First observations of Cheat Gainer (Pros VS Newbs)
Anyone who learns this trick on their first day of tricking can perform this trick, it is just that easy, but do you wanna look like you are trying to kick the moon’s reflection in the puddle at night, or look like you are about to represent NASA and kick the actual moon? Jokes aside, the cheat gainer is one of the more simpler moves you can learn in tricking, beginners usually do this move with little air time, it looks like they are trying to stretch their kicking leg up and over for the ground to land and not actually flipping their body to get to an upright position to land with ease.
Cheat Gainer
3 Stages of Cheat Gainer
Take Off, The Flip, The Landing
The Take Off
Elongated last step onto the jumping leg:
With a wider stance, more momentum can be generated by the kicking leg, as compared to having your legs close together.
Kicking leg driving up and to the side, in sync with arm swing:
As the main momentum generator, the kick leg driven by the hip flexors (right leg) will be driven towards the opposing shoulder (left shoulder)
Kick should be a toe drive and not an inward crescent kick, crescent kicking will not change the hip positioning leading to an awkward landing.
Arm swing generates rotational and upward force on the shoulder to help with flipping momentum and power production for the jump. Shoulder drop:
The shoulder drop (left shoulder) is a side motion rather than a backward motion, because the cheat gainer is more of a lateral flip.
As the kick rotates the body as well as attempts to raise the hips, dropping the shoulder down and to the side allows the hips to travel over the head easily.
Spotting for the ground over the left shoulder as you swing would also help guide the left shoulder to drop to the side instead of dropping backwards.
Leg kick and shoulder drop acts almost like a see-saw, as the leg goes up, the shoulder goes down. Single leg jump:
Timing of the jump is important for the efficiency of the flip for beginners.
Jumping only when the kicking leg is driven almost to its peak
Jumping when shoulder starts dropping, in order to use the angular momentum generated by the kick AND the shoulder drop to perform the flip.
Ensuring that balance is achieved before jumping is important to gain height, drills like Reverse Blaster Scoot can be implemented, ensuring athletes are balanced while performing the drill would be the focus. The Flip
Continue leg drive (toe drive):
The kicking leg, led by a toe hence “Toe Drive” (not crescent)
While flipping engagement of the muscles in the kicking leg, and core is important to follow through with the kicking momentum generated during the take off.
Like the aerial as your leg drives over your shoulders, actively driving the leg back down to “reach” for the ground is important to complete the flip.
Reverse Blaster Scoot is a good drill with the focus on generating strong kick, core and leg engagement while performing the drill to keep the leg up and body as a unit to flip.
As you flip, you want to keep your legs wide open like an aerial, due to the fact that the kick also generates twisting momentum, to negate the twist, keeping a wide leg position will allow you to flip without twisting. Spot over left shoulder for the ground:
The cheat gainer is one of the rare tricks where you can spot for the ground during the whole trick.
As you drive your legs up and over you to flip, spotting for the gives you the awareness of where your body is
It also provides you with the information of where you want to drive your leg towards to land.
And it also keeps your body from twisting. The Landing
Drive toe down towards the ground:
Using the hip flexors to drive the toes towards the ground (bringing knees closer to the stomach)
Without actively driving the toe down it would make it harder to land due to the lack of momentum, and would require a lot of power in order to land. Pulling back leg down:
Much like the Aerial you want to actively pull the second landing leg down by using the glutes, and hip adductor muscles
The pull down of the second leg acts like a counter balance for you to land nice and stable
It also aids in positioning your shoulders upright after landing to transit into other tricks.
Strength and conditioning
Single leg box jumps with knee pumps. This exercise can be well applied into the take off of the cheat gainer, when first learning a trick like cheat gainers, people never think of the jump as an upward push because they are concentrating too much on trying to rotate because of fear, so we can implement this exercise to ingrain the muscle memory of how the knee pump can pull the hips up, at the same time when you want to jump, this creates as extra lift feeling that will help athlete’s understand the importance of the kicking leg, and jumping leg working together, and at the same time. The knee pump isolates the upward movement of the kick in the cheat gainer, hence we can educate the athletes that, the moment they start adding the back swing of the kick, and actually kicking like they are kicking a soccer ball, they will create a circular shape with their kick, which produces angular momentum that will help with their rotation in the air, not forgetting the upward movement created by the kick much like the knee pump, but this time with their legs fully extended. ( switch-leg jumps can be implemented to imitate cheat gainer take off and landing )
Stretches, for muscles around the hip. For intense kicking movements like what is performed in the cheat gainer, strength AND flexibility is very important, without sufficient flexibility it is kind of like shooting yourself in the foot even though you were aiming for a target 50 meters away.. With your foot next to the barrel. So in order to perform tricks like cheat gainer with power and at the same time with ease, a good amount of hip mobility should be acquired. Important muscles to target when you stretch for a cheat gainer, first of all, the adductor muscles (groin muscle group) these muscles are being stretched and strained a lot in tricking, be it kicking, trying to keep the legs together tight, or splitting in mid-air, these muscles are working hard, so stretches like the Straddle stretch, lateral split stretch (side split), and the sumo stretch, are a good relief for the adductor muscles. Next muscle groups are the glutes, and hamstrings, it is very important for these muscles to be stretched out because they could be where you make it or break it. The cheat gainer requires a kick straight a head of your body anatomy, and the glutes and hamstring are both at the opposing end being stretched vigorously, without a good warm up, these muscles could be badly strained when the kick is performed. These few stretches could help stretch these posterior muscles out to help get the most out of your cheat gainer, the seated figure 4 stretch where you cross 1 leg over the other and hug the top leg as close to your torso as possible, the downward dog for a light lower back and glutes stretch, the standing single leg toe reach were you put one leg in front of the other and reach for the toe at the front, keeping you back in neutral spine and legs fully extended, and lastly simple walking straight legged kicks to be done from a slow to moderate speed to prevent any sudden strain on the muscles.
Standing cheat-cheat gainers, of course this exercise has to be drilled, it is almost the exact replica of the cheat gainer, similar muscles are used for the take off and the landing, the strength of the muscles can be improved due to multiple reps of jump and landing, and also muscle memory can be built so why not. Athletes can be asked to jump as high as they can for every repetition, and land as softly as they can, to train their muscles in the lower extremity and also in terms of landing how to catch themselves without receiving high amounts of impact. ( As athletes get better, inversion can be implemented, by looking over the shoulder at the peak of their take off.)
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