The Quint

[AgnesNitt]

https://www.wired.com/video/2018/02/almost-impossible-why-it-s-almost-impossible-to-do-a-quintuple-jump


[mod note: corrected URL]

[Query]

Athlete comments on quint

  https://sports.yahoo.com/figure-skatings-final-frontier-quintuple-jump-possible-043451973.html

[Query]

There are some obvious things to do, that might make it slightly more possible:

1. Right now, it is considered bad to start or end the rotation on the ice. There should still be 5 rotations in the air, but the torso could start rotating on the ice, and you could start to go into landing position after hitting it (the latter is sometimes already true, but I think they deduct GOE points.)

Change that, for quints, and that would effectively leave you a lot more time in the air to complete the rotations, that isn't spent slowing down or speeding up those rotations.

2. Make more bouncy soles. There is a clear trade-off here: the more bounce, the less control. Put people on big shock absorbers, and it is obvious you wouldn't have the precise control needed for figure skating. I'm not sure where the break even point would be, but I am pretty sure other skating skills would suffer first if you add much more bounce.

I have tried to find information on USFSA and ISU websites about rules for boots and soles. AFAICT, for the most part, there aren't any. That's not quite true: they have to have a single blade with two edges, and the manufacturer's visible mark can't be too large - but that says nothing about bouncy soles, or even about mechanical aids - though if people started using mechanical aids like spring loaded devices, gas shocks, powered exoskeletons, etc., I assume it would be banned very fast. Maybe it already is, somewhere I haven't looked, e.g., in IOC regulations.

In many other sports, people use bouncy soles in their shoes. In fact, if you buy a good pair of sneakers (tennis shoes, running shoes, basketball shoes, aerobic shoes, cross-training shoes, etc.), they probably have them.

In theory, bouncy insoles/footbeds are easier on the body, and reduce injuries. Unless, of course, you use them to jump higher - which is of course exactly what I am suggesting.

Most materials have some bounce - including some used in current skate boots. This is only a matter of degree.

3. Drugs. There will always be some performance enhancing drugs that aren't yet banned. I assume they are quietly marketed to or developed for elite athletes or coaches.

4. Anything that would make it possible for guys to do quints might make it possible for gals to do quads - I think only one gal has ever succeeded in competition.

5. Right now ISU rules do not give any benefit for doing quints - they aren't in the rules at all.

(See https://isu.org/isu-statutes-constitution-regulations-technical/special-regulations-and-technical-rules/52-2016-special-regulation-sandp-and-ice-dance-and-technical-rules-sandp-and-id-final/file - you can find point values if you search for "quad" but not for "quint")

I don't know enough to know whether that just means they would be credited with a quad, with some deductions because they aren't perfect, or whether they would get no points at all - but the rules would have to change.

6. It isn't clear the rules committees SHOULD allow quints - if they will cause more injuries. There are already a lot of injuries in figure skating. A few years back, a University of Delaware study said that most elite figure skaters that they tested were skating with bone fractures. Some of the people at the Olympics, this time and before, are skating competitively WITH injuries, including some of the best.

It seems nearly certain that more and more difficult jumps WILL create injuries. What is more, if people are allowed to rotate on the ice before and after landing without major penalty, that will increase the torque on the lower body, which could greatly increase injuries.

If more women could find a way to do it, it would happen to women's quads too - though brittle bones are more common in supremely athletic women then supremely athletic men (look up the "female athletic triad").

In practice, if some do it, and get extra points for it, the others must, to remain competitive. That's what has happened for men's quads, and what, some time past, happened for women's triples.

7. An interesting independent question. I remember reading somewhere that figure skaters who spin very fast get red hands, because some capillary blood vessels break, from centrifugal force. Is that true in fast aerial spins, or do you have to spin longer? How long does it last?

[Query]

Additional reasons why I think quints will eventually be possible:

I forgot to include advances in medicine:

1. Presumably the main limiting factor is the strength of the body - primarily bones, ligaments, and muscles.

2. Improvements are being made in athletic and kinesio tape taping techniques, which use external tape to reinforce internal body parts. That won't help the muscles - although elastic tape, such as across the front of the knee and the back of the ankle, might be used to store some energy for the beginning of the jump, and to absorb impact at the end.

3. On top of this, if I understand correctly, surgical repair techniques for fractured bones and torn muscles and ligaments are improving. In some cases, people claim that the repairs are stronger than the original undamaged tissue. We are a long ways from creating the "Bionic man" and the "Bionic women" - but perhaps we are at the point of being able to sufficiently reinforce such tissues that one could perhaps stop worrying as much about breaking or tearing anything. If not, we will get there. And again, you must eventually be able to increase elastic forces inside muscles to effectively store more energy in those muscles, that can be released when you contract those muscles.

4. I don't know if the G forces associated with the aerial spins would be great enough and long enough to cause unconsciousness - but the military folk worked out ways of partially solving that problem in fighter pilots long ago. First off, they can tense specific muscles. Second, they wear G-suits - which are more or less comparable to compression underwear - something that many athletes already use, for other athletic reasons. We can't wear anything as bulky or heavy as what pilots wear - but we probably don't need to, as I doubt the G forces are anywhere near as big.

5. In short, the problems associated with generating fast aerial spins for more difficult jumps is to some extent transition from being a pure physical training problem - which might or might not be sufficient - into an engineering problem, involving improved medical taping, surgery, and taping and surgical materials, which makes it inevitable that it WILL be solved.

In fact, these things will revolutionize all athletic activities, not just figure skating. It WILL happen.

6. You can say that sports organizations could try to prevent these improvements, for example, by outlawing unnecessary surgery. But if an athlete deliberately pushes their body until it breaks or tears, that surgery then becomes medically necessary.

7. Some people claim that transgender females (as defined by current IOC rules) may perform better than cisgender females in certain sports, possibly including figure skating. IF that is true, then transgender females may be able to perform more difficult jumps (including quads) than cisgender females have been able to do - another area of effective medical enhancement.

8. Likewise, it seems obvious that genetic engineering will eventually produce better athletes than currently exist.

[sampaguita]

Interesting. I've also wondered why you can't have bouncy soles on skates. Maybe changing the skates will really push the sports. Years ago, triples would have been impossible on skates *during that time*.

[AgnesNitt]

Axel Paulsen performed the first axel in speed skates in 1882.

It's not necessarily all about the skates.

Probably it's more about the ice consistency.

For example, Vern Taylor landed the first triple in competition in Ottowa in the 78 Olympics on indoor ice. Dick Button could land a triple earlier (he landed a double as early as the 48 Olympics on outdoor ice) if my memory serves he didn't land the triple at St Moritz because of the risk of not having a clean program. But I'm willing to be corrected.

[nicklaszlo]

The energy required to perform the jump increases like the square of the number of revolutions.  So a quintuple jump requires 56% more energy than a quadruple.  It's a big step to make.

Top skaters performing triple jumps expend more energy than necessary by jumping higher than they have to.

(I did not watch the video.)

[tstop4me]

Top skaters performing triple jumps expend more energy than necessary by jumping higher than they have to.

The higher the jump, the longer the dwell time in the air.  The longer the dwell time, the lower the angular speed required to complete a specified number of rotations.  A longer dwell time reduces the likelihood of under-rotation and also allows for a more graceful and elegant overall execution.

With respect to energy expenditure, there is a trade-off:  jumping higher requires more energy (than jumping lower), but rotating slower requires less energy (than rotating faster).  This and other trade-offs are what scientists and engineers are analyzing.

[Query]

The energy required to perform the jump increases like the square of the number of revolutions.  So a quintuple jump requires 56% more energy than a quadruple. 

Yes - but with elastic energy storage that might be possible. E.g.,
  1. elastic wraps across the knee (which some skaters already use, nominally for medical reasons)
  2. inside the body

The o.p.'s video link suggested quints could maybe be done with hand-weights. The idea being that you can store more angular momentum in the weights, which is converted to faster spin speed, when you bring your arms in. In addition, that too is a form of energy storage. Surgical fixes/modification could include making the hands and arm ends heavier - e.g., using steel to fix bone. And it isn't just the hands to which weight can be added. Phil from Harlick once told me that Evan Lysacek preferred heavy boots for precisely the same reason.

I suppose surgical modification could also remove mass from places in the body that cannot be brought closer to the rotation axis. Probably not safe or healthy long term. But we already know that many elite athletes are willing to take long term risks to win. Many figure skaters already remove mass by losing fat through fairly extreme diets, and perhaps even fat loss surgery. (The ice dance partner of one of my past coaches said she had lost a lot of weight when he left for a few weeks. He had been previously urged to change partners because she had grown too heavy for the best lifts, and had been previously unable to lose it. He suspected she had done something drastic to lose weight so quickly, but didn't ask.)

There is already a LOT of available momentum and energy available in the horizontal motion of the fastest figure skaters.

An interesting question might be whether changes in blade shape and mounting position could help too. E.g., the toe pick is to an extent a means by which horizontal linear momentum is converted into vertical linear momentum, and by which the energy associated with linear momentum can be converted to vertical jump height, as well as to rotational velocity. I would argue that the traditional blade mounting position and shape might not be optimal for all figure skaters. True, there are multiple blade shapes available, but the high cost, and the lack of interchangeable runners, has made it difficult for skaters to experiment. Perhaps blades could be custom designed to optimize the performance of each elite skater.

In addition, there has been very little change in the shape of HD SPorts (MK and Wilson) blades used by most Olympic athletes (perhaps due to athlete sponsorship, and to HD Sports' choice to give some free blades to some elite athletes and coaches) over the past few decades, but the speed over the ice, jumps, and training techniques have evolved significantly. It would make sense for that to alter the optimal shape. (Blade maker Skate Science has claimed this is true.)

To some extent, the best skate techs already try to adjust shape to the skater, e.g., the position and shape of the sweet spot, but there isn't a lot of knowledge in this field - each experiment represents a risk of expensive figure skating blades being rendered useless. And it is fairly difficult to custom shape the toe pick, in part because metal has already been removed to form the current shape, in part because skate sharpening machines are not well designed for this purpose.

In addition to shape change, one might argue that the flex could be optimized too. Right now you have roughly too degrees of flexibility available - traditional blades, using a particular degree of steel hardness, and MK/Wilson Revolution blades, which augment that hardness with the flexibility of a composite blade holder. Perhaps a different degree of flexibility is optimal for a given skater. Perhaps a different spatial distribution of flex is optimal for a given skater. Presumably, flex helps store energy and momentum during the conversion process, and can affect the overall conversion.

It is also likely that there is an optimized degree of flexibility to avoid injuring the athlete during jumps and landings. Some people say that the composite Revolution blades are easier on the body due to higher flex - but you can't specify or adjust the degree of flexibility for each skater - there is just one choice within that line.

There also may still be changes in diet and nutrition that could help, though there has already been a lot of research into that. There is no hard line between drugs and food. Drugs are more or less just substances that change your internal biochemistry - but all foods do that too. Some foods with appropriate drug-like effects may not be currently banned.

All and all, I think there are a lot of things which could be used to improve jumps - and will inevitably be used in the future to do so.

The fact that sports science people like the doctor in the o.p.'s video link are currently studying the possibility of doing quints, and of getting more ladies to do quads, suggests they haven't given up on the idea. It doesn't seem implausible that with all these possibilities to play with, they will eventually succeed.

[sampaguita]

The o.p.'s video link suggested quints could maybe be done with hand-weights. The idea being that you can store more angular momentum in the weights, which is converted to faster spin speed, when you bring your arms in.

On the other hand, it's harder to jump high when you carry heavy things around. Medvedeva said in a documentary that an extra 200-300 grams (yup, grams!) can mess up their jumps. Yes, you can rotate faster, but whether you can keep jumping as high as you did is another question altogether. Possibly that's why the hand weights "failed", as mentioned in the video.