5 Takeaways from the Congrès Cheer Québec: What We Brought Back from Montreal

Cheerleading is weightlifting with humans.

It's gymnastics with distractions.

If those two sentences don't immediately make you think differently about what you're asking of your athletes every single practice, they will by the end of this post.

We attended the Congrès Cheer Québec in Montreal, organized by our provincial federation and came home with a renewed appreciation for what this sport demands: technically, physically and strategically. Here are the five things that stuck with us most.

1. Build Your Warm-Up for Your Needs

A warm-up isn't a ritual you do before the real practice starts. It's a tool. And like any tool, it should be chosen based on the specific job you need it to do that day.

What does your team need this season or this quarter? More technique and stability? More cardio? More focus and sharpness? Coach Gio Smith taught us her ways. She shared with the cheer coaches her exact framework of how she builds her own warm-ups for her high school stunting squad.

A warm-up designed to teach your team the specific skills in the way you want them to look.

The question to ask yourself: what are we actually warming up for today? Start there, and build backward.

2. Drills and Adaptations for the Dead Floor

One of the most practical sessions of the weekend.

Not every gym has a spring floor. Not every competition is on the same surface you train on depending if you're pursuing the ICU route or All Star. The dead floor (a flat, non-sprung surface) changes the physics of tumbling and impacts timing, energy conservation and an athlete's confidence.

The takeaway wasn't just about technique adjustments, which there were plenty! It was most of all about intentionality. Gabriel Roy and Jacob Lagimonière from our national team lead that class brilliantly.

Building dead floor drills into regular training is an investment in adaptability. The best athletes will need to prepare for it in order ton continue their journey with the national team.

3. Coach Development Is a Continued Journey

Becoming a better coach is a continuous process, not something that ends when you get your certification or when your team wins its first title. The coaches who grow the fastest are the ones who stay curious, who seek feedback, who put themselves in rooms where they might be the least experienced person and treat that as a resource, not a threat!

And here's something worth sitting with: on competition day, you and the coach from the gym down the street are competitors.

The rest of the year, you're colleagues in the same project. That is building cheerleading in this country into something we're all proud of. Don't hesitate to ask for advice. Someday someone else just mught ask for yours too!

4. Train the Underlying Skills, Not Just the Routine

Think about a competitive swimmer. Or a sprinter. They spend enormous amounts of time on isolated technical work: stroke mechanics, starts, turns, the fundamentals that make the performance possible. The race is the expression of the work.

Cheer training often defaults to running the routine. And it does have its place in the season of course.

But a portion of every week should be dedicated to pure skill development, with drills in isolation, repeated until they become automatic, then repeated again.

Olympic gymnasts at the national level still drill their basics. Every session.

They go back to foundations not because they've forgotten them, but because precision at the highest level requires constant maintenance. Cheerleading is no different. Set aside time each week that belongs only to honing and perfecting your tumbling, your stunting, your jumps. Without the music, the placmeent on the mat, the motions of this year's routine.

Take time to perfect the skills that make the routines possible. This year's and the next... too

5. Roster Strategy Starts Before Tryouts

Tryouts don't create your roster. They confirm it.

The coaches who build the strongest programs go into tryouts with a vision already formed: the roles they need to fill, the skill sets they're looking for, the team architecture they're building toward. Alexandra Guimond from ACE Athletics Cheerleading taught the class how tryouts are the moment that vision gets validated or adjusted, with every little details of her processes.

Some athletes perform under pressure on tryout day. Others show their real value over time. When you put them on their teams, consider giving them two weeks of practice time, or even the full summer, before finalizing your placement. Let the athletes show you who they are in a training environment over a little bit more time.

The roster decision is the single highest-leverage decision of your season. Treat it with the weight it deserves.

Why These Events Matter

The Congrès Cheer Québec is exactly the kind of gathering our sport needs more of.

Not because the information isn't available elsewhere, but because there is something irreplaceable about being in a room with coaches who are facing the same problems you are, wrestling with the same questions and choosing to invest a weekend in getting better at what they do.

Cheerleading is weightlifting with humans. It's gymnastics with distractions. It demands technical precision, physical strength, psychological resilience and split-second trust between athletes who are literally holding each other up in the air. The coaches who keep deepening their understanding of it are the ones building programs that last.

Thank you to Cheer Québec for organizing a weekend worth the trip for every cheer gym in the province!

At Cheer Action, we support Quebec and Canadian cheer gyms at every stage of the season. From custom uniforms to training sets, bags, shoes and gear, we're here when your team is ready to take the floor. Browse our 2026-27 catalog at cheeraction.ca or book a design session with one of our reps.