How to Plan Cheer Practice as a Coach

Preparing your cheer team to be successful doesn’t start at cheer practice, it starts before cheer practice even begins. We know the old saying, Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.

As a cheer coach, I used to show up without a structured plan for cheer practice. Sure, we would accomplish a lot. But it was when I invested time into strategically planning cheer practice that our cheer team was more prepared, more successful, and accomplished more at cheer practice!

First, determine the goals of the cheerleading team. For example, if your cheer team cheers on the sidelines during football games and performs during halftime at the football games, then sideline performances and halftime performances are the priority

During the summer, focus on building up skills in stunting, jumping, and mastering the cheers that the cheer team will be performing on the sidelines. Once they have worked on those foundational skills, as you move closer to the football season, then begin to focus on specific routines for football games.

Make sure that your cheer team knows several cheers and skills that they can consistently perform. Then, you can add on more difficult skills and a variety of sideline cheers and dances.

As you retain cheerleaders throughout the years of high school cheer, they will come into the season familiar with the material and you will be able to move quickly into more advanced skills earlier in the season each year.

How often will your cheer team perform a new routine during halftime? Our cheer team performs a new halftime routine at every other football game. Utilize practice time to work on new routines and work on skills for upcoming routines. It is important to build in enough time for the team to master the skill both for safety and so that the team can perform with confidence.

For our cheer team, we practice 3 days per week for 1 hour and 45 minutes per day.

Here is our Daily Summer Practice Schedule:

5 minute Warm up	Running or a dynamic warm up
5 minute Stretch	Static stretching
5 minute Jump Drills	Leg lifts V ups High Kicks Toe touches Hurdlers Pikes
15 minute Tumbling Drills	Forward rolls Handstands Cartwheels Round Offs Walk-overs Handsprings
30 minute Stunting Drills	Preps/Extensions/Liberties Dismounts Pyramids
30 minute Cheers & Sidelines	Cheers Sidelines Band Dances Sideline Dances
15 minute Conditioning	Conditioning

During the season, we block more time in the practice schedule to work on the upcoming halftime performance and sideline material. We build in time throughout the week to work on drills and skills for upcoming routines, but a majority of the time is spent cleaning and perfecting current routines.

Here is our Daily School Year Cheer Practice Schedule:

5 minute Warm up	Running or a dynamic warm up
5 minute Stretch	Static stretching
60 minute Routines	Stunts Pyramids Dances Full outs
30 minute Stunting or Cheers	Sidelines Stunting for upcoming routines
5 minute Wrap Up	Discuss upcoming events or reminders

The blocks of time can vary within your cheer practice schedule dependent upon what your cheer team needs to work on. If you have assistant cheer coaches, I recommend creating a weekly practice schedule ahead of time and sharing it with the coaches so that you can all be prepared and on the same page at practice.

You can simply create and share a Google Doc file with your coaches. I created a practice planning page in the Cheer Coach Binder resource.

I have found that the more prepared I am ahead of time as the cheer coach for practice, the smoother cheer practice will run. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected].

Happy Coaching!