German Cheersport: Mental Training For Athletes Who Might Land On Their Heads

Since 2020, I have had the great pleasure of working and teaching within the German Cheersport Federation as a coach educator, a sport scientist and athletic coach, and as the federation sport psychologist. Since 2023, however, I have the enormous honor of working with the entire national squad, including four national teams at the junior and senior competition levels.

Cheersport is a lesser-known sport worldwide, I suppose, and is still often reduced to its most basic and consumable stereotypes: the tiny, scantily-clad girls next to the football field and the steroid-level-big dudes who throw them into the air as the crowd gasps and drools - but doesn’t really pay attention to the sport.

That sidelined, show-and-tell style of cheerleading, while valuable and interesting in itself, can barely be recognized in the cheersport we see on a competitive, high-performance level. Cheersport is comparable with acrobatics, dance, gymnastics, and Xsport all rolled into one, and requires far more than a tiny frame, hot bod, and pompoms to find success in.

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“Welcome to Team Germany!”

As both a sport psychologist and sport scientist, I have worked with national teams of all possible gender combinations before, but not every squad I have worked with is eager to be thrown up into the air, flip around a few times, and then dive back into the arms of their teammates with the ever-present possibility of belly-flopping onto the floor. Needless to say, my first few training camps were intense masterclasses in “control your face” - when the sport psychologist looks away and cringes in shock and low-key horror while the teams stunt, there’s probably little hope for anyone involved to be helped!

Very quickly I came into conversation with the athletes and coaches, most of whom welcomed me so warmly and happily that I was immediately part of the team. Hearing more about their motivations, mindsets, and experiences in their own careers of the development of cheersport in Germany and worldwide schooled me very quickly in how cheerleaders train, think, and live: leave it all on the mat for two and a half minutes - and do it with a smile - to find out what is possible.

It took me two months to get over the hard swallow and twitching eye I had during stunt practice and I quickly adapted to their mindset, overtaken by their openness and infected with their passion for a sport that barely gets recognized outside of the USA and doesn’t pay them a cent. I was so inspired by their lack of fear that I adapted to their mindset of hunger for athletic and peresonal development, curiosity about new and higher-level skills, their athlete intuitions and body perceptions, and their willingness to push the boundary of their own fear and safety.

So we made a plan!

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Periodizing Two Years

My involvement with the national squad year-round is based on a two-year development and professionalization project by our organizing federation, Cheersport Germany/CCVD. Alongside the athletic coach who was recruited to provide year-round training plans for each athlete, I could plan and structure my two years as I wished and thought best.

Step One: Building Relationships Everywhere

One of my early mentors in this field imparted on me the importance of asking people, groups, and teams what they think they need, and building the relationship and trust just like a normal person would before you tell them what you think they need. I hold to this rule strongly in 99% of cases - spending time on the sidelines talking to people, eating with them, walking with them, shooting the shit with them. Keeping it professional, but not so professional that everyone thinks I’m psychoanalyzing them or about to tell their coach to cut them from the squad.

When it fit the situation, I preached about confidentiality and how anything said to me in the context of Sport Psych stayed between us. I explained what topics often come up in sessions but that no topic is off limits, that mental health diagnosis and treatment is not my job, but rather to help people perform and stay as healthy as possible while doing it.

Another important step was communicating to everyone in the squad that I have no interest or investment in making squad decisions. That is the job of the coaches. I’m the psychologist. We know our roles and stick to them!

Step Two: Developing Foundational Skills @ Camp

In the monthly Junior & Senior Camps hosted with all NT athletes, teams were offered an hour workshop on Friday or Saturday, in which we worked through specific scenarios together or dove into particularly relevant themes to build skills around them.

For example, I hosted a workshop for each team on pre-competition anxiety and how to build their own pre-performance routines to help them “get in the zone”. They could then discuss their individual techniques with their stunt groups, so everyone in the group understood what the others needed to bring their best in the moment and could offer support.

Topics were and are planned out over each camp in the two-year period, aimed at building up their basic competencies and mental skills over time and long before competition, so that we have time to practice until it’s automatic. Just like physical training and stunting, mental skills take time to master and become effective! Although all themes are cheersport-specific such a working through mental blocks, some are adjusted to be more team- or stunt-specific like communicating or cuing effectively in stunt groups, scenario-specific such as dealing with mistakes when on the mat, and some based on the absolute foundation of having a resilient, reflective mind and perceptive, healthy body.

Step Three: On The Ground @ Orlando

My Worlds 2024 Recap

In April 2024, I traveled with the team to Cheerleading World Championships, the ultimate international competition hosted at ESPN Complex in Orlando every year.

Regardless of how much work we invest in advance in mental training and skill learning, there will always be acute situations that pop up unexpectedly or need a mediating hand to reflect on and deal with in the moment. Thus, although I hosted team meetings with each team twice during the intense week leading up to their competition days, I also offered 1:1 sessions for athletes and coaches every day, and sat in on coach meetings at night. I was available for crisis meetings between teams, coaching teams, or stunt groups or individuals, most notably crises involving panic around poor training results in the last few sessions before Comp Day. I was on the ground at ESPN in the warm-up areas, behind the curtain with the team beforehand, and in front of the mat during competition and back to give hugs and offer support afterwards, regardless of the result on the mat itself.

Step Four: Moving Forward

One week after the end of Worlds, I am as infected by Team Germany’s passionate, daring, fighting spirit. I look so forward to this next year of camps and competitions, of development and hunger for more. Higher. Faster. Better. Another level. Level Seven.

I have a lot of reflecting to do after Worlds, seeing as it was my first international competition in this sport. I am satisfied with the squad’s mental and emotional development over the past year and am pouring over with fresh ideas for further work in the next season - but first of all, I need a quick little off-season too. That keeps the motivation up and the deep peripheral fatigue of working 18 hours a day in Orlando far away.

Cheers to athletes who throw and get thrown for a living. You are brave, ridiculously strong, and you inspire me!