Tumbling..Not just ANYONE can do it!

To be able to tumble takes a lot of work, time, dedication, and courage. Tumbling can be very dangerous. Many cheerleaders are injured while tumbling. If you don’t get the precise amount of power or you don’t turn your body enough to make it over, you won’t make it over and you can seriously be hurt. Tumbling is taken very seriously amongst coaches and athletes. You need to make sure you are spotted (someone is there to catch you in case you don’t make it over) every time you are doing a new tumbling pass until you are ready to execute it on your own.

There are different levels of tumbling passes one can throw. There are the basic tumbling passes which consist of forward and backward rolls, kart-wheels, and round offs. When a cheerleader first starts tumbling, they must learn and master these passes before moving on. These passes are not as difficult to perform, but they are significant because they teach you how to move and control your body when it is in motion, and are the fundamental passes needed for more intense passes.

Then there are your more intermediate tumbling passes which consist of front walk-over’s, back handsprings (also known as a back-flip), and running passes such as a running round off back handspring. These passes are more difficult and require more time, technique, and coaching before mastering. Most high school cheerleaders are tumbling at this level.

This is me in the middle of a back-handspring
(Picture taken Senior year of highschool at a fundraiser)



Then there are your more advanced tumbling passes which consist of no-handed passes, such as tucks, layouts and full twists. These tumbling passes are most intricate because they require no hands, which means they require more power and more training in order to execute them. More advanced or All-Star squads require these tumbling passes.

Tumbling takes a lot of time, focus, power, and courage. Tumbling is not only a technical and power game, but it is a mind game as well. You can’t think about what if’s, you just have to trust your body and go out and throw it. If you think about tumbling too much you can freak yourself out and you can hurt yourself. Tumbling is mostly an individual aspect of cheerleading, but it does help the team’s image and competitive advantage tremendously. The support of each cheer member is vital to one cheerleaders tumbling performance and advancement. The effort of each cheerleader to advance her tumbling skills is crucial to the team’s progress and advancement. Because of tumbling and stunting, cheerleading can be more dangerous than football if one little thing goes wrong. Tumbling takes an incredible amount of athleticism, thus it should be considered a sport because of this if nothing else.

This work by Veronica Oviedo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.