HRvF

SAME! Sad but true, I think so too

I thought I'd share two Yuzu videos I enjoyed today: The perfect balance of artistry and athleticism (video edit by 柚生1805) And also a nice throwback to the "younger years". I think Yuzu could handle a "dance-off" on ice challenge with Nathan! (video from NikaQuest)

All are good, but I LOVE "yuzurious" ! Totally going to use this now!

Oh ok, (I can understand that though because I imagine with harness you would commit slightly different to the movement than without harness). Praying for health and good fortune

I hope that most of the training for 4A can be done in harness?

Aaah yes, that was it! He always puts so much pressure on himself.

Boy, I love this skate so much, I always seem to be crying by the end... beautiful emotion (Somehow the fall makes it even more perfect - didn't he have an injury here? He said his left leg got tired from compensating for the right I think?) And lovely commentary by Tracy!

I also heard those "rumors" (well actually saw it in comments, but never knew the primary source). But wow, this season has been packed and crazy as it is! I can't imagine if 4A in competition happened this season as well, my heart!

Thank you for reading! IKR !! I agree! Also, I think it's a bit like throwing a ball. You don't really actually calculate trajectories and stuff - you "feel" it. But I believe if anyone can do it, it's Yuzu! (Although I'd be 100% fine with whatever direction his skating path takes.) Absolutely!

(I did miss that!) O M Gosh!!! me <= "faints"

Thank you and wow, you explained that so succinctly and perfectly!

hahaha - that sounds crazy! Sometimes I really wish we could get more historical information like this, instead of just bland dates and events, the real people behind the events!

Yes, whenever I saw Yuzu jumping, I always thought, gosh he puts "brakes on" for his jumps, surely he can easily do an extra rotation if he stops putting on the "brakes"! But, on the other hand, so many people (commentators for example) has said that his jumps are so pretty because of his relaxed upper body compared to other skaters. Perhaps, like @Crow mentioned, he CAN spin faster easily, but doesn't do it for other reasons (like difficult landing). This is A M A Z I N G ! ! Thank you for sharing! Thank you very much for your beautiful words and encouragement. I have to say, I was very nervous to post this. You understand exactly. (Sorry to hear about your own negative experience though ) I didn't want to seem like I'm trying to be a smart alec, but when I saw the quote about "He says it’s easier to rotate if you jump smaller, but then it’s likely going to be underrotated" I just couldn't stop thinking about it

That is very interesting! I was wondering about that.

Thank you for reading! I think it is because I tend to get obsessive about things I'm just like a hobbyist looking from afar (wish I had access to Ice Scope!) so just wanted to share some speculations and musings. (It's just because I find these things interesting and I think Yuzu is an amazing athlete. I really do think his athletic ability is under appreciated.) Yuzu has a great (the best in the world?) coaching team and he himself is also very intelligent and responsible so I think the 4A mission is in good hands.

Thank you for reading it and thank you for your reply which I think is very thoughtful and I do agree with you as well. I think you are right that that is a very important factor. When I compared the 3A of 2018GPF_FS (in combination) to 2019WC_SP it also looked to me that the high rotation speed from the 2018 3A was what made the landing difficult. (In other words, I think possibly that for higher rotation speed, more time is needed for a good "checkout", never-mind all the crazy forces on landing which I still find frightening AND the fact that all this happens in split seconds!) I made two video snippets of those jumps, but don't know how to attach in comments, so once I figure that out, I'll add it here, then it's easy to see the comparison. Well, I will support him with any decision he makes (I think he has proven to a very good decision-maker) hehe, indeed! But I have to say, even though he is focused on 4A and not on quint, I would really love it if he could do it even if only to stick it a little bit to the "nay-sayers". (I'm sorry, I'm a little evil BUT - he knows what's best, so I support him in his decisions.

I have been fascinated by Hanyu-senshu's goal of landing a 4A and when I saw his (translated) comment about the 4A: (x) I went digging into the question a bit and thought I'd share my thoughts here. I'm by nature an analytical type of person, so this post is a little "intense", but if this post/topic is not appropriate, please let me know and I'll change/delete it. My intention is just to discuss interesting aspects around the question and admire the hard work Hanyu-senshu has put in, in no way am I trying to be "critical" or "judgmental" in any way. (Because this post is very long, I put some of the content in "spoilers" so that it isn't a loooooong wall of text.) Why am I thinking about this? So these are my assumptions: => Jump "airtime" is related to the height and distance of a jump and therefore the amount of initial energy put into the jump along both horizontal as well as vertical vectors. (You could, for example, do projectile motion along parabolic trajectory calculations using kinematic equations to see how vertical and horizontal movement affects airtime.) => The higher a skater can jump, the longer airtime he has for rotation (more energy into vertical vector). => The faster a skater enters the jump (more energy into horizontal vector), the further the jump and the longer the airtime. => Rotational energy is achieved through body positioning (for example, upper body movement and position) as well as the entry curve of the jump. (Although I think height is the more important vector of the two.) Hanyu-senshu is an athlete who can JUMP REALLY HIGH! IMPORTANT NOTE: Hanyu-senshu's 4As at Torino: So although these numbers are questionable due to poor technology used to look at it, it is possible to theorize that rotation during phase 1 (first 0.5 rotations) are slower than during phase 2 (rest of rotations) and that Hanyu-senshu is able to dedicate about 0.1 seconds to phase 1, about 0.7 seconds to phase 2 and a total of 0.8 seconds for total airtime. (I think jump C was the best of the three attempts). I was wondering if any special tactics could be used to increase the potential success of the 4A. As mentioned before, I believe increasing the entry-speed to increase airtime is not an option. I also don't think faster rotation during phase 1 would work, because the effort during phase 1 is needed to make sure the jump is high enough for good airtime (the cutoff point (in terms of time or rotations) for phase 1 might be shifted though depending on where/how much effort is needed to achieve height). Therefore, a possible place left for optimization is to increase the rotation speed during phase 2. Looking at the numbers, one could speculate in the following: If a total airtime of 0.8 seconds can be achieved and of that 0.1 seconds is used for phase 1 and 0.7 seconds is used for phase 2, 4.5 rotations can be achieved the following way: Phase 1 (0.1 seconds and 0.5 rotations): 5.000 R/sec 300 R/min Phase 2 (0.7 seconds and 4.0 rotations): 5.714 R/sec 343 R/min The highest R/min achieved (with my flawed and rough data) during phase 2 was 321 R/min (5.342 R/sec) (Jump C), the rest of the parameters has been achieved. Rotation speed speculations: I want to also add though that I think it is frightening to think about spinning so fast (and jumping so high) and then needing to land on ice! So many forces on impact, I think it's crazy (and scary) what elite skaters can do. And sometimes I think it would be better if Hanyu-senshu didn't pursue the 4A dream and rather become a life-long artist on ice, creating his own artwork in ice shows, instead of risking injury in competitive skating. But whatever he decides, I know his fans will support him 100%) But anyway, I then had a look at the rotation speeds of Hanyu-senshu's 3As: Comparing his 3A stats with the 4A attempts this shows how much training and work Hanyu-senshu has been putting into this! 3A average duration 0.721 seconds => 4A duration 0.818 seconds 3A average rotation speed 4.870 R/second (292 R/minute) => 4A rotation speed 5.301 R/second (318 R/minute) And I also did a VERY rough "eyeball" estimate of the height of the jump (the problem is estimating where the ice is under the jump). But a VERY rough estimate gave me this: 3A (NHK SP 2019): 0.758 m 4A (attempt at GPF practice 2019): 0.941 m !!! My conclusion is that Hanyu-senshu has been training for the 4A VERY VERY hard and the 4A attempts we saw were ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE jumps! (We can also see this from how much muscle he has gained! I also suspect that his 4A training has been affecting his other jumps. For me this makes sense because until he has his perfect balance of technique for the 4A and have it "locked in", thus experimenting with different speeds, curves, positions etc, it might affect how he does other jumps as well. But also maybe not I'm just speculating hehe) But what I think IS true is that he is jumping higher, is achieving longer airtime and is rotating faster. In terms of how he might reach 4.5 instead of 4.25 rotations, I think... * he is already jumping very high * airtime is already long * perhaps rotating faster after the initial phase (to get height first) is a possible approach to reach more rotations (With this I don't mean a "delayed" rotation, but rather perhaps a slightly different arm movement which first help pull the body UP then to ROTATE. Yes, I know, we are talking about tiny tiny fractions of seconds!) With this in mind, I decided to look at his rotation speed when doing quads (to get an idea what rotation speed he gets there) and compare it with another skater (I picked Nathan since he is his main rival at the moment, although Boyang might also be a good comparison? Anything to learn from Quad Jumps? Speculations about arm movements: So, anyways, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts. Perhaps people with more skating knowledge than me (which is off course 99.99% of other people around the Planet) could correct me where I was thinking wrong or add some information. But I also wanted to highlight that Hanyu-senshu is an amazing athletic jumper (it seems he jumps so high and has so much airtime he can get away with lower rotation speed relative to other skaters! but he has also been increasing his rotation speed) and that he has put in so much work into the 4A and it might not be appreciated enough... to my liking hehehe. I think he has the ability to land a 4A. I actually also believe he has the ability to land a quint. The question is, is it worth the injury risk?