Hey, so i'm just curious how ya'lls practices are run. We're a highly competetive team so we practice all the time! Throughout the month of June we have practice every day, twice a day, for 2hours each. During the shcool year we fall into 3 hour practices 3 times a week, and add saturaday practices for 3 hours during comp season.

But now i'm curious, what do you guys do during practice? We stretch for 'bout 30 minutes, then move into routines. how do you prepare for success, or if your not a competetive team what do you do for fun? Do your coaches/sponsers attend practice? Etc..... OOO also what do you do for team bonding, no cheesy stuff-lol
-Just let me know whats up

Well, yours are run like ours. But we start practice off with the UDA warm-up. We play a lot of games too. This is a game I got from my cousin't squad called pom arms. Here's how you play. For ten minuts, a captin or coach calls out pom positions. You have to hit everything really fast, and tight. Also, you can't rest. then, right after 10 min is up, we hold a T for 5 min, then a high V for 5 min, then a T again, then a hivh V. Right after this, we drop down and do 50 push-ups. Then we stand up, close our eyes, and hit a high V. The, coach and captins walk around, and randomly hit your arm, if you move you have to do 100 push-ups, then hold a T for 10min, and do 100 more push-ups! Your arms really hurt after all of this, but you'll learn to stay tight! For team bonding, we play the "Name game"(Amber&Harmony are only examples!). This is how you play. Have your team stand in a circle (coach and captins too) The coach starts off. They will say: MY NAME IS Amber!, and do a dance move. Then the squad goes HER NAME IS AMBER, and do whatever move she did. Then, the next girl will go MY NAME HARMONY! And do a dance move. (Like a toe-touch) Then the squad goes Her Name is AMBER!, and do the dance move then, HER NAME IS HARMONY, and do the toe-touch. So, you learn everyone's name, and learn a dance! HAVE FUN!

Hey thanks for the ideas, wow the whole arm game sounds pretty intense! I might have to modify it to say 20 push-ups until our team gains some strength-lol thanks a bunch

You're welcome! I have two more games for you. To build teamwork, play the knot game. For fun, play little sally walker!

The Knot Game: Have everyone stand in a circle, and hold hands. Then, walk to the center, and make a clump. Every one must grab someones hand, but it has to be different people. Try to reach over peoples heads and accross from each other. When you're done, you should have formed a knot! Now the challenge, try to get back into a circle. But, you can't let go of anyones hand! Good Luck!

Little Sally Walker: This game is quite simple. Stand in a
circle. Pick two people to go into the center. The squad will then sing this song: "Little Sally Walker, Walkin Down The Street. She didn't know what to do, so she stopped in front of me!" (At this point the two girls will pick two more team members and jump infront of them.)"She said, Hey girl do your thing, do your thing, SWITCH, hey girl do your thing do your thing, CLAP!" When the team is singing hey girl do your thing do your thing the girl will do a dance move, and on switch will change places with the girl dancing. Then she will do the same move that has been done in by the other girl.) Keep this game going, it's fun!

Hope this helps!
~Kimberly

wow, on my varsity team we practice monday through thursday from 8-12 or 8-11 throughout june through july. We have august off. Its going to be hard but so much fun! ~*~Erin~*~

Summer practices always seem like they're going to be so long and hard but i always find myself actually enjoying them. I guess it's cuz there's no longer the pressure of school, it's just waking up early in the morning to dance, and then taking an 8 hour brake before coming back to dance again. But our regualr achool year practices are a little less enjoyable:)

Butters is so right, summer practices are so much more enjoyable! We started yesterday, and I can't wait 'till 3:00 today 'cause I have dance!

Wow butters, you have A LOT of practices during the month of June. Summer practices are always the worst cause they're SOOO hot and everyone is still getting use to the new team. During the school year we have practices on Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Friday. 2 hour/practice except for Thursday when we have 3 because of early release. Usually late fall we move into 2.5 hours/practice and then two-a-days before school. (But that's not unless we need it though ).

Anyways, we stretch for about 15 minutes and then abs/arms conditioning. Then we do our toe-touch circle where we do variations of toe-touches and then c-jumps, capezios, etc. After the circle we go across the floor, (leaps, jumps, turns, combinations from routines), lasts probably about 30 minutes. Then we do our routines, mark them than full out than take it apart and clean it, you know the drill. If we have time we might do a cool down. As for team bonding we have our "dance team sleepovers" and we get together at a person's house for every game after school and eat dinner and get ready.

I am on the same dance team as American dancer- and he have alot of fun! We do alot of strenuos pom work and all and work on technique! This year we have on Wed technigue classes. I have never been but kim can tell you how it goes. With a good mix of work and fun we come ut first place at camp with 1st place for homeroutine and spirt stick everyday the on the ball award and 110% plaque, most achieved and leadership award- it alot but we earn it!

For fun activites we also play Little Sally Walker except we changed the words to the game to fit our team...Little Hi-Stepper dancin to the beat

Hi everyone! Yea, I am on a Varsity team too, but we dont practice to much in the summer anymore for some reason this year. But it is early which stinks! We practice 2x a week at 6;45 in the morning! Not fun to jump around then in the summer believe me. But i love it anyway! So other than that not to much in the summer, but last year we had a competition in the summer so we practiced a lot more than that and had longer hours. I miss competitions! Then when we get to the end of AUG. we start practicing way more to get ready for school games and such. Anyway at practice we do some combinations that we learn like differnet cruches and push ups and etc. We take a lot of our exercises the dance classes we take. They are op. 3x a week but we have to have a mini. of 12 by the end of the summer. There we do all sorts of exercises like: V-ups, supermans, cruches, situps, push-ups, use therbands, and so forth. The really help and are a lot of fun too.