rockstaryuzu

"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time" - although I am of the opinion that time watching Yuzuru is never wasted. There's just something electric about him. When I watch him skate, I feel strangely connected to a much bigger reality than my own. @Jenny_Crux I think most of us here feel that way to some extent.

I know. Terrible, isn't it? One would think that brilliance of that level would be immediately obvious to all. Although in all fairness to my friends, I only showed them still photographs because I was on data instead of wifi. But still, Yuzu's beauty should have been obvious! Edited to add: I noticed Yuzu with Sochi PW, but I didn't fall in love until I saw SC'16 LGC. His performance was so spot on...like he was born to channel Prince on the ice...and I just couldn't look away after that. I probably should have showed them LGC, data costs be damned.

So, have to share this: I'm out with friends for drinks and somehow the conversation has turned to Hanyu. Clearly something is wrong with my friends - I have shown them Masquerade AND H&L '17 and they still think I'm the crazy one.

Open water racing - now there's a fitness challenge! Hats off to you! I left competitive swimming because it became important for me to earn money for university, and I became a lifeguard/swim instructor/ coach instead. Coaching was really fun. There's definitely an effect in swimming that, once you get efficient at it, training feels easier than it would on land. You're not overheating, you might be sweating but the water washes it away, and you don't have to carry you own bodyweight throughout the work. But you quickly realize how demanding those workouts are if you try to replicate them on land. If you think about the amount of stamina needed, and what kinds of energy systems you're engaging, during a 5 quad free skate, it actually becomes really complex. It's a 4 minute duration, so you're definitely using the base level aerobic capacity just to last through the whole tjing. But for jumps and maybe for spins, you're engaging the anaerobic and ATP-ADP systems. So you have to train all 3. But drilling jumps, for example, only trains the second two. If all you do on the ice is short bursts of activity interspersed with leisurely skating, you're not going to train the right energy systems. Someone mentioned in one of these posts that Yuzu's first coach used to give him exercises to improve his stamina like skating continuously for an hour...and that's probably the way for a skater to build that base-level stamina. Doesn't sound like much fun. Round and round in ovals for an hour...almost as bad as up and down the pool following the black line on the bottom of the lane.

It only feels easy because you get used to it! But the easy stuff is really only at the start of the season when you're building your aerobic base. When you start into training for specific events, you're rarely swimming below 60% of max HR. I used to specialize in 200 I.M, 100 &200 breaststroke, and 200-400 free. At those racing distances, you're never training easy. You might do some long slow distance sets, but you're pushing all the time. Maybe I should explain that when I say 'overtrain' in this sense, I don't mean 'the athlete overdoes it and pushes themselves too far'. I mean specifically that the athlete does many times more physical work (either distance covered, or weight lifted, or whatever) in training than they would ever do in competition. The opposite of this would be something like a marathon runner. They don't go out and run 3 marathons every time they practice for their event. But a swimmer who races the 200m distance will go to practice and do a 4000m practice in the morning, and then do another 3 or 4 thousand meters in the evening on the same day, and do dryland training in between, if they're elite-level. And then do the same thing the next day or the day after, lather, rinse, repeat. Now I don't know what kind of training approach is taken for figure skating usually, but it would seem to me that doing tons of run-throughs is a kind of 'overtraining' approach. BUT because of what jumping does to the body, this will lead to injury. So what is the answer for a figure skater? I'm not sure.

The reason there's even a stamina narrative at all is because Yuzu himself keeps mentioning it. But the physical reality, if you look at athletes across various disciplines and especially those in sports that place a high cardiovascular demand on the body, is that stamina tends to peak in the late 20's - early 30's. (Take a look at cross-country skiing, for example. The winning guys aren't the baby skiers, they're the uncles). So my opinion, taking into account that I have no direct personal knowledge of Yuzu specifically, is that Yuzu still hasn't reached his peak stamina as an adult man but is getting closer to it. Maybe he also is aware of this, and maybe that's where all his comments about stamina are coming from. Either way, of course his stamina is going to give the appearance that it's getting worse if you were to compare his performance 5 years ago in a two-quad program with his performance now in a 5 - quad program. How do you even build stamina for a 5-quad program to begin with? I mean, do you have to invent an entirely new way of training, or what? But I think it's clear that he has gotten better and stronger since his teens

The difficulty is that increasing stamina is done mainly by increasing the amount of work you do, which directly increases the risk of injury. Maybe the answer to this question for Yuzu doesn't lie on the ice but in some other area. For example, stamina can be increased by doing basic cardio like running or biking, and lots of it. He mentioned in an interview that swimmers can perform multiple disciplines and races in one competition without loss of stamina. Well that's because swimmers overtrain - for every meter a swimmer races at competitions, they've swum hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers in training, and trained every single energy system the body has, many times over. If Yuzu wants that kind of stamina, he's probably going to have to try something completely new to what he's done before.

If I were Zu, I would just casually and silently show up at Nathan's rink during his training sessions and stare, saying nothing, until it got under Nathan's skin. Yes, he'd know I was studying him...but in the most unnerving way possible... Good thing Yuzu's not like me.

Has our boy become a little obsessed, maybe? I hope he doesn't forget that Nathan's not the only guy out there chasing him. I, for one, think Stephane will take Shoma to the next level where he'll be a truly serious rival for Yuzu. No wonder Zu was saying after SCI that he wondered if he should change his approach to skating. Come on, Yuzu, studying your rivals is fine but do it with an objective eye.

This is random but ever since I started watching Yuzu, I've developed an appreciation for the work the sports photographers do rinkside. How they consistently manage to get such well-composed shots when the boy is moving at twice the speed of any other skater, I don't know, but hats off to them.

On a completely different note, I just want to say that I adore the Planet's New Year's banner with Yuzu in the hakama from the People's Honor Award and the gently falling snow. Nice job, whoever made that.

As if. Forbes Magazine is not that dumb. I call shenanigans. But I do have to thank the author of the article for reminding me that there are Yuzu calendars. I need to get me a great big wall-size one to hang over my desk at work.

Oh, that's unfortunate. They're a really promising team. Was looking forward to seeing them again

Enjoy!

I use mine to store the other Hanyu things fanyus have given me at competitions, like photos and postcards!

MERRY CHRISTMAS, SATELLITES!! (and Yuzu )

Honestly I don't know, I've only seen chatter and discussion on fan sites, nothing official, which is why I suggested to check, just in case.

Check the dates, though - isn't he supposed to doing something with the Tokyo Olympics almost around the same time as FaOI usually is? Makes me wish I had the budget to go. I've always wanted to see a bit of China, and going to see Yuzu skate would be the best excuse ever. Oh well, Beijing 2022 is coming...

Welcome to the Planet! Great first post!

Google translate just told me that a Twitter caption written in Japanese said that Dai and Yuzuru are planning to take up ID together. I'm pretty sure that's not what it says in the original Japanese...thanks Translate for the amusing mental image though.

Okay, here: " Dear Mr. Hanyu, It's been wonderful watching you skate so far. Thank you for continuing to do so. Please continue skating and competing as long as you want to. Know that all of us, your fans, will support you, even though we worry about you and pray for your health. I can't thank you enough for all the joy you've brought to my life, just by watching you from afar. And not so afar - I was very privileged to watch you skate in person at ACI 2019 and SCI 2019, and will be in the arena cheering for you from the high rows, section 116, for Worlds 2020. You make us all proud to be your fans. Do what you want to do in skating, go as far as you can think of (safely - let's have no more injuries.) Do all the things that only you can do. With my best regards and lots of loud cheering and poster-waving, rockstaryuzu" How's that?

I've never seen Santa in quite this light and I don't think I'll be able to think of him (Santa) the same way again...in a good way but a very weird way. This definitely has Lotte/Ghana beat, hands down. What if all of Yuzu's sponsors are competing to create the most, er, memorable image of him that they can?

I don't know what to think of this photo. On the one hand, it makes me laugh because it's a comedic photo. On the other hand, I'm totally bewildered by the concept and trying to figure out when exactly they took Yuzu to a snowy mountaintop to shoot this...