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.