@robin – Great question – if the hand misses, you will most likely drop to feet, hands, and knees unless your chest is facing the ceiling. Notice how Clara always opens her arm outside of the thigh with the sit up. And she uses a pike to slow down the last rotation to catch the pole. You could practice the dismount in the knot by working on the rocks and then piking and controlling the legs opening past the pole while you set up the hand to catch. The tempo of the last roll to the dismount will be different than if you were catching the knee and roll again.
@dorag : I think I understand the first issue as potentially being related to hinging too far in the knee hook hip so the knee and the hand get closer and closer together on the pole. Once the two are close together, you won’t have the same play in the fabric for the bounce. At 7:25 in the replay for the Q&A, there is an activation of the knee hook leg that works in tandem with the drive of the free leg and the lift of the chest to make this roll successful. Knee hooks can be powered from pressing the hip forward to hook the leg up and over the pole rather than the hip sit back and hooking the knee. It’s often cued from the chest opening and getting your knee as far above your hands as possible but includes an activation of the hooking hip forward.
As for catching the pole with the knee hook, there is most likely a bit of internal rotation happening in the hip to make sure the knee crosses from outside the pole across it for the knee to catch. Think about the inner thighs maintaining a serious connection to the pole the whole time so you feel the pole slide from hip/thigh down to the knee as much as possible.
Happy training! Keep us posted!
