Team USA

[rockstaryuzu]

14 hours ago, memae said:

 

He is very handsome. He's got that wholesome American boy vibe - I often think he looks like he is a character in a teenage rom-com. He's the wholesome love interest star athlete except instead of a quarterback he's a FIGURE SKATER who isn't afraid of wearing some sparkles. Someone write that screenplay and give us the skating series we deserved instead of Spinning Out.

It'll have to start with him posing for Instagram photos, though . He's a child of the social media times! 

 

 

[memae]

I watched the latest from TSL (I know lots of people very much dislike them but this isn't about that or them) and they mentioned Bradie training a 3A. So I googled and found articles going back months mentioning it.  How did I miss this? 

 

I think if she's able to come out of the COVID times strong and capable and she lands a 3A in competition, it's going to be big for ladies skating. She's in her 20s. She's twice the height of the girls at the front (she looked like a giant compared to them on the ice during warm up at GPF. This is the progress I want to see in ladies skating. I want strong women jumping big jumps properly. If she does it then it'll prove that it's possible for people who aren't 15 to add jumps to their repertoire. Maybe it'll mean we see some longer careers in ladies skating than we've begun to expect. 

[sallycinnamon]

 

[rockstaryuzu]

10 hours ago, memae said:

I watched the latest from TSL (I know lots of people very much dislike them but this isn't about that or them) and they mentioned Bradie training a 3A. So I googled and found articles going back months mentioning it.  How did I miss this? 

 

I think if she's able to come out of the COVID times strong and capable and she lands a 3A in competition, it's going to be big for ladies skating. She's in her 20s. She's twice the height of the girls at the front (she looked like a giant compared to them on the ice during warm up at GPF. This is the progress I want to see in ladies skating. I want strong women jumping big jumps properly. If she does it then it'll prove that it's possible for people who aren't 15 to add jumps to their repertoire. Maybe it'll mean we see some longer careers in ladies skating than we've begun to expect. 

Exactly! I had no idea she was training a 3A and I'm not her fan but good for her. 

 

[Veveco]

 

[Paskud]

13 minutes ago, Veveco said:

 

URed af😅🙈

[SparkleSalad]

Hope she can get it rotated  i wonder how many skaters will master new jumps with no competitions to practice for

 

 

 

[memae]

15 hours ago, SparkleSalad said:

Hope she can get it rotated  i wonder how many skaters will master new jumps with no competitions to practice for

 

 

I hope so too! How wonderful it would to see some ladies skaters who are adults debuting some 3A or quads in the future. A 3A and some consistency would do wonders for Amber. I wonder if knowing she can do a 3A will give her the confidence to hold things together better? 

[Paskud]

 

 

[rockstaryuzu]

"Girls should also not be afraid to do resistance training and have muscle because it “makes them look bulky”. There is a reason why strength and conditioning is an ESSENTIAL part of every sports training regime. Strength training is about power, muscle endurance, strength. These are all things that will always help you in your sport, no matter what it is. Strong is beautiful because strong is healthy. Strong can be the one thing standing between second and first place."

 

 

This! So very much this! 

 

[memae]

9 hours ago, Paskud said:

 

 

 

 

I struggled with all of this in competitive swimming. My coach made me swim with a broken finger (from a skating accident, funnily enough). When I was a bit older and no longer with that coach, I trained half a season with a broken rib (and when that got better my season ended because I then broke my arm). I couldn't even sit up to get out of bed. I had to roll over and slide out. I couldn't do tumble turns at each end of the pool. I also once trained with a partial Achilles' tear, sustained during training (we were running around then jumping up on the blocks to dive in and sprint, repeat, repeat, repeat). That's all the worst of it. But I definitely hurt in some way every session I ever did. Chafe on my ribs. Tendonitis. Also just the physical and mental pain of hard work. All of this encouraged and normalised by coaches. It was a good thing if we trained so hard we missed 10 minutes in the middle of a session because we needed to spew. 

 

It's no coincidence that I have broken so many bones  (13) so easily. People think I'm clumsy. I'm not. My bone density is terrible. My diet was terrible. I ate for energy rather than recovery. I hated being bulky. My size was constantly commented on (I was very muscular), which is real tough when you're in a swimsuit 5 hours a day and while there were times I was able to eat pretty well and be healthy, I trace my years of eating disorders back to always being around people commenting on my body, particularly coaches and other adults like trainers. I was in a sport that people immediately associate with big shoulders and appetites but somehow my big shoulders and appetite received so much judgement. I couldn't have been good at my sport without that muscle but for some reason there was so much focus on my body instead of what it was doing: swimming really fast. It's like I needed to be strong but wasn't allowed to look strong. When I wasn't winning, the muscles weren't worth it. So I would stop eating, lose weight, then slowly gain it back, win again, lose again, starve again. 

 

 My coach always told me to eat "better" and never taught me how. He focused on energy and so did I because I was always hungry. I was not getting enough iron or calcium. At times I wasn't getting enough protein to maintain my muscle mass. I failed so many classes at school because I couldn't remember anything and ended up repeating. I am in my 30s and my bone density is a major concern. 

 

And this is in swimming. It's not even an aesthetic sport in the ways that skating and gymnastics are. You literally win by being the fastest. It's not up to interpretation. I can't even imagine how bad it gets for skaters in a sport in which the way you look can tie to how you are perceived and affect your points, and also in which some coaches limit how much water their athletes drink because of how much weight matters. 

 

This is why I was so excited by news of this secret Bradie 3A endeavour and then Amber's instagram post. Strong, grown women being strong and proving that they can get it done through strength rather than a technique that relies on small stature and low weight. Amber is nearly as tall as Yuzu, just by the way. She's at least 15cm taller than the Russian girls.

[rockstaryuzu]

12 hours ago, memae said:

Strong, grown women being strong and proving that they can get it done through strength

Yes. Exactly.

 

Your post has reminded me of something important about the female athlete experience: Females are shamed for having big appetites, period. If you're a female athlete in a sport that needs a 3 - or 4,000 calorie a day diet simply to keep from losing weight uncontrollably, such as swimming, you're going to hear about your appetite from someone. In my case is was my mother, who had two other children and a husband to cook for and was continually irked that I would eat more food than she'd planned for, and who also had a heavy dose of societal programming around the idea that women should eat 'daintily', who was continually reminding me "don't eat that, you'll get fat."

 

Fortunately my coaches were nutritionally aware people who knew how much we needed to eat and gave out good info. My point is that it's not just coaches who matter in this instance. Everybody, from parents to peers to even, in this day of social media, fans,  is continually giving female athletes negative feedback around their food intake...it has to stop. Muscle doesn't grow from air.

 

By contrast, the most common thing said to a male athlete about food is "Eat up, you need the energy/strength/muscle/etc."

 

 

[rockstaryuzu]

Also, not really sure how to comment on the performances in the Peggy Fleming event but Jason's skating looks absolutely LIT. If we have any kind of a season this year, I think he's going to surprise people. 

[Faithyu]

On 7/18/2020 at 3:02 AM, rockstaryuzu said:

Also, not really sure how to comment on the performances in the Peggy Fleming event but Jason's skating looks absolutely LIT. If we have any kind of a season this year, I think he's going to surprise people. 

 

I just stumbled upon his performance, sooooo incredible beautiful..........."Melancholy" is really a piece of art

[sweetwater]