What do you think is harder? Synchronized swimming or cheerleading.
Personally synchro is way harder! I do it!
Thank you :) Xx
Both are rigorous athletic activities. To truly compare them would be impossible - they are both very different sports. Having only performed one of these sports - competitive synchronized swimming (in solo, duet, trio and team events, along with tech/figures), I can only speak for that. I can only base my assessment of cheering off of what I have seen and read - so if any cheerleaders see inaccuracies in my assessment, please bring it to my attention. I am open to learning more about it.
Synchronized swimming is an intensely difficult sport, as is cheering. Both require extreme flexibility (such as no-gravity flat splits), strength (throws/lifts, odd balancing positions), and muscular endurance (as movement is constant). Both require a balance of power and grace, along with strenuosity-oriented choreography and a high pain capacity (where you can’t show how much you are struggling). The clearest pro-synchro difference that I see is the aerobic capacity factor (as upper-level synchro routines can be up to 70% under water – so unlike cheerleaders who may be panting while moving vigorously, synchronized swimmers lack access to oxygen while moving vigorously – often resulting in dangerously low level of oxygen in their blood. Also, synchronized swimmers can never stop moving. Cheerleaders may hold a position for a few seconds. Synchronized swimmers are prohibited from touching the walls or bottom of the pool (that includes when throws are done), so holding an arm position requires furious leg work beneath the surface.
To address some of the comments below that degrade synchronized swimming:
@Keenedy: you say that allstar cheer is harder than synchronized swimming. What level of synchronized swimming are you looking at? Novice synchronized swimming, naturally, is less rigorous than most sports. But at the senior or international level? Not so fast. You say that cheer is harder because tumbling takes years of practice. Why does it take five or six years for many athletes to advance in synchronized swimming above the intermediate level? Because the technical skills – sculling technique and such (stamina comes simply through practice) – take years to develop as well. Both sports require precise technique. If a synchronized swimmer has even the smallest flaw in their alignment, many moves, such as spins or thrusts, will quickly become epic failures. If they do not have strong sculling, or they move their elbows too much or they do not push their arms far enough behind their back or if their fingers are slightly bent or hyperextended, they will not be able to do most higher-level moves. If they do not have the right leg position as they tread, they will not have enough power to support other swimmers in a lift. You also say that stunting involves many injuries. Same. I have not gone a practice this season without blood being drawn by being kicked/hit accidently by sharp-nailed teammates (we are scored partly based on how close we are to other swimmers in patterns). I have not woken up from the day after a practice without noticing new bruises on my arms, legs, hips, back, or shoulders, and sometimes my head and neck (when we do throws, flyers often land on our heads if we cannot move out of the way fast enough – when you are under water you cannot see them landing from above the surface). We stretch with the purpose of altering the composition of our feet – to increase the arch and the curl of our toe point. I am kicked/kneed in the head at every practice. I have not gone one season without losing a teammate to a concussion – and that is true on many teams, not just mine. I have watched teammates shatter their wrist, tear their shoulders, develop tendonitis in their knees and forearms (myself included there – but I still swim), and I have seen teammates compete with anything between a parasitic infection to pneumonia (though not well, I might add). You talk about crying. You should see how many people break down every day at my practices. I do not question the potential for cheering to be harder than football – I simply think that synchro is at least as strenuous as cheering.
@Ally: I’m with you that Cheer is intensely vigorous and intensely dangerous. But do swimmers get hurt like that? I think they do. I see it at every practice. We’ve had the ambulences show up too. We have ER visits. We have athletes who get kicked or landed on in the head or neck, at every practice. We tear every ligament in our bodies, and our bones break too. Watch this video of some lifts done by high-level synchronized swimmers. Tell me that it is not dangerous to risk being landed on by this. Because – I guarantee you – it happened repeatedly when they trained. If you wonder why the lifts are not touching the ceiling, it is because every athlete in the lift is prohibited from touching the bottom of the pool at any point. They do this with their legs, by kicking extremely hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkCDycsr...
@Christina: Why do you bring intelligence into this? That’s just a stereotype. I know that there are cheerleaders in the top 5% of my class. But, if intelligence means credibility to you, I have the top gpa in my high school class at the moment, and I say that cheer is not stupid. I also say that synchronized swimming is not stupid. I say that those who judge sports based on the stereotypes of sports alone, with no real knowledge of what the sports require, are stupid.
This is a difficult question to answer – as no person likes to be told that their sport is inferior to another, or that they do not measure up to athletes in different sports. I do not give this answer to say that synchronized swimming is superior to cheering, or vise a versa, because I cannot do so fairly. I simply want to defend both sports against those who believe that a sport where athletes are trained to not show fatigue is not a sport. They are. Subjectivity means nothing – don’t tell me no one’s ever seen a football or basketball ref make a bad call. I’d love to see a football player tread water for a full lap while wearing a weight belt and with arms straight above their head, and then do the next lap fully under water without a single breath, and then repeat with no rest (whereas if they were spotted resting, on my team, they would be ordered to start the entire set over).
I think synchronized swimming is waaaay harder. Iv been doing competitive synchro for 7 years and did cheer for 2 years. Cheer is hard yes but its even harder to do cheer, in the water so theres no ground uv got to hold urself up, and u have to hold your breathe for 40% of the time some times more.
High school cheer is not harder than synchronized swimming, but allstar is! This is because of stunting and tumbling. Tumbling takes years of practice and once you get one tumbling skill you have to get other. Stunting involves many injuries, most are concussions. One cheer practice consisted of injuries for atleasy a quarter of the team. If you ask a cheer coach how many people have they seen cry that day they will probably say like 20. Cheer leading has been voted more dangerous than football. Not that dangerous equals harder, but the things that make cheer dangerous also makes cheer hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sg2zsb5...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvpgqT5v...
Cheer is stupid
competition Cheerleader i
Synchronized swimming no doubt.
I agree with Keenedy! Except I think some high school cheer is extreme too. I'm a high school cheerleader and a competitive cheerleader, and I think they are equally hard. Sure, some school's cheer teams shake their pom-poms and grin, but not a lot of schools. This year at a pep rally, our team did a basket toss competition, and I literally touched the ceiling. I've torn my MCL at competition cheer, and I've broken my wrist, ankle, and three fingers high school cheering. And last year at cheer camp, one girl feel out of a stunt on her neck, and had to be taken away on a stretcher. Cheer is intense.
