Blog 18: 2 Hour Meeting Answer #3

1. What is the most important factor to progress to a Level 2 All-Star Cheerleading team?
2. Always prioritizing safety when attempting skills is an important factor to progress to a Level 2 All-Star Cheerleading team.
3. A. All-Star cheerleaders unfortunately get injured often due to multiple reasons, such as improper supervision/coaching, improper technique in stretching or conditioning, or making a simple error when tumbling or stunting. According to Dr. Kurt Bryant, the majority of athletes that come to his office to be treated for an injury, especially sprains and strains, are cheerleaders and gymnasts.
B. According to a study done by Brenda Shields on the most common injuries that occur in cheerleading, stunting is the most dangerous aspect of cheerleading due to fall-related injuries such as concussions, sprains, strains and breaks. It is because of this that it is essential athletes always attempt every skill, especially harder skills such as tumbling and stunting, with upmost caution.
C. I know from first-hand experience that becoming injured during the season puts a very long hold on progressing in any aspect of cheer. I experienced two injuries during my season because of improper conditioning and treatment, and I was unable to tumble, jump, or even do my dance full-out during practice for over a month. You can't stop practicing something and expect to be able to do it perfect again after a month of not doing it. Since I had to focus on re-perfecting my skills more than once throughout the season, it took valuable time away from me working on skills outside of my level such as a backhandspring.
4. Aside from literally experiencing the negative aspect of this answer first-hand, the multiple scientific studies I've read on fall-related injuries and the lecture I attended by Chiropractor Kurt Bryant were really insightful about how important it is to keep safety a key factor in everything you attempt while cheering. They taught me that simple things such as making sure you have a coach spotting you when attempting a new skill, or always tumbling on a spring floor are simple things athletes can do to prioritize their safety that will make such a huge difference short-term and long-term.
5. I plan to study all three of my answers more in depth. The towers assignment has shown me what topics I need more research on, and and it's mostly on my three answers, especially my first and second answer.

Blog 17: Fourth Interview Questions

1. What is the most important factor to progress to a Level 2 All-Star Cheerleading team?
2. What are some important factors that will help you progress to a Level 2 All-Star Cheerleading team?
3. Why is it important to use proper technique while conditioning and stretching?
4. How does proper technique apply to All-Star Cheer?
5. What are some facets of cheer proper technique must be used in?
6. Will proper technique in conditioning and stretching, specifically, be an important factor that will help an athlete progress to a Level 2 All-Star Cheerleading team? Why or why not?
7. Is keeping a strong mentality an important factor in an athlete's progression? 
8. What are the hardest aspects of cheer to keep a strong mentality in? (If not mentioned, are tumbling and/or stunting?)
9. How do you define mentality when it refers to sports?
10. Why do athletes get mental blocks and how do they overcome them on their own? 
11. How do coaches help athletes overcome mental blocks?
12. Why do you think athletes most commonly get mental blocks in tumbling and/or stunting?
13. How can athletes and coaches help prevent athletes from developing mental blocks?
14. Why is prioritizing safety when attempting a skill an important thing for an athlete to do?
15. If an athlete becomes injured, how will it affect their progression?
16. What precautions can/should an athlete take to prioritize safety when attempting skills?
17. If an athlete is trying to progress to a higher level team, what should their number one concern/focus be?
18. What do you look for during tryouts when determining what team an athlete will be placed on?
19. What is the rank of factors taken into account when placing an athlete on a team by importance and percent? (ex: 20% is stunting, 50% is tumbling, 10% is ____)
20. What should an All-star Cheerleader's priorities be if they want to reach their full potential?
21. In your opinion, and based on your experience, what are the top three most important factors taken into account by a coach when determining if an athlete will move from a Level 1 team to a Level 2 team? Why?

Blog 16: 2 Hour Meeting Answer #2

1.  What is the most important factor to progress to a Level 2 All-Star Cheerleading team?
2.  Keeping a strong mentality, especially in tumbling and stunting, is an important factor to progress to a Level 2 All-Star Cheerleading team.
3. A. Mentality is everything in sports; all aspects of it. In a very general sense, you have to always have a strong mentality when it comes to playing a sport in general. Athletes have to be able to mentally motivate themselves in preparation for the game or performance or whatever it is they're doing. If you don't even have a want or desire to play the sport then there is no way you're ever going to progress at it.
B. One of the biggest things that stops an athlete from progressing is developing a mental block. According to Rene Gonzalez, a mental block is, "when an athlete gets stuck on a certain skill and are too afraid to do it because they overthink it."
C. Mental blocks can occur in any aspect of cheer, but they most commonly occur in tumbling and stunting, which are the two things paid most attention to when determining whether or not an athlete has progressed a level or not. For example, an athlete with terrible toe touches can be on a level 1 team or on a level 5 team, but an athlete with only level 1 tumbling skills like a backwalkover cannot be on a level 5 team where athletes throw tumbling skills like full twisting layouts.

4. My most important source to find this answer would have to be my Interview 3 with my mentor and coach, Rene Gonzalez. I asked him what he believed the most important/significant aspects of cheerleading as a sport were, and he said mentality. I hadn't really thought of having an answer like mentality because I was so focused on my answers being physical things like tumbling or stunting, but talking to him about the importance of mental toughness, especially in cheer, really brought how important it is to my attention.

5.  The next thing I plan to study for my second answer is muscle memory and whether or not there are studies done on how it specifically affects cheerleaders. Muscle memory is one of the ways you can overcome mental blocks, and overcoming mental blocks builds mental toughness which is something essential to every athlete in All-Star Cheerleading.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Plan Approval

1) For my Independent Component 2, I plan on attending and competing at The Summit, the most prestigious All-Star Cheerleading competition in the world for lower level divisions. There will be teams from all over the US and even some from other countries attending to compete. It's like Worlds for level 1-4 teams. This competition is the most prestigious competition for lower level divisions, such as my division, level 1, because teams have to qualify at a national competition and recieve a percent of perfection score of 90% or higher on their routine to even be invited to attend The Summit. The Summit is a competition between the best of the best. Of the 20,000 plus All-Star Cheerleading teams in the US alone, only 350 teams attend The Summit to compete for the title of "The Best Small Senior Level One Team in the United States," or "The Second Best Small Senior Level One Team in the United States." There are of course multiple divisions, I just used my division as an example. Since my team was good enough to receive an at large bid to The Summit, at the end of the season when everyone is having their last practices and not focusing on improving so much but hanging out with their team for the last couple practices of the season, my team will be practicing their butts off for the month leading up to The Summit. We have two straight weeks of practice, Saturday and Sunday included. Our coaches will be focusing on literally perfecting our skills since that is what The Summit is about, percent of perfection on your routine. They're going to add more difficulty to our routine stunting and tumbling wise as well as give us a completely new dance.

2) Since my Summit practices from the month before the competition will count as hours for my Independent Component 2, I'll have no problem reaching the 30 hour minimum requirement. As a matter of fact I'm sure I'll far exceed it since I have about 12 two to three hour practices as well as the competition itself which is three days long and my practices and performances there will count as hours for Independent Component 2 as well. 

3) My current EQ is "What is the most important factor to progress to a Level 2 Allstar Cheerleading team?" The end goal of my project is for me to show I have progressed throughout the season on a level 1 team and that I'm ready to start practicing on/with a level 2 team. By attending the most prestigious competition a team in my division can attend and hopefully winning it or even placing, it'll show that there has been a drastic improvement of skills by not only me, but my team members, especially since 80% of the kids on my team have never cheered before this season. Us receiving a bid to The Summit was a huge accomplishment in itself. After having to place in first or second at a national competition, my team also had to receive a percent of perfection score of 90% or higher to be considered as the recipient of either a full paid bid, a half paid bid, or an at large bid. My team won our bid to The Summit in January of this year at Duel In The Desert, hosted by Spirit Sport in Palm Springs. By attending this competition we therefore have to perfect every aspect of our routine and our skills as cheerleaders, which is progressing in itself.

Blog 14: Independent Component 1

Literal:
A. I, Priscilla West, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.
B. Mentor/Coach: Rene Gonzalez 1 (323) 810 - 4804
C. Digital Spreadsheet of Hours
D. My original Independent Component was to get a back handspring, but I only completed the preliminary tumbling skills to a back handspring. My coach, who is also my mentor, wouldn't let me work on tumbling skills that exceeded my level until I had perfected the tumbling skills on my level, which I have done. A big part of my Independent Component 1, that I stated in my plan, was perfecting these skills, and perfecting them is actually a lot more relevant to my current EQ than it was to my working EQ. The end goal of my Independent Component 1 was to perfect the preliminary tumbling and conditioning skills to a back handspring. So perfecting my back walkover and conditioning to gain enough strength to perform a back handspring were the end goals of my Independent Component 1, which I completed.

Interpretive:
Tumbling is the hardest part of cheerleading to progress at. Any cheerleader will attest to that. It comes easier to some people, but it's the aspect of the sport you have to spend the most time on in order to gain skill. Then after you've gained a skill, you have to focus on perfecting it before you can move onto a harder skill. Tumbling is very time consuming, and the only way to get better is to practice it. Working on my back walkover for at least 30 hours was something definitely achievable because of this. A typical practice starts with conditioning and then we warm up our routine section by section, including tumbling. For the rest of practice we run through the routine multiple times focusing certain times only on stunting and others only on tumbling, or doing a full out which means we perform the routine doing all stunting and tumbling, like we would at a competition. So, every practice I attend with my team, counts as Independent Component hours.

The goal of my entire senior project is to get onto a Level 2 Allstar Cheerleading team, and in order to do that I need Level 2 tumbling skills, which means a back handspring. However, before I can just start throwing back handsprings, my coach has to use his judgement to decide whether I'm physically ready to learn a back handspring or not. The two main things taken into account are the perfection of my skills leading up to a back walkover and my strength. Tumbling is all about using your core muscles to control the way your body is moving while tumbling, so conditioning and strengthening your body to a point where you're physically capable of performing a back handspring is essential in the process to learn one. You can't skip it. Likewise, before you learn a new tumbling skill, especially one harder than any other you already know, you must have the preceding tumbling skills that act as a foundation to your learning down perfectly. According to the USASF Rules and Regulations, a back handspring is the tumbling skill that comes after a back walkover, due to level tumbling expectations and limitations. So, in order to achieve a back handspring and be able to progress to a Level 2 team, I must first perfect my back walkover.

Here is a video of me a few months ago (November I believe), doing my back walkover. Please excuse the poor quality of the video, it was filmed on a phone.

Here is a video of my new, perfected back walkover. Note how my toes are pointed and my legs are much straighter. I also kick over much faster than I previously did, and can do a back walkover in a tumbling pass, which is a lot harder than doing one from just standing,

Applied:
My topic is finding out which factor is most important to progress to a level two Allstar cheerleading team. By doing this Independent Component I've been able to test whether or not tumbling is an answer to my essential question, and it is. With this component I understand the importance tumbling holds to a cheerleader aspiring to be on a higher level and how difficult it is to progress in that area. Tumbling is something a lot of cheerleaders need to work on not only at practice, but outside of practice too, especially if they want to gain tumbling skills that exceed that of their level. I had a hard time getting over my mental block and trusting myself to just throw my back walkover, and I've noticed a lot of other girls on my team who are close to having back walkovers also have this mental block, and it's what stops you from tumbling. You have to practice the skill over and over and fall hundreds of times to get rid of it, and I only know that because that's exactly what I did. So, this Independent Component has provided me with an answer to my essential question, "What is the most important factor to progress to a Level 2 Allstar Cheerleading team?" An important factor in progressing to a Level 2 Allstar cheer team is perfecting the tumbling skills of the level you're already on, and going into the gym outside of practice to work on tumbling skills for the next level above you. You have to dedicate extra time and effort if you want to gain skills outside of your level to move on.