Keeping nice steve planes

Hey - just working on continuous steves and wondering if anybody has sneaky tips for keeping/correcting planes so's I can keep doing them forever without the staff eventually going all whackadoo and flying away.

If you have intermediary tricks to suggest or other magic advice (even if it is "sorry, there is no secret; it is just a sloppiness issue") then it's appreciated.

1. Having a heavy and thin staff will help.
2. So will being off-centre at the right times (when you have to do the wrist wraps)
3. Don't let the staff go beyond the wrist.
4. Pace is important too, you can speed up going either way along the arms for more momentum, but you need to be slow around the wrist and neck.
5. Perfect practice, perfect practice, perfect practice.

A very good understanding of the move... Practice, practice

Have amplitude in your move, start far away ( r or l ) and finish far away too ( r or l ).

It's a arm circle wave.

Make sure yer starting horizontally. Steves are much easier when the staff is nice and horizontal which comes from the release. hold it palm up with center just outside of yer hand on pinky side. Start the rotation around yer wrist and keep the staff flat. watch the center line and keep that line on yer arms

If you think of it like nascar, a big elliptical ring with a camber pushing the cars to the center as they go round. So your arms are the road and any time the center point is not on the road, the staff will start to go off plane. Center point to the outside, it falls to the outside, center point to the inside it falls to the inside.

So to correct a bad plane you need to get the center point off your arm as it's going around the track of your arms, to the opposite side that the staff is leaning towards. Like if it's falling to the outside, you need to get the center point off center to the inside, underneath the 'high' side of the staff.

Mostly thou: Practise.

Or: just correct it with your hands when you get to that point.

Richard...come find me for some coaching after mad skills.

yeah, practice first with a handwrap correction for the continuous ones in the beginning, and concentrate on minimizing all movement with the arms and moving the staff with small circles from the torso. Later the handwraps can be removed and the transfer can be done with a small push at the wrists.