Middle School Cheer Tryout Prep: The 3-Week Plan

Everything here builds toward the moment a judge looks up from the score sheet at your group, and you hit the count.

Stand a foot from the mirror. Count out loud, one through eight, and hit one motion per count: high V, low V, T, broken T, touchdown, punch, clasp, clean. Fists tight, thumbs on the outside of the fingers, wrists straight, arms slightly in front of the shoulders so you can see them in your side vision. Stop dead on each count. Nothing should wobble after the arm arrives. Do the eight-count six times, then film one and watch it back looking only for arms that keep moving after the number.

No jumping yet. Clasp on one, high V on two, swing the arms down and across the body on three and four as the knees bend, then whip the arms up to a T on five as you rise onto the toes. Do it slow, ten times, feeling the knees load on four. Then add a small hop on five, landing with feet together and knees soft. This is the engine of every jump, and most kids skip it and just throw their legs.

Only after the legs are warm from the jump work. Straddle sit and walk the hands forward, chest up, until the hamstrings talk, and hold thirty seconds, breathing. Pike with the strap around the feet, thirty seconds. Then a hip flexor lunge each side. Hold, do not bounce, and stop at tight, not pain. Flexibility earned slowly is the kind that holds up on a nervous day.

Warm up with the arm swing from week one. Then three levels, five reps each. Level one: the full approach with a straddle jump that goes only halfway up, landing feet together. Level two: legs to hip height, hips rolled under, chest tall. Level three: the toe touch you actually have, eyes up, and the landing you can stick every time. Do not go for height you cannot land. Film level three and check one thing: is your chest up or folding toward your knees? Judges score the landing as hard as the top.

Learn eight counts of the cheer from the video, motions and words together. Then say it to the far wall of the room as if the judges are sitting there. Low voice, from the belly, not a scream from the throat. Smile so the corners of your eyes move. Do it five times, and on the last one, look at three different spots on the far wall so you get used to moving your eyes off the floor.

Three rounds: twenty squats with arms in a high V that do not move, a thirty-second plank, fifteen calf raises slow, and ten hollow holds of five seconds. The high V during the squats is the point, because a tired kid on judging day drops their arms first.

Set a timer for ten minutes and learn a full cheer you have never seen, from a video, motions and words. Perform it once at full voice. Then take two minutes, watch the video again, fix the two counts you missed, and run it again. This is exactly what the clinic day asks for, and doing it once at home takes the panic out of it.

Cheer, then the dance you have, then two toe touches, then the cheer again, no rest. Then rest sixty seconds and do it once more. Your arms will want to soften on the second cheer. Do not let them. The judging day order is close to this, and this is where you learn what your motions do when you are out of breath.

The tumbling you show on judging day is the tumbling you already have clean, from your gym, on mats, with a coach. Nothing new gets learned this week in a backyard. Two days before tryouts, walk through the cheer and dance at half speed in the living room, then rest the legs.

Run the plan, then after the clinic day, tell us which motion the coach kept fixing and how the toe touch landing held up. That is where the next plan starts.