Technique in sport stacking is related to a stacker’s style. Every stacker, within the rules of sport stacking, needs to find a style that allows them to do their best, fastest stacking successfully. If you do a YouTube search of stacking styles, you’ll see the great variety of styles that a stacker can adopt. It is best practice as a coach to teach a stacker the classic style for each stack shown in these videos https://www.youtube.com/user/speedstacks/videos Once stackers have mastered the basic stacks, they can start exploring changing their style and adjusting their technique to increase their speed. This section of the Coaches’ Corner provides drills and exercises to help stackers improve their stacking technique.
One way stackers increase their speed is to work on a faster down stack. In this drill for technique, stackers up stack without a fumble, pause, and then down stack as fast as they can, ending with their hands on the timer. Have stackers repeat 10 times each for 3-3-3, 3-6-3 and 1-10-1.
There are many different styles of starts and stops that stackers develop. However, sometimes those styles result in scratches from stackers touching the cups before they start stacking and/or holding the cups when they stop the timer. Practice stacking with your hands flat on the timer to start and then stopping the timer with your hands flat on the touch pads as a way to work on increasing the speed of the stacking itself. Once you’ve reached a new speed goal with this technique, go back to using your preferred start/stop hand positions.