Cheerleading Stunts, Cheer Stunts, Stunt Names, Levels 1 to 6 and Pyramids.

The positions in a stunt group, as the rulebook treats them rather than as habit does.

Gyms use nicknames for these roles and the nicknames drift from gym to gym. The rules do not drift, and the distinctions below are the ones a judge and a safety official are working from. The one that catches teams out most often is what counts as a base: if only one person is under a foot, that person is a base no matter where their hands are, which decides whether a skill counts as single based and therefore what level it is.

Worth knowing before you assign roles for the season: bases and spotters together account for 34 percent of cheerleading injuries. The person on the ground is getting hurt nearly as often as the person in the air, which is an argument for conditioning bases properly rather than treating them as the strong ones who do not need it. There is a position by position conditioning program that splits the work by base, flyer and backspot for exactly this reason.

The stunt names, sorted by what the skill actually is.

Most cheerleading stunt names lists online are alphabetical piles that mix a body position, a dismount and a whole toss together as if they were the same kind of thing. Grouping them by family is more useful, because the family is what determines which rule applies. Every entry below is checked against the current USASF glossary, and the classification notes matter: whether something counts as a two leg stunt or a prep level stunt is exactly what decides its legality.

Cheerleading stunts list by level, 25 stunts in teaching order.

The glossary above says what each stunt is. This list says when a group is ready for it. Each row names the level where the skill usually first appears and the skill the group has to own before trying it. Level rules describe what a group may compete, not what an individual athlete is ready for, so treat the prerequisite column as a floor. A group that cannot hold a stunt should not be twisting into it.

Basket tosses climb their own ladder: straight ride, then toe touch, then kick full. Ride quality matters more than the trick, and a crooked straight ride is a reason to stop, not a reason to add a kick. Stunts also fail at the weakest role, so progress all four athletes. When a group changes even one member, or after a fall or a growth spurt, drop one step down the list for a week. It costs seven days and saves seasons. A group stuck on one row for a month usually moves faster with a session of private stunt lessons than with another month of open mat time.

What each level actually allows, 2026 to 2027 season.

This is the table that decides what goes in your routine. Two things to hold onto before reading it. First, a level describes what a team may compete, not what an individual athlete has mastered: a Level 3 athlete on a Level 2 team competes Level 2 skills. Second, the rules are re-released every season, so a stunt that was legal two years ago may not be now. The numbers below come from the current rulebook, and cover the stunt side only. For the levels themselves, including the Novice, Prep and Elite tiers and what the decimal levels like 2.1 and 4.2 mean, see cheerleading levels explained.

The spotter requirement, which changes by level

Level 1 requires a spotter for prep level and above and for floor stunts, with an exception for shoulder sits, T-lifts and stunts supported only at the waist. Level 2 requires one for above prep level and for floor stunts. From Level 3 up, a spotter is required above prep level, and single based stunts with multiple top persons need a separate spotter for each top person. Across every level, no single based or assisted single based extended stunts are permitted for Youth and below.

On dismounts the rule is short and frequently broken in practice: a dismount to the performance surface requires assistance from the original base or spotter, unless it is a straight drop or small hop off with no additional skills from waist level or below. Dismounts must return to the original bases. Release moves need 3 catchers for a multi based stunt and 2 for a single based stunt landing horizontal, may not land inverted, and may not intentionally travel.

A pyramid is just two or more connected stunts, and the height cap is lower than people think.

The three cards below are the headline rules. The twist caps for pyramid transitions, the structure restrictions on what may connect to what, and the arithmetic that turns a roster into a number of stunt groups are all set out on the cheerleading pyramids page.

Bracing is what lets a lower level team build something that looks advanced. At Level 1 a two leg extended stunt may connect to a prep level or lower bracer with a hand or arm connection, and a prep level single leg may do the same. Prep level bracers must have both feet in the bases' hands unless they are in a shoulder sit, flat back, straddle lift or shoulder stand. At Levels 1 and 2 no extended stunt may connect to another extended stunt. Required bracers must be connected by the time the skill starts and stay connected all the way through.

The basket toss rules, and the rule change that measurably saved athletes.

A basket toss uses 2 or 3 bases plus a spotter, with 2 of those bases interlocking wrists to make the basket. The general toss rules then sit on top of that and they are strict. A toss needs a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 4 tossing bases, one of whom must be behind the top person. It must be caught in a cradle by at least 3 of the original bases, one positioned at the head and shoulder area. There may never be more than one top person. No flipping, inverted or intentionally traveling tosses are permitted at any level, and nothing may move over or under a toss.

The reason those rules read like that is worth telling parents. When basket tosses on hard surfaces were banned for the 2006 to 2007 season, the catastrophic injury rate fell from 1.55 to 0.40 per million, a 74 percent reduction. It is one of the clearest cases in youth sport of a single rule change producing a measurable drop in serious injury, and it is why the toss section has stayed conservative since.

The wider injury picture points the same way. Stunts cause 52 to 60 percent of all cheerleading injuries, and 89 percent of severe fall related injuries involve stunts or pyramids, with falls from 4 to 11 feet responsible for 87 percent of severe injuries. Ankles are the most injured site at 24.4 to 44.9 percent, followed by wrists and hands at 15.6 to 19.3 percent. The encouraging half of that research: stunt related injury rates fell 36 percent between 2010 and 2019, qualified coaching staff cut injury risk by half (relative risk 0.5), and the literature recommends at least one qualified spotter per five athletes.

Stunts, pyramids and tosses are 52.94 percent of your score.

On the USASF master score sheet, stunts are worth 20 for technique plus 20 for difficulty, pyramids the same, and tosses 5 plus 5. That is 90 points out of a 170 point sheet. Building is more than half of everything a judge scores, which is why a level appropriate, cleanly executed stunt section beats an ambitious one that draws deductions. For reference, a building fall is a 3.0 deduction, a major building fall 4.0, a bobble 2.0 and a legality infraction 4.0. A legality infraction costing the same as dropping the structure is the reason the pyramid rules by level are worth checking before choreography rather than after.

One change worth planning for: USASF has published an updated rubric for The Cheerleading Worlds 2027 that converts club divisions from the 170 point format to a 100 point format to align with IASF. USASF describes it as primarily a scale conversion rather than a change in scoring philosophy, with category weights staying within less than one percentage point, and the notable difference is that jumps become a capped category. The division rules behind it sit on the USASF rules page.

Knowing the rules is half of it. Knowing who can hold what is the other half.

The practical problem for a coach is not the rulebook, it is memory. Which flyer has hit a heel stretch consistently, which base can load a full up, which back spot has never caught a kick full, and what happens to three stunt groups when one athlete is out sick on a Tuesday. Most programs answer that from a notebook or from nothing at all, and then build a routine around a skill one group hit once in June.

The fix is a written record per athlete by position: which stunts are signed off, on what date, with or without a front spot. Choreograph from that record and you see which groups are one skill away from the next level. When one skill will not come in a crowded practice, a few private stunt lessons with a coach who spots it usually move it faster than another month of group reps.

Athletes can also put that record on a free profile with stunt video, so the flyers, bases and backspots in the cheer directory show what they can actually hold.

Cheerleading stunt questions, answered.

High school stunts run on a different rulebook, and it changed for 2026-27.

Everything above is USASF, which governs all star cheer. A school squad is governed by its state association, and the state associations use the NFHS spirit rules written jointly with USA Cheer. The two books are not interchangeable, and a coach who moves from a gym to a school program is working from the wrong document until they notice. USA Cheer and the NFHS announced nine updates on March 17, 2026, all effective for the 2026-27 school year: two definition changes, three clarifications and four rule changes.

Two of these land on paperwork rather than on the mat. The tumbling definition changes what a tumbling category on a tryout score sheet should be counting, and if your rubric goes out before you fix the wording you will be scoring against a definition the rulebook no longer uses. Every change with its rule number, what the rules book costs and the coach rules courses are on the NFHS cheer rules 2026-27 page. The full tryout process, including where the skill list belongs in the packet, is on the cheerleading tryouts page.

Source: USA Cheer and NFHS joint rules announcement dated March 17, 2026, read August 31, 2026. The full 2026-27 NFHS and USA Cheer Spirit Rules Book is the authority; this is a summary of the announced changes, not a substitute for it.

The rest of the building season.