Practice
Practice is what makes competitive cheer leading so difficult and time consuming. Competing is the fun part of competition cheer where as no one in the audience sees what the team went through to pull of what they performed on the floor. Each team practices at least twice a week for 3 hours or more. As you can see in the picture to the left Senior Elite is practicing their pyramid and in the picture below you see them competing the same part in their pyramid. The saying most cheerleaders know is "You compete how you practice" Which means exactly what it says, you have to practice with a smile on your face and exactly how you want to compete. The reason for smiling at practices is because you won't remember or be worrying about smiling as much as hitting the routine to your best ability. The hours a team puts into working on their skills and their routine is oblivious to the crowd and judges as long as they see a good performance.
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