Tag Archives: coaching advice

Featured, Practice Tips, Tips

7 Effective Strategies to Get Your Cheer Team’s Attention: Managing Short Attention Spans

Posted on by Steve Pawlyk
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01
Aug
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Steve Blog Circle

Byline Steve Pawlyk

By Steve Pawlyk

Published August 1, 2023

One of the key challenges for any cheerleading coach is maintaining the focus of their young athletes. With so much talent and energy in one place, it’s not uncommon to find short attention spans and distractions taking over practice. But fear not! We have some effective strategies that can help you create a more structured environment and ensure your cheerleading team stays on point.

  • Establish Clear Expectations

Before the cheerleaders set foot on the mat, ensure they know what’s expected of them. From the moment they arrive at practice until they leave, outline the rules and enforce them consistently. Make it clear that practice time is for focusing, learning, and improving, and not for chatting or goofing around.

  • Use Positive Reinforcement

Praise your cheerleaders when they pay attention and perform well. This reinforcement boosts morale and encourages them to continue behaving in the desired way. Give shout-outs to those who show excellent focus, rewarding positive behavior, and others will strive to earn the same recognition.

  • Incorporate Interactive Teaching Methods

Sometimes, traditional teaching methods may not hold the attention of young, energetic cheerleaders. Try to incorporate games, challenges, or interactive drills that will engage them. The more fun they’re having, the more focused they’ll be.

  • Introduce Breaks

Attention spans can wane over time, particularly during long practices. Introduce short, regular breaks where the team can rest, hydrate, and socialize. This helps to recharge their batteries and allows them to refocus once the break is over.

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  • Use Visual and Auditory Signals

Visual and auditory cues can be very effective in gaining and maintaining attention. Using a whistle, clapping your hands, or employing a visual signal like raising a hand can be a great way to grab the team’s attention instantly.

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  • Set Goals and Monitor Progress

Setting goals gives the cheerleaders something to aim for and focus on. It could be mastering a new routine, improving stunts, or enhancing teamwork. Regularly check-in on these goals, track progress, and celebrate achievements. This helps maintain focus as cheerleaders will be more invested in their own development.

  • Be a Role Model

Lastly, the most effective way to get your cheerleaders to pay attention is to lead by example. Show enthusiasm, dedication, and focus, and your team will be more likely to mirror these traits.

Managing a team of talented cheerleaders with short attention spans is a challenge, but with a combination of clear expectations, positive reinforcement, engaging teaching methods, breaks, visual signals, goal setting, and exemplary behavior, you can create a more structured and focused practice environment. Remember, every cheerleader is unique, and what works for one might not work for another. Stay patient, flexible, and keep experimenting until you find the right mix that works for your team. Happy coaching!

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Featured, Safety, Tips

Cheerleading Practice Design Guidelines

Posted on by Dr. Scott Christie
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17
Aug
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dr scott christie

By Dr. Scott Christie

Published August 17, 2020

Cheerleading Practice Design Guidelines

5 ways to reduce athletes’ risk of avoidable injuries

When designing a practice plan the main goal should be to put into place the appropriate elements of implementing the perfect routine. In order to achieve this goal, special attention must be paid to developing skills safely and efficiently, mitigating injury risk and ensuring your athletes have the adequate physical and mental capacity to handle the intensity of practices and performances.

Cheerleading Practice Design Guidelines by Dr Scott Christie rules youhitzero ippmusic com

One of the biggest obstacles in cheerleading is being able to ensure that you have full attendance at practice. A coach constantly has to deal with athletes missing practice due to sickness, vacations, weather, other unanticipated events, as well as injuries in and out of practice. Most of these factors are uncontrollable but a coach does have a significant control over avoidable injuries occurring during practice.

 

To help with achieving full team practices, below are five ways to reduce your athletes’ risk of sustaining avoidable injuries.

 





1. Chunking your practice (10-15 mins sections)

Chunking your practice is good for two reasons. First, by changing up your activities into small 10-15-minute chunks, you can avoid unnecessary mental and physical fatigue that comes with staying on one movement pattern or skill for too long. Secondly, from a memory acquisition standpoint chunking your practices creates faster learning of skills.

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2. Control fatigue

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Pay attention to your athletes’ body language. As a previous coach, I know it is very easy to get upset with the poor performance of your athletes at times and as a result push them harder to help develop ‘mental toughness’. This strategy more often than not will lead to an avoidable injury. Cheerleading requires high power outputs and fatigue will reduce an athlete’s power production significantly which can lead to increased risk of injury (especially near the end of practices).

3. Use vivid visualization

 

Vivid visualization allows for more practice time without actually performing the skill. This can be done at home or at practice once the athletes are too tired to continue safely.

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4. Monitor overtraining

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Many sports have their athletes fill out short mental health questionnaires out on a daily basis. There are many stresses taking place in an athlete’s life outside of cheerleading. It is important to be aware of this and monitor it on a daily or weekly basis. Try to remember that as much as cheerleading is all about the team, a team is still made up of many unique individuals that require different coaching methods.





5. Improving physical fitness

Athletes that are extremely physically fit are better suited to be able to handle the high physical and mental demands of cheerleading practices and performances. Most sports have their athletes work on their fitness between practices, cheerleaders should be doing the same!

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Hit_Zero_Blog_Pic5

For more information from Dr. Scott Christie please visit our website’s resource page at www.cheerdistrict.com. Interested in implementing training programs backed by science within your gym community? Email support@cheerdistrict.com for more information.

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About Dr. Scott Christie:

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Featured, Tips

Keeping Athletes Safe with Social Media and Gym Communications

Posted on by Kyle McCarthy
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16
Nov
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By Kyle McCarthy

Published on November 16, 2019


Our industry is an informal one...

…it’s hard not to be when you’re dealing with family! We spend so much time together as a gym family that it’s sometimes not easy to see how social media and the way we interact with it can actually put the kids we coach at risk. After all, social media is great! It’s been revolutionary for the ways in which we can quickly communicate with parents, share photos and videos, free marketing for gyms and has really helped build gym communities and bonds. We’ve become so accustomed to sending a quick message to an athlete after a hard practice to check in on them, or to give them a personal shout-out, that we don’t realize the potential harmful effects of this casual closeness.

Kye YHX BLOG 1
Kye YHX BLOG 1

In most areas of life, communications between minors and adults is a no-go zone. Whether it’s a teacher at school or an inappropriate message on Instagram, neither of these are ok. So why is it ok for a coach? Truth is, it isn’t. And we have all allowed a culture to grow where it’s normal and ok for adult coaches to message minor athletes, and vice versa, potentially creating an understanding in a minor athlete’s mind that contact from an adult is not unusual nor cause for concern. The normalization of adult/minor online communication was a huge concern for the USASF and prompted the creation of the USASF Electronic Communications Policy.

In most areas of life, communications between minors and adults is a no-go zone. Whether it’s a teacher at school or an inappropriate message on Instagram, neither of these are ok. So why is it ok for a coach? Truth is, it isn’t. And we have all allowed a culture to grow where it’s normal and ok for adult coaches to message minor athletes, and vice versa, potentially creating an understanding in a minor athlete’s mind that contact from an adult is not unusual nor cause for concern. The normalization of adult/minor online communication was a huge concern for the USASF and prompted the creation of the USASF Electronic Communications Policy.

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The USASF acknowledged that our informal industry culture was putting athletes at risk and acknowledged the need for safety measures to be put into place swiftly and comprehensively. They immediately banned private communications between athletes and coaches, as well as banning them from following each other on personal social media accounts (athletes can still follow official gym accounts).

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They tasked every gym with coming up with an Electronic Communications Policy that was as stringent as the official USASF policy, or gyms would be expected to default to the USASF official policy. 

As we are into the second season with this policy in place, many gyms may still be lacking comprehensive plans or implementing the policies they have effectively. With the 2019-2020 under way, we want to help you with an easy plan to ensure that your athletes and coaches are safe into the future.

Here are 5 easy steps to ensure your gym is adhering to the USASF Electronic Communications Policy and protecting athletes from potential harm:

  1. Review your Electronic Communication Policy with your staff. This is something you should do monthly or multiple times throughout the season as a refresher so coaches remember how to appropriately communicate with their athletes.

  2. Hold parent information sessions to inform your parents of safety concerns regarding social media. Parents should oversee their child’s social media accounts within reason.

  3. Discuss social media expectations with your athletes and inform them of the rules so they are aware.

  4. Eliminate multiple forms of communication for the program and make all staff, parents and athletes aware of the official channels of communication.

  5. Find a digital platform that is trusted so you can manage the communication for everyone.

  1. Review your Electronic Communication Policy with your staff. This is something you should do monthly or multiple times throughout the season as a refresher so coaches remember how to appropriately communicate with their athletes.

  2. Hold parent information sessions to inform your parents of safety concerns regarding social media. Parents should oversee their child’s social media accounts within reason.

  3. Discuss social media expectations with your athletes and inform them of the rules so they are aware.

  4. Eliminate multiple forms of communication for the program and make all staff, parents and athletes aware of the official channels of communication.

  5. Find a digital platform that is trusted so you can manage the communication for everyone.

Kyle McCarthy blog3

An app such as the CheerLife app will tick all of your boxes when it comes to safe electronic communications. It has group chats, one-way broadcast push notifications, revenue building channels (who doesn’t want to make more money?!), action tracking in a safe social media environment, a noticeboard for gym updates, built-in pro-shop channel, private lesson scheduler and full integration with existing class management software like iClassPro and Jackrabbit. It’s also adheres to the USASF ECP and our content management team is quick to remove, suspend or ban any individuals who violate our terms and conditions.

Keep your kids safe in a specialized custom app for your gym and keep your minor athletes off major social platforms!

Contact CheerLife today!

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