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As a physicist, I bow down to Yuzuru Axel Overlord Hanyu. Part 4: 3 Axel edition.
Im gonna skip over the back counter entry because I plan to do a thread about his entries in the future and it almost deserves its own thread. Just remember that it is really difficult because of momentum and balance. I promise to explain it well in the future.
Body position on the entry: both arms and free leg fully extended backwards (really, the flexibility needed to extend both arms like that is impressive) and the skating leg on an outside edge.
The swing of his limbs, always synchronized, produce the energy needed to get great height, while the outside edge on the skating foot helps to gain angular momentum
He also swings the leg and right arm a bit further than his left arm, which also helps to gain rotational speed when pulled closer
This body position on the entry isnt as common as I first thought. Extending both arms that much makes it more difficult to keep balance and also makes much harder to rotate, but it's the most efficient way of jumping higher
At the take off point, right after finishing the swing, he turns his body following skating leg while leaping into the air forward
And yes, once again I mean just forward, look at this minimum prerotation. Here the direction of jumping, last frame he touches the ice and first frame on the air
Then, with a bit of delay due to the forward momentum (generated on the leap) that he needs to fight, he pulls his arms and legs closer to increase the rotational speed and flies across the ice
Important points to keep in mind:
1: Besides being the only foward jump, the axel is the only one that has just one foot touching the ice during the whole take off, that means there isnt any aditional point of balance, it must be enough with skating skills
1: Besides being the only foward jump, the axel is the only one that has just one foot touching the ice during the whole take off, that means there isnt any aditional point of balance, it must be enough with skating skills
2: Unlike in every backward jump, there isnt any footwork that converts the kinetical energy into height, so it all comes from the skater's jumping power, and here comes one of the two main difficulties of the axel: he cant use his arms to rotate.
In every other jump, he can use his upper body to gain rotational energy, because jumping power comes entirely from the footwork, but on the axel he needs his arms to jump, so it is much more difficult to get the rotational energy needed
3: The higher he jumps the less energy he can invest into rotate, but also the more time he has. So one could think that he must jump high in order to have enough time to rotate, but it is actually the other way around. He slows down the rotation in order to not over rotate it
How do we know this? His average rotational speed for his 3A at WC19 was around 4.3rps. Underestimating it, for his 4A attempt we get 4.8rps, despite being way higher than a 3A, so I dont think there is any doubt about his ability to rotate fast. He just HAS TO rotate slower
4: Second and even more relevant difficulty of the axel: axis of rotation/control of momentum. Due to the leg kick needed to jump the axel, it is so easy to jump off axis. Kicking too hard may lead to land too forward, kicking too sideways to land on a lean, and so on.
So the fact that he has a success rate of 92.6% when the second highest success rate isnt over 80% (Kolyada, with 79.7%) shows how impressive his coordination, air awareness and technique are. Hanyu's 3A is one, if not the best element you'll ever see in fs in terms of execution
