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Six Mistakes That Keep Cheer Gyms From Great Choreography
Dan Cotton, host of the Cheer Biz Podcast and owner of Oregon Dream Teams, has spent years choreographing routines for gyms across the country. In this solo episode, he breaks down exactly what separates a forgettable routine from a great one — and why the difference often comes down to the gym, not the choreographer.
Welcome Back to the Podcast
Dan Cotton opened this episode of the Cheer Biz Podcast by reminding listeners to join the community conversation happening in the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners groups on Facebook, where gym owners swap ideas and support one another year-round. He also pointed listeners toward the Cheer Biz Accelerator, a hands-on event designed to help gym owners grow their businesses alongside Dan, his wife Danielle, and their team. The final 2026 Accelerator is scheduled for November at Dan’s own gym, Oregon Dream Teams in Portland, Oregon, and spots are still available for gym owners who want to start 2027 strong.
With the housekeeping out of the way, Dan turned to the topic of the episode: the six things that consistently prevent gyms from getting a great routine out of their choreography experience. Choreography has been a side passion for Dan for years, and while he doesn’t consider himself one of the sport’s elite choreographers, he has spent enough time in gyms across the country — and studying what separates the best from the rest — to know exactly where things tend to go wrong. As he explained, some of the state’s most decorated choreographers post-year after year of championship-caliber routines simply by working within one niche long enough to know exactly what a score sheet rewards. But even the best choreographers, he admitted, can only build a great routine if the gym has done its part first.
Build Your Team Before You Build the Routine
The single biggest factor, according to Dan, is whether the team was leveled appropriately and built correctly from the start. At this point in the season there’s often little a gym can do to fix this retroactively, though Dan noted some gyms have made the tough call to move a team down a level midseason and gone on to have their most successful year yet. More often, though, gyms are stuck with the roster they built: not enough flyers, not enough tumblers, or athletes competing skills beyond their level of mastery.
Dan illustrated the point with two of his own teams. His Worlds-level team, choreographed by Luke Johnson of Spirit Icons, is pushing to compete large coed with roughly 34 athletes working toward 38, but the group doesn’t yet have the tumbling depth to match its size — which will make Luke’s job harder. By contrast, Dan’s senior medium level four team has 32 athletes competing for 30 spots, with 26 clean standing tucks and 22 clean one-and-a-half-twisting tucks. That depth gives the choreographer full creative freedom instead of forcing them to build around a shortage. The lesson: a well-built roster doesn’t just make a choreographer’s job easier, it directly raises the ceiling of what the routine can become.
Communicate With Your Choreographer Early
The second reason gyms end up with a mediocre routine is simple: they didn’t communicate well with their choreographer beforehand. Dan said the sweet spot for detailed communication is about a week out — reaching out a month and a half in advance is often too early, since numbers and lineups are still likely to change. But once that week-out window arrives, there are specific things every choreographer needs to know.
First, any themes, goals, or “must-have” moments the gym is hoping to see, so the choreographer has time to start developing ideas rather than being caught off guard on-site. Second, an honest inventory of the team’s actual skills — not just what a level technically allows, but what the team can reliably hit. Dan gave the example of his own level four team, which can perform double downs but hasn’t trained kick-fulls this season, or which is working full-up-to-one-leg instead of five-forties. Choreographers need those specifics, along with real numbers: how many back handsprings, how many double backs, how many Valdez, how many extra skills the team could throw even if they’re not the primary plan. That information lets a choreographer break tumbling passes into creative groupings instead of defaulting to everyone throwing the same pass at the same time.
Train Motions, Dance, and Performance First
The third mistake Dan sees constantly: gyms spend all their practice time on stunts and tumbling and never train motions, dance, or performance quality. When a choreographer arrives expecting to teach a fun, sassy, engaging routine and the athletes can’t execute basic motions cleanly, the choreographer has to scale back the choreography to something the team can actually clean up in time — which caps the routine’s ceiling before it’s even built.
Dan’s advice is to drill the fundamentals well before choreography arrives: seat rolls, dive rolls, cartwheels on both sides, clean transitions between formations, and basic motion technique. Athletes should also be practicing and receiving real feedback on dance, not just learning choreography once and running it unchecked. The cleaner the raw materials a choreographer has to work with, the more creative and ambitious they can afford to be with the final product.
Let the Choreographer Create
Reason number four is one Dan called a bit of a hot-button issue: gyms that constantly interrupt their choreographer’s creative flow. Stopping a choreographer mid-thought with “wait, can we do this instead” over and over breaks their momentum and can leave them wondering why they were hired in the first place. Dan encouraged gym owners and coaches to give choreographers room to experiment — including trying ideas that look strange or clunky at first. Some of his most memorable formations and transitions started out as admittedly weird ideas that needed time and collaboration to click. Feedback and questions are welcome, he said, but they land best after a section has had a chance to take shape, not in the middle of it.
Stay Present and Fix Issues in the Moment
The fifth and sixth mistakes go hand in hand: not paying attention during choreography, and deciding to “fix it later.” Dan was direct about how much it costs a gym when coaches check out during a choreography session. Beyond modeling poor focus for the athletes, an unengaged coach won’t be able to answer the choreographer’s questions in the moment — and will be the one left trying to teach and clean the routine after the choreographer has left, often without a clear grasp of counts, grips, or formations. Given that a full-time choreographer may complete another ten to twelve routines in the weeks after leaving a gym, expecting them to remember fine details weeks later isn’t realistic.
“Fix it later” carries the same risk. Dan explained that small issues — like a flyer who needs to be in a different stunt group — are far easier to solve on the spot than after the fact, since changes made later can create ripple effects, such as an athlete unexpectedly having to sprint across the entire floor to make a formation work. If a choreographer knows in advance that an athlete needs to cross center, they can build that into the routine intentionally rather than leave it as an afterthought.
Three Bonus Lessons for Better Routines
Dan closed with three additional tips beyond his original six. First, athletes who can only stunt in one group limit a choreographer’s options; cross-training athletes to stunt in multiple groups gives the choreographer more flexibility to build a stronger routine. Second, teams that haven’t worked on pyramids or tosses before choreography arrives put their choreographer in the position of teaching skills from scratch rather than refining transitions, visuals, and counts — so it pays to have the basics in place ahead of time.
Third, and perhaps most personal to Dan: take care of your choreographer. That doesn’t mean going overboard, but it does mean building in real breaks, keeping them fed and hydrated, and telling them when they’ve done good work. Dan estimated that after about eight hours of work, even an experienced choreographer’s output starts to decline, and athletes stop retaining new information at roughly the same point — which is why he often prefers spreading choreography across two days. He also shared a final bonus insight: some of his best routines have come in the second, third, or fourth year working with the same gym, once he’s had time to learn the athletes and how the program trains.
Wrapping Up
Dan thanked listeners for tuning in and wished every gym a great choreography season, encouraging owners and coaches to put these six lessons — plus the bonus tips — into practice before their next session. He also invited listeners to keep the conversation going in the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners Facebook groups, and to consider joining the Cheer Biz Accelerator event in November at Oregon Dream Teams for hands-on help growing their program heading into 2027.
