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Jason Larkins on Fixing Choreography, Beating Complacency, and Cheer Gym Culture
Dan Cotton welcomes back Jason Larkins, all-star gym owner and host of the Let’s Talk Cheer podcast, to answer real questions from Cheer Biz Academy gym owners about choreography, complacency, attendance, and running a business with your spouse.
Catching Up and a New Bilingual Course
Before diving into questions, Jason shared some news: he had just launched a coach’s course, and for the first time, it’s available in Spanish. He credited an AI tool, which he’s nicknamed Antonio, with voicing the Spanish translation in a deep, confident tone he jokingly compared to “a guy you’d run into in Cancun serving you cocktails.” Dan and Jason also reflected on how far their respective podcasts have come. Dan recalled his short-lived Full Out Cheer Podcast, which he ran during camp season before realizing that midnight interviews after a full day of coaching weren’t sustainable. Jason, by contrast, has built the Let’s Talk Cheer podcast from humble beginnings, recording on his couch with AirPods, into a polished production with a dedicated camera and lighting setup.
Dan pointed out how valuable that growth has been for gym owners industry-wide: parents at his own gym’s recent coffee and conversation event referenced listening to both the Let’s Talk Cheer podcast and the Cheer Mom podcast to better understand the sport. Jason noted that his ability to be transparent comes from speaking to parents and coaches in general rather than to any one specific customer, which makes it easier to say things gym owners often can’t say directly to their own clientele.
Fixing Choreography Without Wasting Practice Time
The first listener question centered on how to handle choreography problems once a routine is already set, whether that’s an athlete injury, a section that isn’t working, or simply not loving how a piece was built. Jason’s approach is to prioritize getting the team running full-out routines as quickly as possible, even if that means temporarily working an incoming athlete into the back of a formation while she learns the choreography. He explained that it’s usually easier for athletes to adjust choreography once they already have a grasp of the routine, rather than trying to rebuild sections on the fly. He pointed to the pattern seen in elite programs that debut one version of a routine at NCA and show up to Worlds with a completely reworked pyramid, noting that if teams can absorb a brand-new routine over the summer, there’s no reason a mid-season tweak should feel impossible.
Jason’s gym hires out all of its choreography, working with Next Level and Chris Cox for building skills, Troy Hedgren for pyramids, and Brendan Matthews to stitch everything together. Over time, the team has learned to communicate proactively about eight-count allocations so no one choreographer runs long at another’s expense. Dan agreed, comparing the process to cooking: once you’ve prepped your ingredients, remixing a meal takes far less time than starting over, because most changes involve rearranging existing skills rather than teaching new ones. Both coaches were emphatic that choreography fixes should happen in a dedicated block of time, not piecemeal during regular practice, since trying to clean routines and rebuild sections simultaneously isn’t productive.
Turning Complacency Into Consistency
Next came a question about athlete complacency, a challenge Dan admitted feels universal regardless of generation. Jason shared a phrase his gym repeats often, that you win competitions by winning practices, and you win practices one eight-count at a time. He focuses his athletes on making each individual drill or skill the best it’s ever been, rather than fixating on the season as a whole.
To illustrate the mindset shift, Jason told a story about receiving a box of a thousand crayons as a Christmas gift as a kid, versus doing a thousand-piece puzzle every summer with his wife Ashley: a box of crayons feels repetitive, but every new puzzle piece feels like progress. He encourages his athletes to see each practice as a piece of that puzzle rather than “just another Tuesday.” Dan added that building a strong gym culture, and being intentional about what behaviors get rewarded and celebrated, reinforces that same consistency. Both agreed complacency isn’t unique to young athletes; it’s a universal human tendency that has to be actively coached against.
Solving the Athlete Attendance Puzzle
Attendance sparked one of the liveliest parts of the conversation, with Dan admitting he’s dealt with missing three or four athletes at nearly every practice this fall due to illness, school events, and now high school football games competing for Thursday night practice slots. Jason’s first piece of advice was a mindset shift: every gym is dealing with the same attendance struggles, even though it’s easy to assume the gym down the street has it figured out. He described sharing a video of his own teams admitting they rarely have full attendance, just to prove the point to a fellow coach who felt alone in the struggle.
Practically, Jason’s gym leans on substitutes during the summer when vacation requests are common, pulling athletes from other teams to fill stunt groups. As the season progresses, he shifts toward emailing parents every time a team doesn’t have full attendance, a tactic that helps parents see the cumulative impact even when their own child rarely misses. He also stressed keeping practices productive regardless of who shows up: a recent Thursday practice, hit hard by homecoming and senior night conflicts, ended up being planned entirely by the team’s seniors, who chose to focus on tumbling passes, jump sections, and conditioning rather than treat the day as wasted. Dan echoed the sentiment that judges don’t grant sympathy points for a rough attendance week: teams get two minutes and thirty seconds to perform regardless of the obstacles behind the scenes.
On-Time Practices vs. Finishing the Work
The conversation shifted to a subtler tension: whether to end practice strictly on time or stay late until the work is actually done. Jason admitted he has swung between both philosophies over his coaching career. For years he prioritized letting athletes out on time, worried about customer satisfaction, but he’s recently reconsidered after his senior team missed a paid bid and fell short of finals at Summit last season. Reflecting on how devastated the athletes were, he asked them how many extra practice minutes they would have traded to avoid that outcome, and the answer was overwhelmingly in favor of staying later when needed.
Dan, who runs back-to-back practices and can’t easily run over without delaying the next team, instead encourages athletes who need extra work to stay after on their own to keep drilling, arguing that an extra fifteen minutes a few times a month adds up to multiple full practices’ worth of reps over a season.
Running a Gym Business as Husband and Wife
Dan asked Jason how he and his wife Ashley successfully co-manage their gym despite both being strong personalities. Jason described a system built around clearly defined lanes: some decisions default entirely to Ashley, others default to him, and each checks in with the other during transitions like staff meetings. Ashley leads their showcase and certain fundraisers, while Jason runs staff meetings and handles most parent emails. One recent shift Jason highlighted was handing off all high school cheer conflict conversations to Ashley, since he found it harder to say no to athletes wanting flexibility for their high school teams.
Dan agreed that having defined lanes is important, but cautioned against becoming completely hands-off in each other’s areas, since staying informed prevents blindsided reactions later. He shared that he and his business partner Tori hold a standing Monday meeting dedicated purely to gym business, which helps keep those conversations out of personal time, including in bed at night, a habit both agreed is essential for protecting the relationship.
Calming Competition-Day Nerves and the Score-Sheet Debate
Asked how he manages stress on competition days, Jason credited maintaining a consistent personal routine: exercise, reading, and breakfast in the morning, paired with a detailed schedule for the day itself. He compared it to driving to a new destination for the first time versus the tenth time; familiarity removes a layer of anxiety. His wife Ashley runs a detailed, color-coded “play-by-play” for the whole coaching staff on competition day, mapping out exactly who does what and when.
Dan admitted he handles competition stress far less gracefully, describing himself as calm on the surface but internally overwhelmed once warmups end and rest time begins. His strategy is to keep himself occupied with small tasks, from counting athletes to giving each one a quick word of encouragement, so nervous energy has somewhere to go.
The conversation turned briefly to the sport’s scoring structure, specifically the floating 25/75 split between competition days, which Dan argued no longer makes sense given how dramatically scores can swing between day one and day two under the current judging system. Jason noted that day one used to carry more weight before scores fluctuated as much, but agreed the current system creates outcomes where a team with the stronger overall weekend can still lose. Dan mentioned he planned to raise the question directly with Varsity’s Justin Carrier, preferring to understand the reasoning behind a rule before criticizing it outright.
Parting Wisdom and Building Community
Asked for the best piece of advice that’s shaped him as a spouse, coach, and father, Jason didn’t hesitate. As a husband, he credited staying intentional about dating his wife Ashley even after having their daughter Joey, protecting time for just the two of them. As a coach, he emphasized loving athletes unconditionally, not just when routines go well. As a father, he shared advice from Jeff Benson about praising the character behind an accomplishment, like hard work or bravery, rather than just the accomplishment itself.
Before wrapping up, Jason asked Dan more about his gym’s coffee and conversation events, informal sit-downs with bagels and coffee where parents can ask questions and share feedback throughout the year. Dan explained that these gatherings, along with an upcoming parent mixer, help build a family atmosphere as his gym has grown too large for him to know every parent personally, and give him a group of engaged advocates who help spread accurate information throughout the gym community. Jason shared that his own gym recently held a similar parent social, which is especially valuable now that they operate two locations and roughly 320 athletes.
Dan thanked Jason for making the trip back to the Cheer Biz Podcast and reminded listeners to check out Jason’s Let’s Talk Cheer podcast, now available with Spanish-language coaching content as well. Gym owners looking for more conversations like this one can also join the Cheer Biz Podcast Facebook groups to connect with other owners and coaches navigating the same challenges.
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