Petr Gumennik: “Arutyunyan doesn’t want athletes to follow his instructions like soldiers obeying an officer – without understanding what they’re doing. His training is a complete concept, you could say a philosophy of figure skating.”
Petr Gumennik Talks About Working with American Coach Arutyunyan
original source: Sports by Maya Bagriantseva
Russian skater Petr Gumennik described his positive experience training with American coach Rafael Arutyunyan, highlighting Arutyunyan’s holistic approach and the valuable support from his main coaches. His comments were reported by Sports journalist Maya Bagriantseva. Here’s a translation.
On Tuesday, November 25, Gumennik traveled to California for a training stint with Arutyunyan.
“Rafael Vladimirovich treats me very warmly on a personal level. I feel that he’s interested in me as a person – maybe you could call it a kind of fondness.
His training isn’t just about isolated technical points for jumps, but a complete concept, you could say a philosophy of figure skating. It’s fascinating to immerse yourself in it, and he explains it in an interesting way: everything is interconnected, one thing leads to another, and ultimately it brings results.
Rafael Vladimirovich doesn’t want athletes to follow his instructions like soldiers obeying an officer – without understanding what they’re doing.
If you grasp his full concept, you can then control your own technique, and training online later isn’t so difficult. When I was with him last time, after about three weeks I more or less managed to get into this concept. I understood what needed to be done.
Rafael Vladimirovich explained to me in great detail how to move. Literally: first using his fingers, then with motorcycles, with Fibonacci numbers – from every angle, so I could understand everything as a whole. And now, when I complain that I can’t do a certain jump, he tells me, ‘Remember, you need to do it this way, we’ve already worked on this, you just forgot.’
If an athlete doesn’t control every movement, old habits and mistakes often resurface. So sometimes you still need a prompt, and it’s good that you can get that online. I’m very grateful to him for this opportunity.
I’m also grateful to Veronika Anatolievna (Dayneko), my main coach, with whom I do most of my work. She takes full responsibility for me, for the results, for the training. She is 100% dedicated to her work, always gives her all to figure skating, and is ready to help me in any way.
And I’m also grateful to Tamara Nikolaevna (Moskvina) – with her vast experience, after so many of her athletes have competed at the Olympics, she can give real advice on tactics. Sometimes, intuitively, you want to overdo things or add something extra, but Tamara Nikolaevna, with her experience, can always tell you where to stop and what’s best to do,” Gumennik told.
Related topics: Petr Gumennik, Rafael Arutyunyan
Very clever from Petr, he needs the PR and having a famous coach by his side is an excellent idea.
Many Russian fans of Vladislav and Makar likes to shit on him for not having textbook technique like them or having the star factor and performance like Mark, but he has something that they don’t have… being balanced, jack of all trades (master of none) and in a unpredictable sport like FS that can work perfectly if you’re intelligent (and he is) like Anna Shcherbakova.
Cool