I've only got my YZ426 experience to go by here. There was no way I could kick through the compression stroke on that bike in one swift kick. If I let my foot rest on it with steady pressure, it would bleed past the rings and it would rotate past TDC, but often very quickly, rotating to BDC. The key was to put it as little past TDC as possible, and it would fire. If you went too far, it wasn't worth kicking hard, just bring it around again and try to inch it past.
I can't explain how all the dynamics work here, but I just know I had a great "feel" for what was happening. Hence, I never had any trouble starting the beast. Well, there was that one time the spark plug was loose...