Cheer Coaches

[mytriplek]

For all the cheer coaches out there. How do you run your practice? What's succesful as far as grooming young children with short attention spans?

 

[PrideAtheletics]

...a whip.

 

[PrideAtheletics]

Joking.....the main thing is structure and organization. Depending on the age (you gain attention span as you go up) you won't have much in practice time to stp and think about what you want to do next. KNow what you need to work on and address in practice before you ever start. Another big no no, is never let them get carried away with noise, or talking while you are etc. You will hate your life if you let this happen. If we are talking youth age, your def going to want assistants, so you can give one on one or pod instruction and the rest of the team wont go crazy while your attention is elsewhere. OUtside of that, have a practice schedule, 5 minutes warm-up, 15 stretch, 15 tumble warm-up, 20 tumbling, 30 stunts, run throughs, cleaning etc.

 

[cheerblingflyer]

What we do ( I am on the senior and help coach the younger teams) is when we are working on tumbling, if we do 1 on 1 with one child, we have the others doing conditioning (for little kids not hard core, just basic jumping jacks, pushups, squats, and working on high kicks, etc) rotating them out and switching it up after a smaller number than you would with older kids seems to help keep their attention too

 

[DaniV]

Assistant coaches are definitely key for the younger aged groups and splitting up practice into small "chunks" of different activities makes it go by faster for them. I teach a mini's tumbling class and I've found that they need to have a new circuit to go through every 10-15 minutes. Also, for the younger ones - promising a dance/cartwheel party or trampoline time at the end of practice for good behavior is something that still works their skills but is fun to them. We also make our mini's and youth age kids walk clean as soon as they step foot onto the blue floor. If they are goofing off or running around, they have to walk to the edge of the floor and come back to their spot clean. This has really really really helped keeping them focused (cause they hate walking back and forth over and over again) and creates muscle memory for moving clean.

Older kids... I'm still working on that one. Let me know if you find the key to taming the high schooler that thinks they know everything! haha ;)

 

[Sillybilly114]

I totally agree with the "Don't let them talk over you"! So true coz they will just run over the top of you! Maybe reward them with a game at the end of some classes but finds game that still work towards skills/goals you have for them. They are hard work but so much fun!!