How to Spot When Cheerleading

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Lucy Spain on behalf of Expert Village here to talk about cheerleading jumps and tumbling. Now when we're tumbling it's also really important to make sure that we always have spotters. If you've been tumbling all your life or whether this is your first day on a tumble mat, we need to make sure that we have spotters for everyone. Now, anybody can be a spotter. A lot of people will think your spotter has to be larger than you are or big and strong and that's really necessarily not the case at all. A spotter just has to be someone who's trained in spotting and they also need to know where, when and how to stand. Now one of the most common ways we're going to stand when we're spotting is by taking a stance down on the knee. Now if my tumbler were in front of me, if they were doing a back handspring, I would usually place one hand right around the area of the upper thigh and another one on the back. This is going to help them lean over and if they do happen to fall, I've got my arm out to catch them so that they don't land on their head. Another appropriate way to use spotting when you're tumbling is to grasp the back of your tumbler's shirt. Now we want to make sure we get a good grasp on the material but we don't want to get our hand tangled up when they start tumbling. This kind of tumbling spotting is going to be more appropriate when we're doing more advanced tumbling such as back tucks, etcetera. Now, you can also use a spotter when you're doing running tumbling. This is going to get a little more complicated so it's really important to make sure your spotter is trained for running tumbling. Now you're going to want to do a test trial run and do your tumble so the spotter knows approximately where to stand and it's going to be the spotter's job to stand out of your way when you're approaching them they really need to step in and get right under you. Now it is okay to use spotting when we're practicing. It's a great way to learn. A lot of people just have confidence issues in their tumbling and they'll use a spotter to get more and more confident. So make sure on your team if the only spotter available is the coach that you send a couple people out to get spotting training at a local gymnastics place because it's really nice to be able to have two or three so you can have a lot of tumble practice going on at once."