Why It's Almost Impossible to Do a Quintuple Jump | WIRED

[Music] this is the year of the quad since the last Olympic Games snowboarders and skiers have perfected a trick called the quad court which looks and sounds ridiculous because it is it's five full spins and for full flips all in the span of about three seconds but you know who spins a lot faster than that in way less time figure skaters we're gonna find out what it takes to spin your body four times in the air in a fraction of a second and why spending five times could be almost impossible three years ago British snowboarder Billy Morgan pulled off the world's first quad cork Morgan will be at the Olympics as will Andre raggedly who last year became the first person to do a quad cork on skis mind you these are some of the world's best athletes rigged at leas crazy parkour workout went viral this fall because it's like a superhuman Rube Goldberg in the gym but only a few years ago skiers and snowboarders weren't even sure the quad cork was possible which raises an interesting question are we at the limit of how much a human can turn and flip through the air as amazing as the quad cork is it might not be the limit one physicist calculated that a border could actually complete six or more cork screws that's because snowboarders and skiers get hang times of close to three seconds that may not sound like much but it is a lot of time - a figure skater like 16 year-old dent Ron he's an up-and-coming skater in San Francisco he took home the silver at Junior Nationals this year so you're here today to practice quads right yeah yeah yeah try yeah yeah emphasis on Trey yeah but getting that quad down perfect is tough Dinn and other skaters don't get a ramp to launch fraud they have only their leg muscles to propel them about a foot and a half off the ice and then they've got just about six tenths of a second to rotate and land it it's one really big fast motion so you jump up in the air and then you kind of pull your arms in and your legs at the same time if you've ever seen a skater spin you've got the idea they start with their arms extended and as they pull their arms in it causes the rotation to speed up same thing when they're in the air that's because it's something called the conservation of angular momentum angular momentum depends on both the speed of the skaters rotation and the position of the skaters body relative to the axis that's the center of their rotation the closer the body parts are to the axis of rotation the faster they spin and then of course is the landing or you have to over them before you make contact with the ice which a softer rotation is a definite landing quads have become pretty much mandatory for the top male skaters thanks in part to u.s. national champion Nathan Chen the first man to land five of them in one program to get a better sense of what it takes I bounced with an Olympic skater got insanely dizzy on this thing and talked revolutions per minute with this guy would with the United States figure skating to assist coaches and skaters in performing multiple revolution jumps Richards is a professor of kinesiology and he uses motion capture technology to map jumps and help correct slight imbalances that can throw off even elites to learn what that kind of rotation feels like I got some help from Tim Gable he was the first American to land a quad in competition and did three of them on his way to a bronze medal at the 2002 Olympics they called him the quad king you're actually known as the quad King right I was the quad king until Nathan Chen came along and unseated me so what did it take to become the quad king I think it took a lack of fear and probably a little stupidity and some time on the trampoline which skaters use to practice their jumps I mean you've got more hang time on a trampoline you can experiment with the technique and the air position a little bit more with a lot less wear and tear on your body I'm all about less wear and tear on the body so just one easy turn and Gable made it look pretty easy but for me a totally different story Tim gave me a lot of pointers on how to engage my core and spin more efficiently right arm is out when I was out core is engaged and [Music] alright well done my friend three to go I asked him to tie me while I went for my magnificent spin and a half and 1.08 well you've got enough hang time to successfully complete a quad that's impressive even after dozens of jumps I never made it to even revolutions much less for one of the reasons to train on a trampoline is that ice skating for all its grace is a brutal sport researchers at Brigham Young University actually attached sensors to skates to record the impact forces of landing big jumps from the blade we found that skaters land with somewhere between five to eight times their body weight even on the safety of a trampoline there was no way I was ever gonna pull off a quad like the elite skaters if I couldn't spin faster to pull off a Quint would involve even faster speeds so fast that Richards doesn't really think they're possible so you remember how pulling your arms in can actually make you spin faster there's a way to practice that at home it's with one of these things it's called a gold medal Pro spin trainer and it's basically a human turntable it is per the instructions for serious skaters so naturally I tried practicing with it and basically just made myself sick then I brought it into work for my co-workers to try pretty sure none of us got anywhere close to hitting 400 y'all felt that way but there might be a way for professionals to get the speeds they need to do a Quint and that's what these they're weighted glutes and in an experiment Sara Ridge and Jim Richards had athletes wear them while performing jumps minutes I'm going to show you why from the safety this chair so if you have a greater amount of angular momentum because your arms were out wide and because you had an extra mass further away from your axis of rotation once you're in the air and you bring your arms in that extra mass is that close to your axis rotation all that's left is you're going to increase your rotation speed and it works kind of at least for the first few jumps all of the skaters were over rotated which meant that the gloves are doing their job but after a few more jumps all of the skaters adapted back to spinning the way they did before the gloves but even if skaters could learn to use the way to their advantage there's no guarantee that it would be enough to spin them around five times let alone that it would be legal so we're probably not gonna see a Quint any time soon and it's hard to see why spinning is absurdly difficult even on a trampoline getting twice the air that the pros get I can barely do it one and a half times and it looked terrible spinning even a little bit made me feel nauseous and I never even tried it out on the ice because this place would not let me so at this year's games when you see people spinning and they make it look really easy remember that it really really is not in fact it's right at the edge of what is humanly possible [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 3,510,881

Keywords: big air snowboard, figure skating, gold medal, innovation, olympics, olympics 2018, science and technology, skater, skating, snowboarding, sports, winter olympics, olympians, quad cork, big air, andri ragettli, alexa knierim, chris knierim, nathan chen, billy morgan snowboarder, skaters, alexa scimeca, knierims, quad cork 1080, ski jump, ski jumper, nathan chen spin, ice skating spin, quads, quintuple jump, spinning, spins, almost impossible, wired

Id: B7AjF4of300

Length: 8min 46sec (526 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2018