When it comes to being a cheerleader, I used to think that all I had to do was learn the cheers and stand in front of people while doing some fancy dances.
I never looked at the physical strength that it took to do some of those dances.
When our cheerleading team decided to go competitive, I had a lot to learn. I couldn’t believe how much work was going to go into being a cheerleader. I watched cheerleading movies and they only showed the dance routines being learned. I already knew how hard it was to do cheers and yell, and I was beginning to think competing and yelling was going to be impossible. During the summer, we were all put on a physical training schedule. We had to go to the school and put in two hours of physical training. We did stretches to begin and then we started with working out to build up our upper body and shoulder muscles. We did a lot of arm toning and deadlifts. We also worked on our balance. The main exercise was cardio and weight lifting. By the time cheer camp came around, we were all in excellent shape and we were able to do their training without getting out of breath. We learned new dances and stunts at cheer camp. Everything we went through also helped us to become more of a family. It was a lot of hard work and I don’t think it is going to let up any time soon, but we all seem to have a lot of fun.