How to Perform a Cheerleading Pyramid

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Lucy Spain here to tell you how to perform cheerleading pyramids. Now a basic pyramid is going to be a collection of the stunts that your squad should already have. Whether these stunts be a half, a full, the liberty, the heel stretch, and the scorpion, you're going to want to make sure you have these basic stunts mastered before you move on to pyramid work. The reason this is important is because a pyramid is usually going to consist of about six or more people. And in this pyramid, if one part of the pyramid falls, the other part is most likely to go down as well. So you want to make sure you're not putting your other squad members at risk. It's also very important to make sure that you have spotters around when you're doing your pyramids. For every girl in the air, she should have her own spotter. There are also rules and regulations that go from state to state as far as how pyramids can be built, how many levels high they can be, and different ways to dismount. So you want to make sure you're following your state's rules when it comes to putting your pyramids together. Now, the most interesting thing about pyramids are the creative ways you can link them together. Say your squad has a couple of liberty groups. You can bring these groups together and link them with your arms. You can do different levels, different ways of reaching and different motions while you're in the air with your liberties. You can have an outside girl do a right liberty, and a girl next to her do a left liberty and simply join them with opposing arm motions. That's going to turn out to be a nice looking pyramid. Another way to make your pyramids creative is different dismounts. The most common dismount would be a step out where you simply would grab the shoulders of the person in front of you, and step out of your pyramid. Another step up from that is going to be the cradle where your bases will give you a pop and the flier will simply ride the cradle up and land within her two bases and her back spot. If you want to do a variation on the cradle after you get that down, you can do a twisting cradle which is also referred to as a three sixty. When the flier is riding her pop, she will simply ride up and twist down into her cradle. That is going to be the most advanced way to get out of a pyramid. Now that you've got the tools to get started, go ahead and get creative and start putting your individual stunts into a pyramid. And that's how you create a cheerleading pyramid."