Use your legs and lift your body to avoid hanging up. Your body tends to stay low when you focus too much on popping, but just like a shorter stick falls faster, you are more likely to lose balance when your body is lower. Let's break it down along with other important points.
Key Point ①: Raise Your Center of Gravity
The first and most important key point is lifting your body with your legs, and the difference between this and the popping motion.
It may seem like you need to snap the tail hard to get onto the Manual pad, since hanging up on the edge is a legitimate fear. But focusing on popping alone is the reason you can't hold your Manual.
To support your weight during a manual, you naturally want to extend your legs. When your body stays low, and you want to extend your legs, you'll have to push your back foot forward to get onto the pad. If you overdo this, you'll drag the tail.
And if you try to compensate for this problem by leaning forward, the front wheels are likely to drop. The same reason that you are not lifting the body causes seemingly completely different problems. Because your body stays low, you need to push your back foot forward to get it onto the Manual pad, and you'll either drag the tail or drop the front wheels. And the solution is the same, too. Lift your body.
Indeed, you CAN Manual while keeping your body low, but balancing becomes extremely difficult. Please imagine toppling a long stick and a short stick. Compared to the shorter one, the longer stick takes a longer time to fall.
The same can be said of human bodies. If you move your body by the same distance while standing and crouching, the angle of the body axis increases when you are crouching. Meaning, balancing becomes more sensitive when your body is lower. If you are standing, you are less affected by a loss of balance and can correct it more easily.
And to stand, you need to lift your body with your entire legs, because you can't stand by popping alone. If you try it separately, you'll notice that lifting your body with your legs and popping the tail with your ankle are completely different movements.
Let's visualize the body's height using Whythetrick's system. Starting at the same height, if I jump, my upper body rises beyond the initial height, creating enough room for the pad to be. Plus, my body stands upright, which makes it easier to hold a Manual. Whereas, if I pop without jumping, my body stays low and bent, which makes it harder to balance, even if I manage to get onto the pad.
You can easily fall into a bad cycle. You hang up or can't hold your Manual, and you're tempted to pop harder, which makes you jump weaker and lose control again. To break this bad cycle, try jumping between your attempts. Feel the sensation of using your thighs and break the illusion that makes you think you have to pop hard because popping is not what you need to get onto the pad; it's jumping.
Key Point ②: Approach Speed
The next point is approach speed. A certain amount of speed is necessary for manuals. To get used to the required speed, start by landing on four wheels and practice switching to Manual on the pad. If you approach slower than a certain speed, it becomes virtually impossible to get onto the pad, no matter how high you Ollie.
Let's do some math. Assuming your approach speed is 10 cm per second, and you pop at the very last moment before the nose hits the pad, then the minimum distance you have to cover to get onto the pad equals the distance from the nose to the rear truck, which is about 60 cm. Because you move 10 cm every second, you would need to stay in the air for 6 seconds.
How high would you need to Ollie to stay in the air for 6 seconds? If you calculate it, you'll see you need to Ollie 44 meters high—roughly the height of a 15-story building.
Seems to me, it's much easier if I increase speed so that I don't have to Ollie up so high. That said, it's natural to be afraid of increasing speed, hanging up, and throwing yourself forward. So, start by practicing getting onto the pad with four wheels. Once you can consistently do that, try manualing on the pad and doing a Manual upon landing.
Key Point ③: Timing and Eye Line
The next key point is timing and line of sight. Simply put, wait until the last moment before popping.
As you pop too early, because you anticipate the rear truck will hang up, you'll wind up pushing it forward to get it on the pad. But this rotates the board.
To solve this, wait until the nose gets close enough to the pad before popping. Intuitively, you might think the nose would collide with the pad. But if you lift your front foot by jumping, the nose can rise instead of continuing to move forward, and you can get onto the pad without colliding with it.
As much as popping too early and pushing the back truck forward turns your board, opening your shoulders can turn your board, too. Please note that there's no problem if you have them open at a comfortable angle throughout your trick. The problem happens when you change their angle during the trick. So have them fixed at a certain angle.
As you approach the pad, keep your eyes on its edge. Right at the moment you pop, shift your gaze to your front foot. Once you confirm that the rear truck has made it onto the pad, look forward toward the end of the pad. The hardest part is that you can't see whether the rear truck clears the edge because your view is blocked. There's no easy way to solve this, and you have to practice to acquire the feeling.
Key Point ④: Foot Placement
Finally, foot placement. Your back foot should be flat on the tail during the Manual.
A common mistake is placing the toe on the very end of the tail, just like in a normal Ollie. If you try to manual with this, your body weight will be supported by a single point on your toe, which makes balancing harder.
To fix this, place your back foot slightly toward the toe side of the tail. Right after you pop, slide your back foot onto the tail and press it down on the entire sole, rather than just the toe.
Overall Summary
Overall, the most important takeaway is to develop the feeling of lifting your body weight using your entire legs. And please try Whythetrick's system. Not only can you visualize your movements, but you can also play videos side-by-side to compare what you are doing objectively.