I'm just going to say this straight — if you're not at training, it matters. A lot. And not just for you. For your whole team.
Everyone loves to think "it's just one session." Cool. Let's actually look at that.
on a team
term
if each athlete misses just one
You've got a team of 20 athletes. It's a standard 10-week term. You train twice a week. If every single athlete misses just one training that term, that's 20 missed sessions across the team. Which means there's a very real chance your team is never all there, at the same time, for a full training. Not once.
And then people wonder why routines aren't hitting.
Training without a full team changes everything.
It's not just slightly inconvenient — it completely changes what's possible. You're constantly moving people around, adjusting groups, reworking sections. Instead of building, you're managing. Instead of progressing, you're repeating. Over and over. It gets boring, it gets frustrating, and the routine stays exactly where it is.
Stunts are usually the first thing to fall apart.
You cannot build strong, consistent stunts when your group is different every session. Flyers aren't getting enough reps, bases are adjusting every time, timing never locks in. So instead of stunts that feel solid and automatic, you get ones that "sometimes work."
That's not a skill issue. That's a consistency issue.
Pyramids? Even worse.
Pyramids rely on everyone being there. Not most people. Everyone. If athletes are missing, you're not properly training pyramids — you're walking through them, talking about them, or skipping them altogether. Which means when it's time to actually hit them, it feels rushed and unfamiliar.
Your individual progress is affected by everyone else's attendance too.
This is the part people don't always think about. You might be ready to move on, ready to upgrade, ready to push. But if your group or your team isn't there consistently, you're stuck. Repeating things you've already got, waiting for everyone else to catch up.
That's how athletes plateau — and it has nothing to do with ability.
So no, it's not "just one session." Because it's not just you. It's 19 other people missing one at different times, and suddenly your team never actually trains together properly.
Something else happens that coaches see straight away.
It starts to turn into a trend. Susie misses last Thursday, so now someone else thinks it's fine to miss this week. Then someone else follows. And suddenly attendance drops across the whole team — not because anyone had to miss, but because it felt like it didn't matter.
One thing that actually makes strong teams strong is accountability. You signed up to this team, on these days, for the full season — February to December. You read the handbook. You know the requirements. You understand what's expected. At some point, it stops being about coaches reminding you.
There are only so many times a coach can say "attendance matters."
Real change happens when athletes hold each other to the standard.
Not in a mean way. Not in a bullying way. And obviously still understanding when things genuinely come up. But when you care enough about your team to expect more from the people around you — that's when things shift.
When you want your team to be better, and you're not afraid to say "hey, we actually need everyone here" — that's when teams start to look different.
If your routine feels repetitive, messy, or slow to improve —
This is usually why. It's not the music, it's not the choreography, and it's not that the team "just needs more confidence." It's attendance.
This doesn't mean you can never miss training.
Life happens. We get that. But there's a difference between the occasional unavoidable absence and it becoming a habit. Because once it becomes a habit, it starts to show. In the routine, in the stunts, in the overall standard.
The teams that look clean, confident, and consistent aren't lucky. They just show up. They get the reps, they build properly, and they move forward together. It's not complicated — but it does require commitment.