Raiz

Prerequisites

Optional

Gumbi
The Raiz can be seen as many things.
1. Cheat setup darkside aerial
2. Cheat setup gainer flash
3. Gumbi Aerial
4. Inverted Tornado Kick
5. Outwards spinning butterfly kick 

In this tutorial we are going to teach it from a tornado kick, which I find easiest to learn. 


01 Tornado Kick

Start off with a normal tornado kick. Try to make it as floaty as possible.



02 both legs straight

The next step is a tornado kick with both legs straight. No chamber. Kind of like a Cheat Feilong. 


03 Lazyboy

The next progression is also called Lazyboy. It's a tornado kick with no actual kick. Instead you push your hip out and swing both legs straight from side to side. We are getting close to the raiz now.

04 Spot the ground

The next step is just a small modification but it will already turn your lazyboy into a (bad) raiz. Now instead of spotting forward, like you would for a tornado kick, you'll spot over your shoulder to look for the ground. Start spotting even before you takeoff and don't take your eyes off that spot.

05 getting horizontal

Practice this until you can get your body at least horizontal. Your head should be on the same level as your hip. You achieve this by lowering your upper body a little bit before you takeoff and by pushing your hip upwards as you takeoff.  This is basically a Side2Side Raiz.

Changing it into a inverted (non-Side2Side) Raiz

Wind up.

Swing your arms wide and look at a spot on the ground. 

Lower your body so it is at least horizontal as you swing your back leg up. Try to keep your spot at the ground. You will need to arch your back  to make this possible.

Swing your leg up high and keep your spot on the ground. This is where you can see the similarties to a gainer flash. Now instead of looking over your shoulder, like in the previous progressins, you'll want to look straight back. Like in a backflip or gainer. Arch your back, stick your chest out and push out your hips.

Swing your legs over and keep your back arched. Keep spotting the floor. You don't want to go side to side anymore. It should be more 'backflip'ish. Get your hips above head level by pushing it up.

As you see you should be spotting the floor the entire time. Just let your legs carry you to the end of the trick. You should know how that feels by now if you practiced the previous progressions. 

Done.
Tips

This is trick is not hard but can be quite tricky to learn. Try to figure out what your personal learning progression you prefer.

Going from a tornado kick was definitely the easiest way for me but you can also try the other methods. 

1. Cheat darkside aerial. Step into your cheat setup and do an aerial on your bad side. Spot the ground and swing your leg over. Keep your spot throughout the trick and it should work naturally.

2. The real cheat gainer. Step into your cheat setup and swing your arms as you would for a gainer flash. Swing your leg up the same way and look straight back. So basically a gainer from a cheat setup.

3. If you can already do a gumbi, you could try to turn that into a raiz, since it's a raiz with both hands. Swing your back leg hard and turn your body over fast to generate as much whip as possible, so you can leave your hands away. Swing your arms with speed and momentum.

4. Outwards butterfly kick. This is very similar to the darkside aerial technique but you'll think of a butterfly kick where you spot the ground instead. I wouldn't recommend you to use this as a primary learning method as it won't teach you how to invert properly.