The rest of Nathan’s responses from the Q&A:
This question wasn’t shown at the beginning of the video:
Fortunately I haven’t really had anything super scary (knock on wood, obviously), but I think just dealing with injuries before competitions have not been fun – physically, mentally, you’re kind of out of it and you don’t really know how to approach the whole situation – but I think having confidence in the fact that you have put a lot of training time in. It’s not necessarily like the week before training or the month before training, it’s from the time that you started skating to the time that you compete – all those days count – so you can’t ignore all of that – and I think just having confidence in the fact that you put so much time and effort into the skating – will show up in competition.
What was the greatest piece of advice that your coach gave you?:
This isn’t actually one of my skating coaches, this is one of my trainers – but it actually has helped me a lot, in that a lot of the time before competitions or during practices, I tend to overthink the elements too much, I tend to think about the technique a little bit too much, it tends to freeze me up while I’m going into the jump and I don’t really know how to do it – so he was just like, “Sing a song in your head, it can be anything – just don’t think about the jump” … obviously you need to train the jump, you need to allow your body to recognize how to do the jump over and over via many repetitions, but when it really counts – if you dwell too much on the specifics of the element, it’s not going to go well. You have to trust that your body knows how to do it, and so – sing a song.
After a bad day of skating, what do you do to get yourself up again?:
What helps me is just like visualize – think about all the things that you didn’t necessarily do right, or things that you would want to change the next day - make a plan on how you’re going to attempt those things the following day, and then talk to a friend, talk to someone, or just do something that makes you happy. But force yourself to do something different – don’t just sit in bed and like wallow about the sport. I live in California, I go to the beach – think, just go to a mall, do something – it helps a lot.
What do you think is the key mindset for having a successful performance without being too overwhelmed?:
That’s the golden question – if I had the perfect answer for you, I would tell you right now – but I don’t. It changes every single time … sometimes you can just step on the ice and just you know everything is going to fall into place, sometimes you’re just like, “man, I don’t know what I’m doing here”, but those are the times that I think you need to trust yourself, trust your training, trust your coaches - they definitely know how to put the skater into a situation where they can be completely self-sufficient and handle the program on their own. And I think those are the times where you just have to fall back on that, and again, just kind of let your mind go blank, try to think of all the things that your coach has told you in the past, and just let your body go on autopilot.
Have you ever been late to a competition?:
No, actually I haven’t – the closest thing would just be that like - at Nationals one year, I thought the practice was at like 0:45, but it was at 0:30, so I got there 15 minutes late – but that was just a practice … I would not advise that, get on time to your practices - but, one of my friends, Patrick Chan actually, he took a nap before his competition, before the short program – and the competition was at like 7, and at like 6:30, his coach came knocking on his hotel room, “Hey, by the way, you know you compete in 30 minutes” and he was just like, not ready at all – but fortunately the rink was across the street, so he booked it and made it on time – and actually skated like one of his best programs of the year – so maybe that’s the key, maybe I’ll try that next time.
Was there a time when you just didn’t want to skate or you just wanted to quit ice skating?:
Yeah absolutely, I’ve been in the same situation with injuries, and also with bad practices and all of that – and it sucks, there’s definitely moments where you’re just like, “I don’t know why I’m putting so much effort into this sport” but at the end of the day, if you are truly passionate about what you do, I think no matter what, you’ll find a reason to come back to the sport, or come back to whatever it is you’re doing, and like [Karen] was saying, actually breaks help a lot - if there’s a time where you’re just like deep, deep in a rut – it might be because your body is just too tired or mentally you’re just like, burnt out – if you give yourself a couple days to recover, to relax – just take your mind off of skating, it really, really helps – and then when you get back on the ice, you’re like, “Wow, this is why I love the sport so much.”
This question wasn’t shown at the beginning of the video:
Fortunately I haven’t really had anything super scary (knock on wood, obviously), but I think just dealing with injuries before competitions have not been fun – physically, mentally, you’re kind of out of it and you don’t really know how to approach the whole situation – but I think having confidence in the fact that you have put a lot of training time in. It’s not necessarily like the week before training or the month before training, it’s from the time that you started skating to the time that you compete – all those days count – so you can’t ignore all of that – and I think just having confidence in the fact that you put so much time and effort into the skating – will show up in competition.
What was the greatest piece of advice that your coach gave you?:
This isn’t actually one of my skating coaches, this is one of my trainers – but it actually has helped me a lot, in that a lot of the time before competitions or during practices, I tend to overthink the elements too much, I tend to think about the technique a little bit too much, it tends to freeze me up while I’m going into the jump and I don’t really know how to do it – so he was just like, “Sing a song in your head, it can be anything – just don’t think about the jump” … obviously you need to train the jump, you need to allow your body to recognize how to do the jump over and over via many repetitions, but when it really counts – if you dwell too much on the specifics of the element, it’s not going to go well. You have to trust that your body knows how to do it, and so – sing a song.
After a bad day of skating, what do you do to get yourself up again?:
What helps me is just like visualize – think about all the things that you didn’t necessarily do right, or things that you would want to change the next day - make a plan on how you’re going to attempt those things the following day, and then talk to a friend, talk to someone, or just do something that makes you happy. But force yourself to do something different – don’t just sit in bed and like wallow about the sport. I live in California, I go to the beach – think, just go to a mall, do something – it helps a lot.
What do you think is the key mindset for having a successful performance without being too overwhelmed?:
That’s the golden question – if I had the perfect answer for you, I would tell you right now – but I don’t. It changes every single time … sometimes you can just step on the ice and just you know everything is going to fall into place, sometimes you’re just like, “man, I don’t know what I’m doing here”, but those are the times that I think you need to trust yourself, trust your training, trust your coaches - they definitely know how to put the skater into a situation where they can be completely self-sufficient and handle the program on their own. And I think those are the times where you just have to fall back on that, and again, just kind of let your mind go blank, try to think of all the things that your coach has told you in the past, and just let your body go on autopilot.
Have you ever been late to a competition?:
No, actually I haven’t – the closest thing would just be that like - at Nationals one year, I thought the practice was at like 0:45, but it was at 0:30, so I got there 15 minutes late – but that was just a practice … I would not advise that, get on time to your practices - but, one of my friends, Patrick Chan actually, he took a nap before his competition, before the short program – and the competition was at like 7, and at like 6:30, his coach came knocking on his hotel room, “Hey, by the way, you know you compete in 30 minutes” and he was just like, not ready at all – but fortunately the rink was across the street, so he booked it and made it on time – and actually skated like one of his best programs of the year – so maybe that’s the key, maybe I’ll try that next time.
Was there a time when you just didn’t want to skate or you just wanted to quit ice skating?:
Yeah absolutely, I’ve been in the same situation with injuries, and also with bad practices and all of that – and it sucks, there’s definitely moments where you’re just like, “I don’t know why I’m putting so much effort into this sport” but at the end of the day, if you are truly passionate about what you do, I think no matter what, you’ll find a reason to come back to the sport, or come back to whatever it is you’re doing, and like [Karen] was saying, actually breaks help a lot - if there’s a time where you’re just like deep, deep in a rut – it might be because your body is just too tired or mentally you’re just like, burnt out – if you give yourself a couple days to recover, to relax – just take your mind off of skating, it really, really helps – and then when you get back on the ice, you’re like, “Wow, this is why I love the sport so much.”
