All-Star Progressions In Stunting Vs Tumbling

[vannahlexis]

Both? And then the question comes what is the purpose of camp? Is it to teach the brand new people how to stunt? If so and they are really brand new how far can they go legit in a few hours?

If they are experienced how far can they go in a couple hours? And if you don't know how to teach the skill as a coach that the camp is teaching them when they leave how will they know how to continue to get better at it?

I feel like with brand new to cheer kids it would take much longer.

If you're dealing with 4 girls/1 girl 1 guy that have been with each other for a while, they would excel quicker.

There are so many types of camps I've never experienced before. The camps I've been to have all been by the same company. Here's how that went:
-separate classes for separate skill levels (i.e. classes involved pre requisites like holding a lib for a certain amount of 8 counts before starting to learn mock ups, solid straight up cupie before starting baskets)
-it was always made clear that the stunts may not hit solid within the 3 days, they are teaching you how to do them so they can be perfected at home practice
-teams are assigned 1-2 staff members to assist coaches, answer qs, additional trouble shooting, etc
-during competitive season you get a follow up with the camp director at a home practice to do whatever you want her to basically

I think there are too many variables to determine an exact measure of how far someone can go in a matter of hours without an actual experiment.
I think it would be awesome if someone could actually put that together!!

 

[King]

@King As a College Cheer Coach have you ever added team members who were former high level gymnast with zero cheer experience? If so, were they able to keep up with the level of stunt difficulty?

Actually, yes, I just did that. This year on Gold (our stronger team) we took a former (and by former I mean 4 weeks ago done with gymnastics) level 10 gymnast with absolutely no cheer experience and learned all our cheers and chants for games over our video catalog we host for our team. Great person, tumbler, and good athlete. Is she able to keep up with Gold on their stunting? Yes and no. Our team is a mixture of small coed / group stunting and single based coed stunting. We took 24 and have 5 group stunts and 7 coed stunts. She is not involved in the group stunts at all where the skills they are working on are double ups, rewinds, full arounds.. very high level group stunt stuff. She would struggle a lot with how fast the group stunts are moving so she isn't flying in that. Instead she does have a coed partner and works hands, extensions, and libs. She is not pushed to go much past that until she has mastered it. We are also working on teaching her to basket for us because she has such a solid foundation in body control. Three weeks in she's only doing baby straight rides because I want to teach her right from the beginning. Having a perfect double full later isn't worth sacrificing having her doing back tuck baskets at the first game. The long way is the short way (meaning if you spend the time to do it and learn it right in the beginning youll get to the high level stuff sooner).

If we didnt have those additional spots on Gold I would have put her on White for a season to learn how to properly cheer and handle stunting.

 

[cheernerd5678]

Both? And then the question comes what is the purpose of camp? Is it to teach the brand new people how to stunt? If so and they are really brand new how far can they go legit in a few hours?

If they are experienced how far can they go in a couple hours? And if you don't know how to teach the skill as a coach that the camp is teaching them when they leave how will they know how to continue to get better at it?

We had a stunt clinic last weekend, hosted at my school but open to everyone. It was from 3 hours. The instructors taught from a shoulder sit to full ups and kick full dismounts. The teams that came in and were truly learning left with preps cradles, some of them were trying extensions. Our JV went from shaky extensions and iffy prep level libs to solid extensions and attempting extended libs. My team came in with full up to prep and every team had hit it to extension by the end, but other than that we were mostly working on our own stunt sequence not the new ones since the main point of the clinic was as a fundraiser for new uniforms.
It was good to hear input from the staffers and it seems like some girls respond better to NCA staff members than their own coaches. Not sure why.... But they make corrections when told by NCA people but they don't when told by a coach/teammate. So it's definitely helpful in that way. JV has kept working on the stunts they started and have improved a ton. I think that like 3 extended libs hit the other day? Which is really impressive for them, since most girls are basically brand new to cheer.
A lot of coaches videotape the demos so that they can learn to teach the stunts they may not have felt comfortable teaching before.

 

[King]

I feel like with brand new to cheer kids it would take much longer.

If you're dealing with 4 girls/1 girl 1 guy that have been with each other for a while, they would excel quicker.

There are so many types of camps I've never experienced before. The camps I've been to have all been by the same company. Here's how that went:
-separate classes for separate skill levels (i.e. classes involved pre requisites like holding a lib for a certain amount of 8 counts before starting to learn mock ups, solid straight up cupie before starting baskets)
-it was always made clear that the stunts may not hit solid within the 3 days, they are teaching you how to do them so they can be perfected at home practice
-teams are assigned 1-2 staff members to assist coaches, answer qs, additional trouble shooting, etc
-during competitive season you get a follow up with the camp director at a home practice to do whatever you want her to basically

I think there are too many variables to determine an exact measure of how far someone can go in a matter of hours without an actual experiment.
I think it would be awesome if someone could actually put that together!!

If the whole goal is to just learn how to do them then why not just learn from videos how to do them if someone was teaching you on video?

 

[vannahlexis]

If the whole goal is to just learn how to do them then why not just learn from videos how to do them if someone was teaching you on video?

Not sure. I feel like hands on training by professionals would help you progress quicker and probably with better technique.

The professionals in the video can't answer your questions, they can't step in as a flyer to show her what she's doing incorrectly, they're not there to watch you to identify any problems the stunt group doesn't realize.

Personally, I would FEEL better having people there to assist me, but in no way am I saying the videos wouldn't help me get the job done just as effectively.

 

[King]

Not sure. I feel like hands on training by professionals would help you progress quicker and probably with better technique.

The professionals in the video can't answer your questions, they can't step in as a flyer to show her what she's doing incorrectly, they're not there to watch you to identify any problems the stunt group doesn't realize.

Personally, I would FEEL better having people there to assist me, but in no way am I saying the videos wouldn't help me get the job done just as effectively.

Ok now can having that person there for only the first few hours do you miss out on most of their expertise for the life of doing and training the skill? Meaning if you are about to spend 120 hours working on a skill ( 2 hour practices twice a week means 7 months ) you are only getting hands on expertise instruction for around 1.5% of that time.

 

[vannahlexis]

Ok now can having that person there for only the first few hours do you miss out on most of their expertise for the life of doing and training the skill? Meaning if you are about to spend 120 hours working on a skill ( 2 hour practices twice a week means 7 months ) you are only getting hands on expertise instruction for around 1.5% of that time.

True!

But with the video, you have a greater chance (in my opinion) of learning how to do the stunt incorrectly, because you cannot interact with them.

If you do learn the stunt incorrectly, you might never get it with great execution. Which will lead to more hours of your time troubleshooting the stunt, and possibly a harder time doing the stunts that evolve from that.

I apologize if this is not making any sense- my thoughts are really scattered lol

 

[Paria]

Bases do the same thing a lot of the time. For a base, a lib cradle, lib full down and a lib double down are the same (as long as they're popping). For a flyer, it's very different and from what I've read here, when flyers are rushed through twisting they can tend to block and become scared. I think that's why flyers are likely to be put on a lower team than their tumbling - they need time to get comfortable, bc what they're doing is scary. As a base, as long as they're making corrections and aren't afraid of the stunt and stepping out, it's pretty easy to learn a new stunt - you're not going to "block" on catching a full down if you can catch a straight cradle.

This is very accurate. I'm a flyer and my first year of cheer was sophomore year on my school team. I barely had any experience with straight ride baskets or straight cradles and all of a sudden they had me doing full downs and twist baskets. I completely blocked and would start having panic attacks. The technique was awful. They finally took my twist basket out of the routine but I had to keep the full down in and it was honestly a safety hazard to my stunt group. My junior year I switched over to allstars and was put on a level 2 team. After spending a year doing straight ride baskets and straight cradles I suddenly had a full down with proper technique and a twist basket that didn't risk breaking my backspot's nose and I wasn't even scared about doing them.
That's when I learned just how important proper stunt progression is.

 

[King]

True!

But with the video, you have a greater chance (in my opinion) of learning how to do the stunt incorrectly, because you cannot interact with them.

If you do learn the stunt incorrectly, you might never get it with great execution. Which will lead to more hours of your time troubleshooting the stunt, and possibly a harder time doing the stunts that evolve from that.

I apologize if this is not making any sense- my thoughts are really scattered lol

So that immediate feedback when initially learning a skill is the most important? I can see that. What if on the video someone was covering common mistakes and correct placement very thoroughly?

Also how many new skills can be learned in 4 hours correctly? Since the initial instruction is the most important isn't it very few in 4 hours to make sure what is learned is quality? Possibly the camps are there more to teach the coaches how to teach the skill than the athlete?

 

[youbetterwork]

Last summer I had two experiences with teaching non-cheerleaders how to stunt. First one a guy who had never been doing cheerleading. He learned toss hands block in about an half an hour (with a good flyer). He also tried to to a standing tuck in the same amount of time. It wasn't successful lol. Second experience was teaching four non-cheerleaders, both guys and girls, how to do a prep. Ehhh.. they struggled. But they managed to do one in 10 minutes or so.

Teaching a high-level gymnast/someone with very good physic how to stunt is a lot different than just some random person.

 

[Helen uk uni cheer]

This past season I was brand new to cheer and gave it a try at 19. I started out being taught level 2 stuff before being placed in a level 1 stunt group as a backspot. I think it has helped me gain proper technique as I still helped out with level 2 when there was someone missing. I then at the end of the season for a different team stunted level 2 main routine and I am capable of level 3 skills in a year because I went to extra practices and I am determined.

I am just a determined with my tumbling but it is coming a a much slower rate it has taken me an entire year to get a very nice forward roll, backward roll and im getting there with hand stands and cartwheels. amd I go tumbling 2-3 times a week

It really depends on many aspects

 

[King]

Last summer I had two experiences with teaching non-cheerleaders how to stunt. First one a guy who had never been doing cheerleading. He learned toss hands block in about an half an hour (with a good flyer). He also tried to to a standing tuck in the same amount of time. It wasn't successful lol. Second experience was teaching four non-cheerleaders, both guys and girls, how to do a prep. Ehhh.. they struggled. But they managed to do one in 10 minutes or so.

Teaching a high-level gymnast/someone with very good physic how to stunt is a lot different than just some random person.

If a half and extended lib are the forward and backward roll of stunting is it only when getting into elite level loads, transitions, and dismounts that it is actually difficult to teach?

 

[quitthedrama]

Based on some examples I have experienced, it is easier to progress faster in stunting. CP was on a team where they were short a flyer. They took a flyer that had only flown level 2 and then took a year off and she was able to fly level 5 the next season. The gym teaches excellent stunt technique and I think that made a difference. However no matter how good the coaching I don't ever see her being able to learn those skills in a 4 hour clinic.
On the other hand, my CP was at a stunt clinic and one of the college guys there had no prior experience with cheer. He said his college's cheer team advertises a free pizza night. Lift a girl and you get free pizza. He wanted pizza so he went. Lifted a girl, went to a few practices, decided he liked it and now cheers for his college team. I believe that college recently won UCA so I guess their strategy works lol. I think it would be very doable to teach a strong guy how to stunt at a clinic and progress to high level stunts within a season.

 

[WinstonsGirl]

So that immediate feedback when initially learning a skill is the most important? I can see that. What if on the video someone was covering common mistakes and correct placement very thoroughly?

Also how many new skills can be learned in 4 hours correctly? Since the initial instruction is the most important isn't it very few in 4 hours to make sure what is learned is quality? Possibly the camps are there more to teach the coaches how to teach the skill than the athlete?

I think the skills camps are great for giving athletes and coaches the foundation for the skill. That's where you learn the grip, how to do it properly and begin trying it. Are you going to have some groups that hit it, yup. Is it going to be competition ready, clean and tight, probably not. So yes, we've learned a new skill, but it will most likely need more time in the gym after to make it competition ready.

But a decent coach should be able to clean things up. We go to the skills camps to learn the new techniques in the first place.

 

[King]

I think the skills camps are great for giving athletes and coaches the foundation for the skill. That's where you learn the grip, how to do it properly and begin trying it. Are you going to have some groups that hit it, yup. Is it going to be competition ready, clean and tight, probably not. So yes, we've learned a new skill, but it will most likely need more time in the gym after to make it competition ready.

But a decent coach should be able to clean things up. We go to the skills camps to learn the new techniques in the first place.

Are new techniques learned every year or only during watershed years?