Progressions are the fundamental building blocks of learning any new skill. In order to master the final goal, you need to have completed the progressions required before moving on. However, people tend to skip over these important middle steps and rush to the end- which can do more harm than good. From Level 1 to Level 5, progressions are not something to ignore. Check out why cheerleaders should always follow progressions before attempting a new skill!

Progressions help you understand and correct any body alignment issues and form problems.

We all know that tumbling, stunting, jumping, and dancing requires extreme precision, and progressions pinpoint those tiny details that make all the difference. Why does your full up keep falling backwards after you make it to the top? Why are you piking over so much on your layout? Progressions are able to help you correct your body alignment problems, which in many cases is the reason why a stunt keeps falling, or why your tumbling doesn’t feel quite right.

Progressions make learning advanced skills in the future easier.

I bet you’ve heard your coach tell someone that if they don’t have a clean layout, they can’t start learning fulls. Or that if you can’t do a lib from an elevator, you shouldn’t be trying to do high-to-highs. While this may be frustrating to hear, it is important to respect your coach and understand why they are telling you this. Learning (and correcting!) those baby steps in between the big skills will help you in the future! If you learn to set correctly from the moment you start trying back tucks, by the time you learn fulls- you’re set won’t be an issue! Listen to your coach and understand that progressions are meant to help you in the future.

Progressions create clean skills that judges love to see!

The tricky part about cheerleading is finding the right balance between difficulty and execution. In most cases, execution trumps difficulty. Teams that hit stunts tight, strong and clean generally will be scored higher than a team with scary, shaky stunts that barely stay up. You want to be the team that hits zero during competition, and progressions are certainly a step in the right direction. Break apart the skill and drill each section as separately as possible. Slowly combine those parts until it creates a whole sequence. Yes, this will take more time. And yes, you might feel frustrated. But the end result is so much better than if you had skipped the important progressions.

Progressions make you feel safe and confident.

Trying to get a new skill straight from the trampoline to the floor in a week is not only scary- it is unsafe! This is what makes athletes start to lose confidence and is partly why mental blocks occur. If an athlete feels completely comfortable on one surface, move him or her to a slightly different surface- then repeat until the next natural progression is the floor. It can be scary to attempt a skill, which you are already feeling unsure about, on a brand new surface! The cheerleader needs to feel completely comfortable before going into the next step. Otherwise bails and falls could happen because the cheerleader doesn’t know where he or she is in the air, or they just don’t think they can do it. Safety must always comes first!

the above was taken from an article from www.insidecheerleading.com