High School Cheer Tryout Prep: The 4-Week Plan

Everything in this plan builds toward judging day, when your group is called and the score sheet is open.

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Stand square to the mirror and count out loud, one through eight, one motion per count: high V, low V, T, broken T, touchdown, punch, K, clean. Fists tight, thumbs out, wrists straight, arms slightly forward of the shoulders so you can see them without looking. Each motion arrives and stops. Run the eight ten times, then film one and watch for any arm still moving after the number. That drift is a lost point.

No full jumps this week. Clasp on one, high V on two, swing the arms down and across as the knees bend on three and four, whip up to a T on five while rising onto the toes. Ten slow, ten with a small hop on five, landing feet together and knees soft. This is where the jump height actually comes from, and it is the first thing that falls apart when a kid is nervous.

After the jump work, not before. Straddle with the chest tall, walk the hands forward, hold thirty seconds and breathe. Pike with the strap around the feet, thirty seconds. Hip flexor lunge each side. Stop at tight, never bounce, and skip anything that loads the neck.

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Three levels, five reps each: halfway straddle landing together, legs to hip height with hips rolled under and chest tall, then the full toe touch you actually have with the landing stuck. Add the same three levels for a pike or a hurdler if the sheet lists one. Film the top level and check the chest. If it folds toward the knees, drop a level and rebuild. The landing is scored as hard as the top.

Say a chant to the farthest wall, from the belly, low and open, not a throat scream. Five reps, and on each one move the eyes to a different spot on the wall so you are used to looking up and out. Then do the chant with the motions, at full volume, with a smile that moves the eyes. Then outside if you can, where the sound has nowhere to bounce. This is what sideline actually asks for.

Three rounds: twenty squats holding a high V that does not move, a thirty-second plank, fifteen slow calf raises, ten hollow holds of five seconds, ten push-ups. The high V during squats is the drill inside the drill, because tired arms drop first on judging day.

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Ten minutes on the timer to learn a full cheer or sixteen counts of a dance from a video you have not seen. Perform it once to the far wall with full voice and face. Two minutes to rewatch and fix the counts you missed. Run it again. Clinic days teach material once and expect it back the next afternoon, and this is that skill in a room by yourself.

Book open gym or a tumbling class this week and next, and bring the sheet. The tumbling you show on judging day is the pass listed for the team you want, done the way you own it, on a floor, with a coach watching. Nothing new gets learned in a backyard. At home, tumbling is a cartwheel to warm up the wrists and that is all.

Cheer, chant, dance, two toe touches, cheer again, no rest between. Rest sixty seconds and repeat. The second cheer is where the arms go soft and the voice drops, and the second cheer is what a three-hour game looks like. Keep both sharp.

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Warm the legs, then five toe touches at the level you own, landing stuck every time. End on a good one and stop. The height is in the bank; this week keeps it.

Set the chairs where the judges sit. Walk in, set, perform the cheer, the chant, the dance, and the jumps, and walk off. Once, full effort, face on. Then once more only if the first was not clean. Two days before judging, walk through everything at half speed and rest the legs.

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Run the plan, then after the clinic, tell us which line on the score sheet the coaches kept coming back to and how the landing held up. That is where the next plan starts.