He is like a teenager in the comics, like a dragon, like a shock. The elegant posture is reflected on the ice, and every smile is the focus of the field... The Beijing Winter Olympics is Yu Yu's third trip to the Winter Olympics, and challenging the human limit 4A (Axel's four-way jump) in such a major competition has made him even more eye-catching.
Yu Yusuke once used "a lifetime of suspense" to describe his attitude towards figure skating. In Japanese, "life in suspense" means "to fight all your life and do one thing with all your strength." Yu Yu is like a warrior, even if he is hit by fate, he does not give up, but directly tells fate that he is a storm.
Today, Yu Yu has blown this "storm" towards 4A. For the 27-year-old who has won all the honors in the figure skating world, 4A has become the last obsession of his figure skating career. After the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics defended his title, Yusei Yushin said, "All my motivation now is to finish the 4A. Everything that should be done has been done, everything I want to get has been obtained, and then I just want to complete the goal I had when I was a child. 4A is not a dream, it is a goal. ”
What is 4A
4A, that is, Axel jumps around, requires the player to slide forward when jumping, jump with the front outer blade of the right foot, the left foot knife tooth does not point ice, after rotating 1620 degrees in the air, the left foot after the outer blade falls on the ice, the right foot does not touch the ice surface, and then slide backwards.
There are 6 common jumps in figure skating, ranging in low to high difficulty: Toe loop jump, Salchow jump, Loop jump, Flip jump, Lutz jump and Axel jump. Each jump is divided into one week, two weeks, three weeks, and four weeks. The more laps you spin in the air, the harder it becomes.
Axel Jump is the only jump of these 6 jumps that jump forward and fall backwards on the ice, so it will always jump half a week longer than other jumps. In other words, to complete the other 4 weeks of jumps, you only need to rotate 1440 degrees in the air, and to complete the 4A Axel four-way jump, you need to rotate 1620 degrees in the air. It seems that there are only 180 degrees more, but the requirements for figure skaters are increased by geometric base. At the same time, 4A, as the only forward jumping action, requires figure skaters to completely rely on the reaction force of the blade blade to the ice surface pressure and the centrifugal force of their own leg swing to complete the jump. Therefore, Axel's four-sided jump is currently one of the most difficult figure skating jumps in the world.
How hard is 4A
How hard is 4A? Yu Yusuke once described it this way, "Jumping around is like jumping around with your eyes closed while turning around for two weeks (a trick of jumping rope), or jumping 6 meters while jumping during the long jump and adding a turn." ”
According to relevant technical statistics, the remaining time of each jump of the vast majority of figure skaters in the air is 0.7 to 0.8 seconds, while normally the human body can make about 5 rotations in 1 second, so rotating in the air for 4 weeks is within the normal capacity of the human body. But 4A needs to rotate in the air for 4 and a half weeks, which is an extra half a week to challenge the limits of the human body. To turn around for 4 and a half weeks in a short time in the air, you must have a fast enough air rotation speed. According to professional calculations, its rotation speed is equivalent to the wheel speed of a car with a speed of 50 kilometers per hour.
The 4A jump will also put the legs of figure skaters, especially the ankles, knees, etc. under a lot of pressure. According to the measurement of the sensor bound to the bottom of the skates by professional institutions, the impact of figure skaters jumping to the ground is about 5 to 8 times the weight of the athletes themselves, and the impact of 4A directly reaches the peak, that is, 8 times. Astronauts rotate in the centrifuge to train, the limit is 8 times the weight load, the impact force can be imagined.
The weight of the feathered knot is generally controlled at about 57 kg. In other words, for every 4A jump, his legs have to withstand about 456 kilograms of impact. Obviously, the risk of injury is very high. Yusheng's coach once introduced that if you jump 4A and fall, the impact is about the same as hitting a school bus.
During the practice of the 2019 GPF Championship, Yu yum tried 4A three times and failed. When he fell on the ice with his knees bent, fans begged him not to try again. Three-time World Championship winner Chen Wei is also a master jumper in men's singles, but he said he never wanted to challenge 4A because the risks of practicing 4A were too great.
What qualities are needed to jump 4A
Jumping 4A first requires a certain jump height and distance, thus ensuring that there is enough lag time to complete the 4 and a half weeks of rotation in the air. Therefore, super explosive power is the basis for completing this extreme action. Of course, figure skating jumps are not high jumps or long jumps, not high jumps or long jumps.
Figure skating is a sport that requires a lot of precision. Its jump pays attention to the balance of height, distance, and axis of rotation. From the perspective of physics, the higher the jump, the more the upward force will be used, and the force going far will be less, resulting in insufficient distance. The farther you jump, the higher you can drop. At the same time, the higher the farther the jump, the axis of rotation in the air will not be easy to control. Therefore, finding a balance between height, distance and rotation axis is the key to doing a good jump, and it is also a great challenge.
Yusei Yushin said that his jump height is calculated according to the difficulty of the action, his own body shape, etc., through the corresponding formula, in order to achieve balance in all aspects, and finally form a complete jumping technique, a fixed action trajectory. If you want to jump as high as you want, you may not be able to control the falling ice. And to jump out of a fixed trajectory in the game, you need strong body control.
Figure skating jumps also need to tighten the body at the right time, and then open the body at the right time, which still has to have strong control to keep the body's axis of rotation from deviating.
Jumping 4A requires a strong psychology and tenacity. Between January and April 2021 alone, Yu yusei challenged the 4A more than 1,000 times, but never succeeded. In this situation, it is often suffocating, and there seems to be no hope, "Every time my body falls heavily on the ice, as if it is a death jump, I am training with my own mental preparation that I am not sure which time I will fall out of the concussion and then die." 」 ”。 However, Yusei Yushin did not bow to the difficulties and conceded defeat to fate, and the things he identified would never give up halfway.
Why did Yu Yu string jump 4A
At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Yu yusheng defended his title as the men's singles champion of figure skating, becoming the first figure skater to win the men's singles championship at the Winter Olympics in 66 consecutive years. Before that, he had won all the honors and stood at the top of the figure skating world. In 2014, at the age of 19, Yusuke Yusuke won the gold medal at the Sochi Winter Olympics, becoming the first Men's Singles Champion at the Winter Olympics in Asia. In that year, he won the World Figure Skating Championships and achieved grand slams in the Olympic Games, World Championships and Grand Prix finals. In 2016, Yu Yusei completed the feat of winning four consecutive grand prix finals. To date, Habu has also broken the world record 19 times.
Outstanding achievements, handsome appearance, good character and reputation have made Yusei Yushin a national treasure athlete in Japan, and its commercial value is also quite amazing. According to the list of the top 100 athletes in 2019 released by the well-known American sports website ESPN, Yu yu was the only figure skater selected that year, ranking 64th, and its endorsement sponsorship amount was as high as 13.41 million US dollars.
Therefore, after two consecutive championships at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, YuSheng Yuxin could have completely retired, but he did not do so, but risked being seriously injured or even shortening his sports career, spending several years in order to conquer the jewel in the crown of figure skating in 4A. Yusheng knot strings should break through themselves and exceed their limits. Yusei once said, "My enlightenment coach told me that the A jump is the jump of the king, I have been fighting with the A jump as a weapon since I was a child, and it can be said that the 3A (Axel three-week jump) is my most solid comrade-in-arms." At that time, I also set myself a goal, that is, to jump 4A. This is not a dream, but a goal. "Looking around the world, Yu yushin is the world's most proficient figure skater in the A-jump technique. After the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, he began skating for the 4A.
Although the 4A action is considered to be an action that challenges the limits of human beings, it is actually an action with a very low return on investment. From 2A to 3A, the score has more than tripled, from 3A to 4A is 1.5 times, and the other 3lz (hooker three-week jump) and 3A are 3.1 points worse, but the 4A is only 1 point higher than 4lz (hooker four-week jump). In the score system of figure skating, the base score of 4A is 12.5 points, and the base score of the second most difficult hooker jumping around is 11.5 points, and the basic score between the two is only 1 point, but the degree of difficulty is completely different. Therefore, practicing 4A or jumping 4A in the game is extremely low cost-effective, and its investment and return are completely inconsistent.
There is a Chinese saying that knows that there are tigers in the mountains, and prefers to go to the tiger mountains. 4A is like the tiger in the figure skating world, and Yu yu yu string will be the tiger fighter, creating a new era for figure skating.
This is not the first time that Yu Yu has been a trend leader. In the 2015-2016 season, Yu yu set a record of "completing 5 four-week jumps in the competition, with a total score of more than 330 points", which shocked the entire figure skating world, which also triggered the domino effect. More and more figure skaters have begun to use the four-sided jump, opening the era of "group competition" of four-way jumping.
Today, Yu yushin is doing his best to break through the 4A, the limit of figure skating and even human beings. December 26, 2021, is also a day that can go down in the annals of figure skating. Yusei challenged the 4A in the All Japan Championships, and although the number of rotations was insufficient and his feet fell on the ice, he was able to use this action in the official competition and did not fall, which was a success.
"The ice man is like jade, and the prince is unparalleled in the world", and the feathered string is the "ice king" hidden in the slender and slender posture. Having a feather knot is definitely a stroke of luck.
Source: Thoughtful Shanghai