to do rolls correctly will help protect you from injuries when you roll out of handstands, cartwheels, and handsprings.

Learn to roll in all directions: forwards, sideways, and backwards. Start with the forward roll and its variations, the shoulder and dive rolls. Then learn side rolls and back rolls. After this you can start learning two-person double rolls and their variations, which form the basis of many cheerleading stunts.

4. Learn Handstands before Cartwheels and Handsprings

The handstand forms the basis of a number of more advanced tumbling techniques, including cartwheels, round offs, handsprings, and back handsprings. Perfecting your handstand will improve your skill with all these other techniques as well.

To master the handstand, build up to it step by step. Start with a tripod and get a good sense of what it’s like to shift your balance to and from your hands in that position. Pay close attention to how your weight shifts over different parts of your hands, and between your hands and the rest of your body.

After you’re comfortable with that, go from that into a tip-up. From there work through a headstand, head and forearm balance, and forearm balance. When you can do these well, you should find the handstand easy.

You can then incorporate your improved handstand into enhancing your cartwheels, round offs, and handsprings.

5. Learn Other Techniques in a Logical Progression

As with the handstand, learn other tumbling techniques in a logical progression. For instance, before working on a back handspring, build a foundation in a good round off, which is based on a good cartwheel (which is based on a good handstand), and a good handspring. You can develop a good handspring if you build up to it by starting with a neckspring, then progressing to a headspring, and building from that into a bent-arm handspring and then a straight-arm handspring.