Science, grit, collaboration: Investing in Yulo’s victory
Carlos Yulo’s two Olympic gold medals in the floor exercises and the vault—a first in Philippine history—highlight the need to invest resources in sports where Filipinos appear to have physical advantages.
The height of gymnasts is below the general average worldwide; in fact, US gold medalist Simone Biles stands 4 feet 8 inches. While male gymnasts average 5 feet 3 inches, Yulo’s 4 feet 11 inches arguably improves control and execution.
“Male gymnasts’ lower height is highly functional when it comes to their sport,” says fitness trainer Victoria Petrella in Flex Fitness. “Shorter people are more compact than taller people. When it comes to doing challenging moves like backflips in the air or springboarding off a trampoline to flip your body around, every move has to be timed perfectly. Essentially, to execute tricks like flips, gymnasts need to be able to pull all their limbs in tight very quickly … Shorter limbs have a shorter distance to go to be able to pull in and help you spin.”
In his book “The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance,” Sports Illustrated journalist David Epstein uses basic physics to explain the advantages of smaller athletes. They have smaller moments of inertia, so they need less force to spin, flip, rotate themselves. Their body mass is nearer their axis of rotation, which lessens the force required to do certain movements.
“For larger athletes … any rotation will require more force to initiate and will slow down faster,” says Epstein. “This is why figure skaters spin faster when they pull their arms into their bodies.” Figure skating is also another sport Filipinos can excel at, with proper training and investment.
Despite their small stature, male gymnasts develop upper-body strength to execute arm-dominant moves—think about the rings. “Gymnasts focus on strengthening the shoulders, the pectoral muscles, the arms and the abs,” says Petrella.
Article continues after this advertisement“That being said, leg strength is important too!” she continues. “Think about how much power it takes to push, press and drive out of the vault to explode into the air as a gymnast often doing multiple flips.” Yulo knows this well, and his explosive leg power catapulted him to the top in the vault and floor exercises.
Article continues after this advertisementTraining for strength and flexibility is also essential for elite boxers, and it makes sense for us to invest more resources in these sports.
Yulo’s decadelong trek to the top, marked by perseverance and determination, is well-known, so I focus here on his equanimity during competition. In his first event in the all-around competition, the pommel horse, Yulo fell off his dismount. But instead of overthinking or panicking, he continued on with the rest of the apparatuses, and finished 12th.
Climbing up 12 spots (from 24th at the start) bolstered Yulo’s fortitude, as he went on to dazzle the world in individual events in the coming days.
Yulo deserves the prizes pledged by public and private entities upon his return, but investment should come before—not just after—victory.
The MVP Foundation supported Yulo, but when Yulo parted ways with his longtime Japanese coach last year, he needed more resources, so he turned to friends—fellow competitors—abroad. South Korean Olympian Lee Junho had Yulo train with him for a while in their gym. Thereafter, British Olympian Jake Jarman, the 2023 World Vault champion who is half-Filipino, invited Yulo to train with them at the UK National Sports Centre in Lilleshall. This good deed was rewarded, as Jarman placed third in the floor exercises and stood beside Yulo on the podium in Paris.
“There is a togetherness of those who duke it out in high-level combative arenas, especially the Olympic Games,” says Olympics reporter Jo Gunston, “in which although competitors are pitched against each other in a gladiatorial context, support for each other is at its core.”
Queena N. Lee-Chua is with the board of directors of Ateneo’s Family Business Center. Get her book “All in the Family Business” at Lazada or Shopee, or the ebook at Amazon, Google Play, Apple iBooks. Contact the author at [email protected].
