Cheerleading, One of the Toughest Sports? By Amelia F.

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Try lifting a person with just your two arms, or stand up 10 feet in the air with only one pair of hands holding only one of your legs and your other leg up. Try all of this and tell me cheerleading is not a sport. Cheerleading is a physical activity for a specific sports team motivation based on routines. The routines contain tumbling, dance, jumps and cheers. Cheerleading is a sport because you not only need physical strength, mental strength, but you also need a ton of balance.

Cheerleading is a sport for many reasons. First of all, for all the physical strength involved. Every cheerleading teams must do very intense warm ups before getting started. Some examples of warm ups they do is push-ups, different kinds of jumps,running and many more! When doing their dance routines, cheerleaders need to be very strong especially if they are the base (the person who lifts and catches people) because they need to hold the weight of a person. In other cases, they need to push their own weights up while they are performing jumps. Finally, cheerleaders need a lot of muscles to execute the tumblings they do such as back flips, front flips,etc.

Another reason why cheerleading is a sport is because of all the mental strength needed. Indeed, Cheerleaders (especially flyers) need very high mental strength (confidence). They need a lot of confidence in their partners since they constantly get thrown and catched in the air. Imagine the stress of getting thrown in the air and not being sure if someone will catch you well. This also puts a lot of pressure on the bases because they know that if a flyer falls and is badly hurt, it is most likely their fault. Lastly, you must be confident in your capacities before going on stage. Even if you have the physical strength and good techniques, you still have a lot of pressure on you.

The least reason why cheerleading is a sport is because you need a ton of balance. Cheerleaders constantly have one leg up in the air which requires the body to be very equal. Another example is the flyer. This person who is getting hold by one leg must stay straight and sturdy or else she/he could get badly hurt. To wrap it up, cheerleading in general requires a lot of balance since their is a lot of range in movements.

In conclusion, people who say cheerleading is not a sport obviously have never done cheerleading before or just do not want to admit that a sport most girls do is actually a sport. Cheerleading requires good physical strength, mental strength and balance. So, if you are searching for a great sport that keeps you in shape, you are very competitive, you are not scared of heights and you are strong, try cheerleading! But remember to be cautious!