Coaches Does anyone else coachAll Star Cheerleading?

[peace.love.gymnast]

I just recently began coaching tumbling for an all star cheerleading squad....wow!! A whole new world! I cheered in high school but never like this all star stuff. I'm still trying to get used to the way they have to finish skills compared to the way you would do it in gymnastics. Does anyone else coach or help with an all star squad? I would really love to hear how you go about handling the differences between the cheer tumble & gymnastics tumbling. I was just kind of thrown into it by the owner so it's very challenging figuring it out.

 

[gympanda]

I coached All Star tumbling for a few years. It is different, especially with the focus on finishing standing skills with arms down. I also found it challenging because you tend to have a much larger kid to coach ratio, making it hard to feel like you accomplished anything. Not to mention you have so many differnent tumbling levels happening in one practice it is hard to set-up stations that are condusive to the whole group. What I found was that standing tumbling was as important as running tumbling, so I always split my practices between both, having a few standing stations (lots of wedge activity), leg strength stations, tumbletrak stations and then corner tumbling.

When I coached All Star I also felt the kids were being pushed into doing skills quickly without progressions. I really had a hard time with that (one of the reasons I don't coach All Star anymore), but realized all I could do was try and keep the kids as safe as possible by pushing conditioning and falling drills. Honestly, All Star was SO FUN to coach because the kids were great and very, very eager and excited to learn, but I found it hard to do with a gymnastics mindset. I had to become a little less picky and perfectionist and take my cues from the owner.

Good luck!!

 

[peace.love.gymnast]

You really just said everything I've been thinking and feeling about the situation. I was really shocked to walk in to a class of 15 by myself and they range in age from 4-14 yrs old...crazy! I was very reluctant to take the job because of the reputation cheer tumbling has very just "getting a skill over" no matter what it really looks like. I finally accepted because the owner told me she had been a gymnast when she was growing up so I figured she was a bit more technical with her coaching...NOT THE CASE...AT ALL!!! I'm going to try to make the best of it though