Asada shows improvement | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Asada shows improvement

babayaga

On the Ice
Joined
Aug 27, 2010
Your comments would be more constructive if YOU can actually describe and tell us EXACTLY HOW her current jumps are BETTER than what she did in Vancouver, for example, because obviously many people here do not see the improvement that YOU claim to be there.

Blade of Passion even included a video of her past performance that had better jumps than what I see now.

Nobody said she can't skate. She does have nice qualities. But is it not true that her jumps aren't what they used to be, despite her working on them for about three years? And three years is enough time to see some significant changes, provided that she received proper coaching. (I do not doubt her work ethic as I know that as a Japanese person, her life motto is "gambaru".)

Of course the jumps in the video that Blade of Passion posted are better than now, but this was not when she decided to start working on them. Three years ago her jumps started to leave her altogether. She wasn't doing a Lutz at all, let alone with speed and power like in that posted earlier video. She was not doing 3S or 2A-3T. Even her flip became unstable that year. She was able to land her 3A at Olympics, but ended up making a mistake on the second flip again. So no, three years ago she wasn't skating like in the posted video, she was already on a downhill. That was the year when she failed to make GPF for the first time too. So even though her jumps are unstable and often underrotated now, I think she is on the right track. She is back to attempting 7 triples; 3S, 2A-3T, and 3Lutz were nonexistant during the Vancouver year and are slowly coming back now.
I am getting impatient with her slow improvements too, but here are the positives: skating skills improved a lot under Sato, and her speed increased; 2A-3T that she landed in NHK was the best I've ever seen from her; the flutz is less noticeable, and 3S is much more consistent this season than before.
And this was one of her performances from 3 years ago for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i56LM_wLsgQ
 

wonderlen3000

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
I think the 'e' call on the Flip and Lutz give trouble for most of the lady. Reworking on the technique seen to give problem for most of them. Miki and Yuna on Flip, Mao on Lutz, etc...the idea in the head give skater confident issue. Lesser skater just take the lose on -GOE and didn't give too much trouble into it. Just rotate fully and land the jump, whihc is still a lot better point wise than falling or poping the jump.
 

Bartek

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 29, 2009
Of course the jumps in the video that Blade of Passion posted are better than now, but this was not when she decided to start working on them. Three years ago her jumps started to leave her altogether. She wasn't doing a Lutz at all, let alone with speed and power like in that posted earlier video. She was not doing 3S or 2A-3T. Even her flip became unstable that year. She was able to land her 3A at Olympics, but ended up making a mistake on the second flip again. So no, three years ago she wasn't skating like in the posted video, she was already on a downhill. That was the year when she failed to make GPF for the first time too. So even though her jumps are unstable and often underrotated now, I think she is on the right track. She is back to attempting 7 triples; 3S, 2A-3T, and 3Lutz were nonexistant during the Vancouver year and are slowly coming back now.
I am getting impatient with her slow improvements too, but here are the positives: skating skills improved a lot under Sato, and her speed increased; 2A-3T that she landed in NHK was the best I've ever seen from her; the flutz is less noticeable, and 3S is much more consistent this season than before.
And this was one of her performances from 3 years ago for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i56LM_wLsgQ

THIS!

The fact that she decided to attempt this very difficult process of reworking her technique didn't come out of nowhere. In 2008 she landed those lutzez and flips with big speed, height and power but the technique was bad therefore it was certain that at some point she was going to have troubles with those jumps. Tarasova took Mao with horrible technique and she knew it was simply too late to rework it before Vancouver. Look at her layout in Vancouver: 3A, 3F, 3Lo, 3T. That's all she put into her programs and the flip became inconsistent, I believe due to bad technique. Now she attempts 3S and 3Lz again which is certainly good! There IS improvement and it's owing to her changed technique. Compare her current flip and the flip from Vancouver or before. There is no mule kick anymore and she doesn't lower her upper bodu so much in order to jab her toepick into the ice. The problem is that she slows down going into her flips but the technique has definitely improved.
 

gmyers

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
If her goal was doubles it's been improved! There has been basically no improvement on any triple jump.
 

hurrah

Medalist
Joined
Aug 8, 2009
Yes, I think her technique has improved so that it is far more closer to the 'textbook' style, but the technical improvement is now actually causing the under-rotation, and it's because there are still alot of technical changes that still needs to undergo. Coach Sato wanted to change Mao's jumps incrementally, in small steps. So there have been improvements in the way she toe picks and how she holds her upper body and also how she moves her upper body as she takes off, but I think there are still alot of issues that need to be worked through. Right now, I have a feeling they are not only trying to get her to increase her entry speed, but also trying to get her to use a different set of muscles from the ones she used to to torque her body. Coach Sato predicted that Mao would have to rework her jump technique until the very last minute leading up to Sochi. As a fan, I hope she'll make the deadline.
 

Nadia01

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 10, 2009
I think the 'e' call on the Flip and Lutz give trouble for most of the lady. Reworking on the technique seen to give problem for most of them. Miki and Yuna on Flip, Mao on Lutz, etc...the idea in the head give skater confident issue. Lesser skater just take the lose on -GOE and didn't give too much trouble into it. Just rotate fully and land the jump, whihc is still a lot better point wise than falling or poping the jump.

Yuna never got edge calls on her flip, except that one time, which I thought was strange. (Afterward she changed her 3F/3T to 3Lz/3T b/c that's where she got her call at the Worlds. That tech caller never gave Yuna another edge call again)

Mik did have a noticeable lip, but she fixed it in 1 or 2 seasons, in time for Vancouver.
 

Nadia01

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 10, 2009
THIS!

The fact that she decided to attempt this very difficult process of reworking her technique didn't come out of nowhere. In 2008 she landed those lutzez and flips with big speed, height and power but the technique was bad therefore it was certain that at some point she was going to have troubles with those jumps. Tarasova took Mao with horrible technique and she knew it was simply too late to rework it before Vancouver. Look at her layout in Vancouver: 3A, 3F, 3Lo, 3T. That's all she put into her programs and the flip became inconsistent, I believe due to bad technique. Now she attempts 3S and 3Lz again which is certainly good! There IS improvement and it's owing to her changed technique. Compare her current flip and the flip from Vancouver or before. There is no mule kick anymore and she doesn't lower her upper bodu so much in order to jab her toepick into the ice. The problem is that she slows down going into her flips but the technique has definitely improved.


They were due to bad technique. I think Arutunian recognized her technique issues, but somebody on her team wanted him to stop coaching Mao jumps (thinking that it was a worthless effort since Mao's jumps were so "good"). If he'd been able to rework her technique back then, things might have been very different in Vancouver.
 

mary01

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 20, 2011
Yuna never got edge calls on her flip, except that one time, which I thought was strange. (Afterward she changed her 3F/3T to 3Lz/3T b/c that's where she got her call at the Worlds. That tech caller never gave Yuna another edge call again)

Mik did have a noticeable lip, but she fixed it in 1 or 2 seasons, in time for Vancouver.

yeah but there is a big difference between a skater changing her technique on one jump, and when a skater suddenly changes her technique on several, including adding combo's and jumps she didn't attempt for a whole season. so naturally it takes more time!

I think she has done amazing, by changing her technique, during such a short period of time (and it was a short period of time when considering the huge changes she has made) and under the personal circumstances she was under.
 
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Joined
Mar 11, 2011
yeah but there is a big difference between a skater changing her technique on one jump, and when a skater suddenly changes her technique on several, including adding combo's and jumps she didn't attempt for a whole season. so naturally it takes more time!

I think she has done amazing, by changing her technique, during such a short period of time (and it was a short period of time when considering the huge changes she has made) and under the personal circumstances she was under.

Her flip technique in particular stands out in terms of change. I was really stunned that she removed the mule-kick but I hoped that she would change mohawk turn entry into three-turn entry which would give her much better momentum and speed going into it.
 

Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be
Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 14, 2008
Country
France
Of course the jumps in the video that Blade of Passion posted are better than now, but this was not when she decided to start working on them. Three years ago her jumps started to leave her altogether. She wasn't doing a Lutz at all, let alone with speed and power like in that posted earlier video. She was not doing 3S or 2A-3T. Even her flip became unstable that year. She was able to land her 3A at Olympics, but ended up making a mistake on the second flip again. So no, three years ago she wasn't skating like in the posted video, she was already on a downhill. That was the year when she failed to make GPF for the first time too. So even though her jumps are unstable and often underrotated now, I think she is on the right track. She is back to attempting 7 triples; 3S, 2A-3T, and 3Lutz were nonexistant during the Vancouver year and are slowly coming back now.

Mao's 3S, 2A-3T, and 3Lutz were only "non-existant" during the Vancouver year because that's what her coaching team decided upon. She was still perfectly capable of doing those jumps at that time. She completely stopped trying the xxx-3T combinations and the 3Lz in the Long Program after the 2007-2008 season, which was when she stopped getting coached by Arutunian. Mao's jumping was at her best when she was with him. He fixed the poor toeloop technique she had earlier in her career and her Triple Axels were better than ever when she started training with him.
 

Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be
Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 14, 2008
Country
France
I always respect your analysis. Mao is my favorite current skater no matter what, but even I can tell that her current jump arsenal may not be enough to keep her competitive. Your thought about reconstructing her actual jump plan strategically sounds very useful, because it deals with her capacities as they exist right now. I have two questions based on your explanation:
1) If she's slowing down before her jumps, is this something that can be dealt with?
2) If she has been training in this new way for about three years, is there a way for her muscle memory be able to revert to "what comes naturally"?

1) Maybe. I think the reasons for the slowing down are because of her new technique and because of training new transitions into the 3Flip. She keeps trying to do different connecting moves into the 3Flip every season, in addition to focusing on a technique that doesn't come naturally to her. If she keeps trying to do new difficult entrances, all while focusing on this different takeoff technique, then pushing for more speed might just result in her falling more.

2) I would suspect yes, but I don't know for sure. I do know that her new Flip technique (trying to take off directly from the inside edge instead of pulling from an outside edge to an inside edge) hasn't paid off at all, though, and I feel like it's never going to at this point. The way she used to do the Flip may not have been completely textbook, but it wasn't something that got her an edge violation either. She is just so much more tentative when going into this jump than she ever used to be. It's a noticeable distraction for me because I see her face leaving the program while preparing for the jump more than she ever used to. The same goes for her Lutz.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
When you break it down to those details, I sometimes think she must be the bravest skater of all. (Except for female pairs skaters, of course, whose moves are sometimes literally death-defying.) She's gambling her entire future on this new training method. Thank goodness this is not something my other favorite skaters ever thought they had to do. I don't think I could have stood the tension.
 

babayaga

On the Ice
Joined
Aug 27, 2010
Mao's 3S, 2A-3T, and 3Lutz were only "non-existant" during the Vancouver year because that's what her coaching team decided upon. She was still perfectly capable of doing those jumps at that time. She completely stopped trying the xxx-3T combinations and the 3Lz in the Long Program after the 2007-2008 season, which was when she stopped getting coached by Arutunian. Mao's jumping was at her best when she was with him. He fixed the poor toeloop technique she had earlier in her career and her Triple Axels were better than ever when she started training with him.
I agree that her jumping was the best when Mao was with Rafael. As for the first part, why do you think Mao's coaching team removed important jumps from her programs if she was capable of landing them? She had a solo 3T, that he could have replaced with 2A-3T and a solo 2A could be replaced with 3S. All of these changes would make her programs more expensive and not as dependent on the success on 3A as they were. What do you think?
 

mary01

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 20, 2011
I agree that her jumping was the best when Mao was with Rafael. As for the first part, why do you think Mao's coaching team removed important jumps from her programs if she was capable of landing them? She had a solo 3T, that he could have replaced with 2A-3T and a solo 2A could be replaced with 3S. All of these changes would make her programs more expensive and not as dependent on the success on 3A as they were. What do you think?

because she found no need to replace a difficult and big point getter ( the 3A's) with a much easier triple, Mao is not the kind of skater to take the safe road, and by the way Mao landed all 3A's at nationals and 4CC, so there was simply no reason why she should have replaced them to something easier, and i'm happy she went for it cause she also later landed all three 3A's at the Olympics and at worlds, and was the first woman to land several 3A's in the same competition not only at one association but on several that season.

I remember a interview where TAT said that one of the goal with that particular layout was for Asada to be the first woman to land three 3A's in the same competition.

her layout was already packed that season, there was simply was no space for the sal or lutz!
 
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babayaga

On the Ice
Joined
Aug 27, 2010
because she found no need to replace a difficult and big point getter ( the 3A's) with a much easier triple, Mao is not the kind of skater to take the safe road, and by the way Mao landed all 3A's at nationals and 4CC, so there was simply no reason why she should have replaced them to something easier, and i'm happy she went for it cause she also later landed all three 3A's at the Olympics and at worlds, and was the first woman to land several 3A's in the same competition not only at one association but on several that season.

I remember a interview where TAT said that one of the goal with that particular layout was for Asada to be the first woman to land three 3A's in the same competition.

her layout was already packed that season, there was simply was no space for the sal or lutz!

mary01, you misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about replacing the 3A's, but a solo 3T and a solo 2A. The program was difficult but very risky and she was still loosing to Kim. So I thought they would have raised the base value of the jumps if they could.
 

mary01

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 20, 2011
mary01, you misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about replacing the 3A's, but a solo 3T and a solo 2A. The program was difficult but very risky and she was still loosing to Kim. So I thought they would have raised the base value of the jumps if they could.

she already had three combination- jumps 3A-2T 3F-2lo 3F-2lo-lo, no space for a fourth combination!
 

Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be
Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 14, 2008
Country
France
Having two 3Axels already in the program, I can understand that she would be too tired to attempt a 2Axel-3Toe combination afterward and be able to get credit for it with the super-stingy downgrade system that was in place for the 2010 Olympics. However, she still could have done a 3Toe-2Axel sequence and then put a 3Lutz in the program. The jump layout would have been:

3Axel-2Toe
3Axel
3Flip-2Loop-2Loop
-----
3Lutz
3Flip
3Toe-2Axel
3Loop

This would have scored her a couple extra points (and that's factoring in some -GOE she would have gotten for edge violation on the Lutz), without even really taking extra effort. Ultimately, though, she still wouldn't have beaten what Yu-Na Kim did with the judging system at the time. The Triple Axels were undervalued and Yu-Na was able to put three Double Axels into the program that racked up a ridiculous amount of points, because of the scale of values at the time.
 

gmyers

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
because she found no need to replace a difficult and big point getter ( the 3A's) with a much easier triple, Mao is not the kind of skater to take the safe road, and by the way Mao landed all 3A's at nationals and 4CC, so there was simply no reason why she should have replaced them to something easier, and i'm happy she went for it cause she also later landed all three 3A's at the Olympics and at worlds, and was the first woman to land several 3A's in the same competition not only at one association but on several that season.

I remember a interview where TAT said that one of the goal with that particular layout was for Asada to be the first woman to land three 3A's in the same competition.

her layout was already packed that season, there was simply was no space for the sal or lutz!

She did not land all the 3a at worlds. She actually only did one. < actually means something. It means more than the 3a showing on the protocol.
 
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