okay so this has been driving me crazy for a while. been flying freestyle on a 5inch for about a year and a half, mostly comfortable with rolls, dives, the basic stuff. the split-S just would not click for me ? kept either pulling out too early and getting this weird floating arc that looked terrible on footage, or overcorrecting on exit and basically diving into the ground.

what finally worked for me was thinking about it in two completely separate phases instead of one fluid motion. i was treating the whole thing as one continuous input which was wrong. roll inverted first, full stop almost, then initiate the dive and pull through. sounds obvious when you say it out loud but when youre in the air it doesnt feel obvious at all. also helps a ton to pick an exit point before you even start the maneuver, like actually commit to where youre going to be pointing when you come out of it. the dvr looks way cleaner now, exit lines are actually intentional instead of just wherever i ended up

anyone else have specific cues they use for the split-S or other maneuvers? curious if this two-phase thing is how other people think about it or if theres a better mental model

the exit point thing is huge and applies to basically every maneuver honestly. i always say fly to a point not through a motion. took me forever to internalize that. for the split-S specifically i think a lot of people also underestimate how much altitude you actually need when youre learning it, so you get this extra panic on exit because the ground is closer than expected and the inputs get all twitchy. doing it higher until its automatic and then bringing it lower is the boring but correct answer

yeah two phase is pretty much how i think about it too. some people say think of it as a half roll into a half loop but that still feels like one thing to me. your way of almost pausing between the roll and the pull actually makes more sense for building the habit cleanly. might try this in the sim tomorrow, ive been sloppy on mine lately and the exits are kind of all over the place depedning on my speed going in