This post about Yuzurus improvement over the years was written by SHINGALAS poster on Golden Skate. This detailed post was not written by me. Shingalas has seen Yuzuru live and has followed him for long, thus has more insight about his skating more than me. This is a bit long but a very good read. About Yuzurus skating skill, posture, choreography... ======== [QUOTE=shingalas] I dont ever think Hanyu will be a Patrick Chan or a Denis Ten in terms of posture, carriage, elegant curving back, etc... but I dont think he needs to be. His aesthetic will never be classical. Daisuke Takahashis lines were never classical either but he made it work for him. For me, Hanyu has amazing lines on his spins and the line on his ina bauer is my favourite among all current/recent competitors, women included. I think its pretty obvious that he has been working on his posture, its very evident in his exhibitions where the physical demands are much lower and hes a bit more relaxed. He doesnt nearly hunch his shoulders up as unsightly as much as he used to, look at youtu.be/DYkGYMYW69c?t=1m50s (Skate America 2012) for example and cringe at his shoulders going into his second spin, ack) and his back has improved a lot. When exiting his jumps, he also has a beautiful line with great extension on his free leg, even better than compatriots Uno/Machida who otherwise have better lines (Machida much more so than Uno). In general I would say he has a couple of gorgeous lines (most of his spins, his ina bauer, his jumps), but otherwise can be a bit clunky (his biellmann line is rather eeek). I think what he really needs to work on is yes, his extension (point your toes!), but mostly on controlling his arm movements. As gorgeous as his Chopin SP step sequence is, he still looks a bit like hes frantically trying to bat away an army of cobwebs with his flailing. It doesnt detract too much from the overall performance IMO because it plays well to the beautiful and desperately fast music, but overall his arms really could be improved upon. Of course hes so thin that any noodle-like quality will be amplified. I think what made R+J very successful was that his choreographers gave him (look at youtu.be/i0bCvXHtzx4?t=39s) unique shapes to do with his arms (the fist pumping after the quad, that arm movement during the spread eagle, etc. A lot of it was just hitting an interesting/static arm position to the accents of the music, but it really worked). I would like to see Hanyu work again with Russian choreographers because I think their tendency towards bombastic drama really suits him more so than the more lyrical North American style... That being said, him and Buttle are a dream team. WRT skating skills, even back in the 2011-2012 season, they were never bad. Hes pretty much always had relatively deep edges, speed, great flow and knee bend, he just lacked refinement. IIRC Orser even said when Hanyu came to him he was all about speed, deep edges, and quads :laugh: Of course he lacked control and stamina, which is seemingly why he often slowed down half way through his programs and got his edges would suffer. He had a good sense of sureness on his blade most of the time but I dont think he was very confident in multi-directional skating and his foot placement was sloppy. If you compare his edgework and amount/quality of his one-footed and multi-directional skating, the improvement in a few years is quite remarkable. Just watch only his feet and look at his (youtu.be/6nSihTWuRMw?t=2m1s)COC 2011 SP step sequence versus his (youtu.be/MoMsNlXfrL4?t=3m15s) GPF 2014 SP step sequence and see how much faster, more ice coverage, and more precise his footwork is. He does less easy toe work and his edge quality is much deeper. The difficult turns (twizzles, counters, etc) are much less laboured especially in the clockwise direction. He has better upper body movement (yes, the arm flailing, lol) even though hes also skating on much deeper edges and at greater speeds. One thing that has always stood out to me is his wonderfully long strokes and how few crossovers he takes, and those things have only gotten better with practice. Watching his Worlds 2014 EX it was really evident just how little effort he needed to put in to glide across the ice, and I especially enjoy how hes learned to (youtu.be/5zETc8_Mg1c?t=1m17s)stroke and turn right with the nuances of the music (even though I think he said he had to turn down his speed lest he skated into the boards LOL). In his POTO LP, I loved what Kurt Browning had to say about his step sequence, which is that (paraphrased) he doesnt push through his footwork, he simply glides through it. He of course also praised him as fleet-to-foot at the GPF, and used words like supernatural at Worlds earlier this year to describe the way he moves across the ice. Kurt has always spoken highly of his skating skills, and I tend to trust his credentials on evaluating footwork ;) So to kind of answer your question, in terms of improvements from last season, its hard compare such a short time span because you dont know what can just be attributed to the different choreography, different choreographers, or just outside factors like schooling (Machida :cry:), terrible accidents that leave you bedridden for 10 days, unexpected health complications... It seems like this year more people are praising Hanyu for his skating skills, which I do think have gotten better, but at the same time I think people didnt really acknowledge that they were still very very good last season, definitely some of the best in the field. Perhaps its just the fact that Patrick Chan is sitting out for the season, most of the veterans are gone, and among this current crop, Hanyus great skating skills (when paired with his beautifully minimal Chopin SP that highlights his effortless glide, as opposed to PW which highlighted his charisma) shine all the more brightly. His posture for me is still steadily improving (mostly observable on a long term basis), his lines are great in some places, sloppy in others i.e. mostly through the feet and arms, but generally better (again, more observable on a long term basis)... Stamina is quite obviously unable to be accurately judged this season because of how much time hes had to spend this season recovering from one thing or another. That being said, I do think his R&J2 seems harder in terms of TR/CH than what his POTO is supposed to be (even though I know its been significantly rescaled back to a more basic form, Im making an educated guess based on what we saw of it in practices), but POTO was supposed to have 3 quads in it, so I really have no idea if his stamina pre-COC was better/worse/on par with his stamina last season. But overall, I think its important to chart development and improvement over a long period of time. In just a few years, hes truly come very far. It makes me all the more excited to see how great hell be by 2018... Wishing him the best of health so we can enjoy and cheer him on all the way to Pyeongchang (or that slightest possibility of even further!!)
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 21:42:36 +0000
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