Advancing on the handle?

Okay this may seem like a silly question but me and my friend got into this discussion after riding the other day. After I went out the front on a blind 360, he said that my problem was that I pulled the handle to my hips while in the air. I always assumed that proper form on a spin was pop pull pass in that order. He said that his technique was he would advance his hips to the handle right before leaving the wake and then initiate the spin by pulling the handle towards the small of his back while in the air. My question is is this the way to spin correctly? His spins are a lot more consistent than mine while I am decent at them they are sometimes off axis and I struggle with getting the handle a lot more. Are you supposed to pull the handle to your hip while on the wake for every trick short of a raley? I guess I don't really understand one of the basic foundations of whiteboarding LOL. I don't ever do this I also struggle reaching te board on grabs and think it may be related too. What's embarrassing is I have been riding for 10 years and never have thought of this