What caused Shingo to do so well in 40

[shunsukenumber98]

I know Shingo went through mental therapy to help him, but how exactly did this mental therapy helped shingo clear stage 1 in 40? Anyone knows the details on how it works? 

And also, considering the mental therapy worked for Shingo, could this mental therapy help Yamada do well when he often fell prey to mental blocks or other competitors such as Ryo from sasuke 31-35 or Keitaro when he had the stage 2 mental block? 

[dakohosu]

Jun 3, 2024 10:57:40 GMT -5 shunsukenumber98 said:

I know Shingo went through mental therapy to help him, but how exactly did this mental therapy helped shingo clear stage 1 in 40? Anyone knows the details on how it works? 

And also, considering the mental therapy worked for Shingo, could this mental therapy help Yamada do well when he often fell prey to mental blocks or other competitors such as Ryo from sasuke 31-35 or Keitaro when he had the stage 2 mental block? 

No idea exactly, but I'd imagine it was training him mentally to not overthink obstacles he's failed before, because he has had an extensive history of failing obstacles multiple times; Dragon Glider twice, Double Pendulum three times, Fish Bone twice, etc. and all of those obstacles are very much a case of being incredibly easy to just make a freak mistake and fail instantly. So I definitely think there was an element of Shingo self-sabotaging his attempts on those obstacles as he may have gone into it almost expecting to fail if he had done so before. This is why pro athletes like Jovtchev and Okuyama did so well, because they're trained to adopt a "man vs course" approach, blocking out any external feelings like audience pressure and mental worries, and so forth. 

So yeah, if I had to hazard a guess, he was probably mentally trained to adopt a similar mindset which helped him just focus and not worry about his past failings on those obstacles, especially as he was virtually flawless in his run in 40. Everyone knew he was athletically capable, so it wasn't that surprising to see him do well in and of itself, he's just had a knack for mistakes left right centre before.

Different forms of mental therapy work for different people so hard to say. Yamada would probably be the most difficult case because he was consumed by obsession and a sense of "Sasuke or nothing" as he had given up everything for the show, so with those conditions it's VERY hard to adopt a similar mindset to Shingo, who's always been pretty light hearted. The more stressed you are about competing in general, the more mental demons are going to be seeping into your head, and obviously Yamada being "Mr Sasuke" would've been 110% stressed during his runs. 

Keitaro I think was more of a case of him just not training enough for the Backstream. He'd rush the first half of the course and fail early like in 35 and 38 to leave himself enough time for the Backstream, and if he did get that far he'd spend 20 seconds psyching himself up which caused him to time out in 36 and almost in 39 and 40. Had he just trained more swimming, he'd have gone into Stage 2 a lot more confident, and not made these faux pas like he did prior. Yuuji literally almost drowned when he was a kid and in 29 as well, but he trained the Backstream aggressively, and had no issue in future tournaments as he knew he could do it with his extra swimming prowess.

Not really sure about Ryo. Mentally he just gave up from 32-35, apparently wouldn't train at all until a few weeks before tournaments, I'm actually surprised he bounced back because usually when people's interest start to wane it becomes very hard to rekindle (look at Nagano for example), Ryo and Yuuji are really the only exceptions. I think his more recent performances there's probably more of a case for him to need some extra lock-in mentally. His run in 37 was blatantly just impulse due to pressure, 38 he got freaked out by wasting time on the log so rushed into the SL; 40 was a freak accident, but it did make me question why he still tries to go so fast on the first half of the course when he's beaten the Tackle+WW multiple times now. He clearly still has bad memories from 31-32. Then his most recent run I can't talk about but was an exact replica of a failed strategy, so again he clearly wasn't thinking straight. I think he just needs to actually strategise before his runs to not adopt such a risky approach (mainly centred around rushing).