Why won't my stunt go up?

It is almost never your legs. Watch a stunt that does not go up and you will see the same thing nearly every time. The base squats, she stands, and her arms do not start moving until the flyer is already at her chest. By then the weight has stalled at waist level and died there, and no amount of leg strength was going to save it.

Every base gets told to squat more. Almost none of them get told what actually stalls a stunt. So she goes and adds weight to her back squat, she gets stronger legs, and the stunt still sits at her chest, because the thing that was broken was never in her legs.

Your arms are late

Here is the sequence most bases run without knowing they are running it. Dip. Stand. Then press. Three things in order, each one finishing before the next one starts. It feels like effort and it looks fine from the side, and it is three separate pushes on a load that only stays light for about half a second.

Gravity does not wait for you to finish standing up. The stunt rises for a moment and then it stops rising. If your hands are still down at your waist when your legs are already done, your flyer has gone from going up to coming down, and now you are trying to press dead weight off your chest. That is the hardest thing you can ask your body to do and it is a job you never needed to have.

What the job actually is

Get under it fast and get low. Hands go over your head, not to your chest. Then legs and arms fire at the same instant and finish together, so you are driving up in the window where gravity is already pulling down. One motion, floor to overhead, nothing stopping halfway.

Legs alone will not get a stunt up. Ever. They are one of three parts, and the other two are your arms and your timing.

Your core matters as much as your flyer's

Your flyer hears the word activated at every practice of her life. You have probably never heard it once, and you are the one with a person on your hands and a load running from your palms all the way down to the floor.

When your middle is soft, that load stops traveling in a straight line. Your ribs flare, your back arches under the catch, and the weight ends up in your low back instead of going where it is supposed to go. Ribs down. Brace like somebody is about to hit you. Then the weight travels the way it should and your legs and arms actually get to do their job.

It goes up, and then it drifts

Different problem, same practice. A stunt lives in the middle, between you and your co-base. Not over your head. Not over hers. The second one of you pulls it toward yourself, your co-base stops holding a stunt and starts fighting you, and now two people are working against each other underneath a human being.

It is usually the weak hand. Everybody has one. Whatever you do with your strong side, do it with the other one, same reps, same holds, same weight, every time.

Stop bouncing out of the bottom

In the gym you dip and the bar bounces you back up and it feels fast. A stunt does not give you a bounce. When you load a flyer, the bottom of that dip is a dead stop and everything after it has to come from you.

So pause at the bottom. Hold it, no bounce, then go up fast. It will feel worse and it is the position you are actually in when a stunt is on your hands.

Your flyer has a part in this

You cannot move somebody who is not activated. During an inversion your group needs tension to push against, and that tension is her. Loose is what is hard to move. If she is holding herself, you have something to throw. If she is not, the best timing in the gym is not going to fix it.

And no, this is not about how much your flyer weighs. That is not the variable here and it is not a conversation this sport needs any more of.

What to change this week

• Watch one stunt group from the side and find the moment the arms start. If the flyer is at chest height, that is your answer.
• Count it out loud so legs and arms finish together instead of taking turns.
• Get lower and get there faster. Speed off the bottom is what makes the timing possible.
• Pause your squats at the bottom. No bounce.
• Brace before the load arrives, not after it lands on you.
• Give your weak hand the same work as your strong one, or more.

One more thing, because bases lose seasons to it. Shoulder pain is not something you train through. If something is sharp, or in a joint, or it changes the way you move, that goes to somebody qualified to look at it, not to the next practice.

Fix the timing and stunts start going up that were not going up before, with the same legs you already had. That is the part nobody tells bases. You were not weak. You were late.

If you want the strength written out behind that timing, that is what The Base Program is.