Your most valuable piece of equipment

Your most valuable piece of equipment as a cheerleader is... your voice, of course. I recently took a class for teachers and school professionals on crisis intervention and they taught us about using our voices to defuse potentially volatile situations with our voices. They explained that "non-verbals" doesn't just refer to facial expression and body language- some of the most powerful part of communication is not what you say, but how you say it. In other words, it's not the words, but the non-verbal vocal qualities that can calm, intimidate, or in the case of a cheerleader- invigorate.

The instructors, both school psychologists explained to us how important 3 aspects of our voices are.

1. Tone
2. Volume
3. Cadence

Tone- if a student is anxious, defensive, or acting-out, adults need to avoid sounding impatient, condescending or inattentive. People can HEAR if you care and if you're calm. When an adult tells you that they "don't like your tone of voice," it probably means that no matter what your words said, you sounded ironic, sarcastic, patronizing, or disrespectful. 

In the same way, the crowd can hear if you're confident and poised, but more importantly, they can hear if you're intneted, invested, and enthusiastic. Invested- you care that the team do well. Enthusiastic- you're having fun and you're positive and you want the crowd to have fun and stay positive- even if the team's down. Intented- that means you're purposeful, your purpose is to raise the energy level and your objective is to get the crowd to cheer WITH you. (Intentedness, enthusiasm, confidence and poise are all blocks in John Wooden's famous Pyramid of Success).

Another word for tone is expression. Practice reading things with different types of expression and you'll realize how much how you say something can change how the meaning may be interpreted. This will make you a better reader, a decent actor, a great cheerleader and a very effective communicator. This is a skill that will help you all through your life, no matter what your job is, with just about anybody and in almost any situation.

Volume- Teachers need to use an appropriate volume taking into consideration distance and situation... Inside voice? Outside voice? Classroom lecture voice? Polite conversation voice? Private conversation voice? Library/Movie theater/Church/Funeral Home voice? Factory assembly line floor voice? You see what I'm getting at? How many kids don't go out for sports because they complain that the coach is always yelling at them? Hello- They're outdoors with 20-40 noisy kids and they have to make sure that everyone can hear them- they're yelling TO you not necessarily AT you.

This goes without saying. Any cheerleader needs to be heard from at least 50 feet away. There are plenty of things you can do to work on this. Ask me if you'd like some exercises. Don't be surprised if I post some here on the blog or on facebook whether you ask for them or not. Posture and pitch have a lot of effect on volume. Using your diaphragm is key. Strong core muscles and respiratory endurance all help too. No smoking either.

Finally Cadence- If a teacher wants you to understand and follow directions, they need to deliver their instructions using an even rate and rhythm. Readers and actors have to consider their flow or fluency. For cheerleaders, you have to be two things- even (AKA consistent) and deliberate (not too slow, but definitely not out of control- too fast). The analogy I use with  my squads is a locomotive. You're the engineers for the "Spirit Train," and the fans in the stands are all hobos. Only unlike the Union Pacific, you WANT all the hobos to get on board with you. Travel too slow and they'll feel like you'll never get them anywhere. Travel as fast as a magnetic bullet-train and they'll have no hope of ever climbing on. You have to keep it even and steady, so they can match you and understand you, beat for beat, syllable for syllable.

Obviously pitch and inflection are really important too, but for now, try working on your tone, volume, and cadence. If you can skillfully master your most important piece of equipment, you'll quickly become powerfully effective at leading cheers.

Breath from your diaphram

I'm always preaching that cheerleaders should yell from their diaphrams, not scream from their larnyxes. They end up being able to be louder longer, have deeper, richer pitch, and most importantly protect your larnyx from injury- so you don't sound like you've been smoking for 40 years when you're 20. Here's more reasons- it can help you focus (like if you have ADD) and can help you deal with stress and anxiety- especially things like, say... stage fright!

This is from the book "Change your Brain, Change your Life" by psychiatrist Daniel G. Amen, M.D.

TRY DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING

Breath deeply and slowly from your belly. This is one of the main exercises I teach my patients have panic disorders. I actually write out a panic plan for them to carry with them. On the prescription it says: "Whenever you feel anxious or panicky, do the following:

• Breath deeply and slowly from your belly.
• Kill self-fulfilling prophecy forming negative thoughts
• Distract yourself from the anxiety

Breathing is a very important part of the prescription. The purpose of breathing is to get oxygen from the air into your body and to blow off waste products such as carbon dioxide. Every cell in your body need oxygen in order to function. Brain cells are particularly' sensitive to oxygen, as they start to die within four minutes when they arc deprived of it. Slight changes in oxygen content in the brain can alter the way n person feels and behaves. When a person gets angry, his or her breathing pattern changes almost immediately. Breathing becomes shallower and significantly faster. This breathing pattern is inefficient, and the oxygen content in the angry person's blood is lowered. Subsequently there is less oxygen available to the person’s brain and he or she may become more irritable, impulsive, confused, and prone to negative behavior (such as yelling, threatening, or hitting another person)

Learn to breathe properly
Try this exercise:
Sit in a chair. Get comfortable. Close your eyes. Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. Then, for several minutes, feel the rhythm of your breathing. Do you breathe mostly with your chest? Mostly with your belly? Or with both your chest and belly? The way you breathe has a huge impact on how you feel moment by moment. Have you ever watched a baby breathe? Or a puppy? They breathe almost exclusively with their bellies. They move their upper chest very little in breathing. Yet most adults breathe almost totally from the upper part of their chest.

To correct this negative breathing pattern, I teach my patients to become experts at breathing slowly and deeply, mostly with their bellies. In my office, I have some very sophisticated biofeedback equipment that uses strain gauges to measure breathing activity. I place one gauge around a person's chest and a second one around his or her belly. The biofeedback equipment measures the movement of the chest and belly as the person breathes in and out. If you expand your belly (using the diaphragm muscles there) when you breathe in, it allows room for your lungs to inflate downward, increasing the amount of air available to your body. I teach my patients to breathe with their bellies by watching their pattern on the computer screen. In about a half hour's time, most people can learn how to change their breathing patterns, which relaxes them and gives them better control over how they feel and behave.

If you do not have access to sophisticated biofeedback equipment, lie on your back and place a small book on your belly. When you breathe in, make the book go up, and when you breathe out, make the book go down. Shifting the center o f breathing lower in your body will help you feel more relaxed and in better control of yourself. Practice this diaphragmatic breathing for five or ten minutes a day to settle down your basal ganglia (the portion of your brain responsible for anxiety and for being able to settle down and focus/concentrate- like ADD).

This has been one of the most helpful exercises for me personally. When I first learned how to breathe properly. I discovered that my baseline breathing rate was twenty-four breaths a minute and I breathed mostly with my upper chest. I had spent ten years in the military, being taught to stick my chest out and suck my gut in (the opposite of what is good for breathing). Quickly I learned how to quiet my breathing and help it be more efficient. Not only did it help my feelings of anxiety, it also helped mc feel more settled overall. I still use it to calm my nerves before tough meetings, speaking engagements, and media appearances. I also use it, in conjunction with self-hypnosis, to help mc sleep when I feel stressed. My current baseline breathing rate is less than ten times a minute.