The plan
- Count it without music. Walk the section with the coach counting out loud, 5 6 7 8 into the 1, so athletes learn which count each move sits on before the music is added.
- Add the slowed mix. Play the section at 75 percent with a click on every count. At 144 BPM that is 108 BPM, slow enough to place every move and fast enough to still sound like the song.
- Loop the section. Loop just that section, starting from the 5 6 7 8 before it, and run it until it is clean. Then loop the section before it and join them.
- Put the count on the wall. Put the projector view on a screen at the front of the gym so every athlete can see the 8-count and the count while they learn.
- Speed it up. Move to 85 percent (122.4 BPM), then full speed. Turn the clicks off at full speed so athletes count in their heads.
- Send it home. Print each athlete's cue cards and give them the practice track, so they can rehearse the counts between practices.
Why counts before music
Music carries athletes along, which is exactly why it hides counting mistakes. Taught without it first, each move gets a number, and the number is what an athlete falls back on when nerves speed them up at a competition. The count sheet is the reference: when two athletes disagree about a count, the sheet settles it.
Worked example: a practice block
Worked example. A 45 minute block for the opening stunt and the tumbling pass after it, on a 144 BPM mix:
- 5 minutes: counts out loud, no music, walking the stunt.
- 10 minutes: the stunt looped at 75 percent (108 BPM, one 8-count every 4.44 s) with clicks.
- 10 minutes: the tumbling looped at 75 percent, then both sections joined.
- 10 minutes: both at 85 percent (122.4 BPM), projector count on the wall.
- 10 minutes: full speed, clicks off, then back to 85 percent for anything that fell apart.
The tempos and 8-count lengths above are computed from the same grid the player uses.
Spoken counts or clicks?
A click lands within a few hundredths of a second of the count, highest on each 1, and on the practice track it is written into the file exactly on the count. Spoken counts ("five, six, seven, eight") are what athletes are used to hearing from a coach, and they help with learning which number is which, but a browser voice can lag a little at full speed. Use spoken counts for slow learning runs and clicks for timing work. The practice track always uses clicks, because a browser voice cannot be recorded into a file.
Common mistakes
- Teaching from full speed. Mistakes get locked in before anyone can see them.
- Starting a loop on the 1. Without the 5 6 7 8 lead-in, the team is always late into the section.
- One sheet for the coach only. Athletes learn faster with their own counts in their hands.
- Never running clicks off. The competition floor has no click track.
- Changing choreography without changing the sheet. The printout on the wall is what the team believes.
Everything above runs in the count sheet editor. For the speeds and what they do to the music, see slowing a mix without changing pitch.
Sources
Checked on 27 September 2026. Count sheets have no single governing standard; what is written here is common practice in our own words, and every number in a worked example is computed by Cheersheet's own engine when the page is built. Where your gym, choreographer or ruleset does it differently, follow them.
- Cheersheet's own engine and its tests. Every worked number on these pages (tempos, 8-count lengths, how long a routine takes at a practice speed, what the detector found on the test tracks) is computed by the same code the sheet runs, when the page is built.
- MDN Web Docs, Web Speech API: SpeechSynthesis. The browser voice used for spoken counts. Voices and their timing vary by browser and device.
- MDN Web Docs, HTMLMediaElement: preservesPitch. Pitch is kept by default when the playback rate changes; listed as Baseline, widely available since December 2023. Opened 27 September 2026.