Source: Russia Today/Google Translate
Alia, come on. You can": Mustafina - about "nightmares" dreams, coaching career and muscle mass
July 4, 2023, 15:32 Elena Vaitsekhovskaya
It is better for a gymnast to be strong than thin. This opinion was expressed in an interview with RT by two-time Olympic champion in uneven bars Aliya Mustafina. According to her, weight is not a problem at all for an athlete if the muscles are well developed. She also admitted that she had never been upset because of the competition, remembered the sudden phone call that changed her life, and explained why she did not consider it necessary to force athletes to train.
“I didn’t go into coaching because of a divorce”
- One of your interviews during your sports career was called "I love children too much to be a coach." Nevertheless, you are now leading the country's youth team in women's gymnastics and, apparently, you really like it.
“I really love coaching. First, because it works. And secondly, it looks like it's really mine. Children understand me, I manage to find an approach to each of them, explain even the same mistakes in different words, so that everyone understands what exactly I want to achieve from them.
Your colleagues have already managed to tell me a story, how one morning, before going to the gym, you looked out the window, and there ...
— Yes, it was. The children wrote right on the pavement: “Aliya Farkhatovna, we love you!” Naturally, I was extremely pleased.
For some reason, it seemed to me that after sports, your priority would be family, children, some kind of completely unsportsmanlike life. Moreover, as far as I remember, you really were not disposed to become a coach. When did the priorities change?
- I didn’t work then, I sat at home with my child for more than a year, and one day our head coach Valentina Alexandrovna Rodionenko called me rather unexpectedly and said that she and Andrei Fedorovich (Rodionenko, head coach of the Russian national team. - RT ) really want, to lead the youth team. At first I was very doubtful, worried. There was no experience. On the other hand, just then I thought: why not try? At least in order to understand whether I want to do it or not. I tried. Got sucked in.
- Was the decision somehow connected with the fact that you broke up with your husband?
- No. Alexei and I divorced much earlier, when I was training. So my departure to the coaching profession was definitely not dictated by the desire to get away from some personal problems.
- Tried to understand why, of all the possible candidates for work with the youth team, the Rodionenko spouses chose you?
- The coaches were bribed, firstly, by the fact that I trained for many years in front of their eyes, and trained at a fairly adult age. Even then, I constantly helped all the girls. Plus, our leaders initially wanted the team to have a young, fresh look, which, in their opinion, is always useful.
— I agree. But the same Valentina Alexandrovna is a rather authoritarian person, and I remember very well the pressure you were under when your coach Alexander Alexandrov was forced to leave the national team due to a conflict with the leadership. Was it hard to let go of those memories?
- In fact, I did not perceive everything that was happening around me as some kind of pressure. In the gym, I just did my job, trained.
When some new girls appeared in the team, I did not have any jealousy towards them. It was just a goal to prove that I am not weaker than anyone else. Therefore, I did not see any negative attitude towards myself in the actions of the coaches. Accordingly, after the sport, there were no resentments and thoughts that I want to work with someone, but not with someone.
- How free are you in your actions now?
- If I have any professional questions, I can always turn to the same Valentina Alexandrovna for advice. Of course, we discuss some important points together with her and Andrei Fedorovich. But in the daily work with athletes, there is no such thing that I do something just because I was told to do it. In this regard, I make my own decisions. Moreover, we discussed this point from the very beginning.
- Have your internal coaching ambitions already woken up in you, or is work still perceived as sheer pleasure without any specific goals and obligations?
- There are goals, of course, as well as ambitions, but also pleasure. The only problem is that there are no international starts. Accordingly, it is impossible to compare ourselves with world leaders, to see in which direction and how actively we are moving.
- But after all, the leaders, judging by the results of the last Olympics, were we ourselves?
“There is still not enough competition. If we talk about training, about performances at domestic competitions, the girls' progress is simply colossal. Yes, I watched the youth world championship. Yes, I am not ashamed to say that if we went with our children to this tournament, we would have no equal. But it's all subjunctive, whatever one may say. In this regard, it is a little difficult to work.
It is important for a gymnast to be strong, not thin.”
- At one time, as far as I remember, you had one of the most technically intense programs on uneven bars.
- At the Games in London - no. In Rio, yes. And that's only because I managed to learn new elements two weeks before the competition.
- Are the combinations that your wards are doing now more difficult?
The combination that I did on the uneven bars in Rio is now considered to be basic. That is, if a girl performs this set of elements when moving to an adult team, then her bars are not bad. But there are athletes who do more difficult things.
The junior team is also puberty. Is it necessary to try to bring female athletes to the maximum level of difficulty before they begin to grow and take shape?
We have such a task. I always say: while the child is small, until he begins to grow up, while he is light, you must learn absolutely all the elements. Yes, perhaps before puberty it will be one combination, and after - a completely different one, but in any case, the gymnast will be able to do everything.
If you recall my own experience, I was 18 years old when I competed at the first Olympic Games. It turned out that the peak of my growing up fell on an earlier period, when I was recovering from an injury for almost a year. I then recovered greatly, but at the same time I still worked, worked, worked and worked. And she returned to the hall no longer a little girl, but an adult.
- Was it difficult to transfer the old children's skills to an adult body?
- No. But this is just because I had a good base of elements since childhood. Remembering and restoring them turned out to be much easier than learning something new.
And you never looked overly thin on the platform.
- I was very strong. That is, all my weight, even if it seemed unnecessarily large to someone, was made up of very well-developed muscles. Therefore, it was easy for me, even when, with a height of 163 cm, I competed with a weight of 57-58 kg. I would even say that being strong in gymnastics is better than being thin. You have to drag your body and turn it over.
Are you an observer coach or a practicing coach in the gym?
Probably more practice.
Yes, we have very cool specialists, but you still have to work on all the apparatus in one way or another. As the saying goes, one head is good, but two is better. Plus, I'm now completely driving the log. This, of course, is insanely difficult, I really lack a specialist on this projectile.
Can't manage alone?
- I really can't. Because there are three more types of all-around. If someone deals a combination at the other end of the hall, I, working on a log, must have time to look both ways at the same time and notice all the mistakes.
Do you have to yell at children?
“In general, we have a fairly trusting, honest relationship with them. Even without shouting, they perfectly understand who is the coach here and who is the athlete. At the same time, outside the hall, we can always talk on various topics, laugh. I think it's good.
With regard to work, I have long developed a certain position of my own. If something doesn’t work out for an athlete, you first ask yourself: have you done everything to make him succeed? Did you see and explain all the errors, did you find all the approaches. As a rule, I don’t shout at all in the hall, but I can say something very loudly when I see that someone in particular is stupid. When, for example, the girls are pumping and forgot which stations they should go to. A loud voice works well in this regard.
When you said almost ten years ago that you loved children too much to be a coach, I was sure that at that moment you were going through your own and not always positive experience. When the coaches constantly yelled at the athletes, insulted, stamped their feet, took away food...
- Yes, and they beat sometimes. It is clear that this was a long time ago, even before I got into the national team, but I also came across very tough children's coaches, looking at whom I understood very well that I myself did not want to.
- But after all, in gymnastics for a long time it was believed that there was no other way to make a result.
- Has anyone else tried it? We are trying.
- Agree that parents, as a rule, raise their children the way they raised them. If someone has been slapped for any offense, it is likely that over time the person will begin to spank his child in the same way. Coaching work, I think, is arranged in a similar way.
- Probably, a lot depends on what examples are in front of your eyes. I began to think about this when, after the Games in London, we started working with Evgeny Grebenkin. Most recently, he was remembered with Ksyusha Afanasyeva. She now works as a choreographer in our team, and she said about Grebenkin: “This is the person who made me love gymnastics, although I hated it all my adult life.” Evgeny Anatolyevich never shouted at us, did not force us, but long and patiently explained why it was necessary this way and not otherwise. It was then that a very strong restructuring began in our brains.
I definitely wouldn't be able to become a politician."
- Do you remember your own career as absolutely successful or as unsaid?
I don't regret anything, that's the main thing. Firstly, I won a lot of things, and secondly, I stopped downloading the bad ones. That is, whatever the situation, I chose the pluses from it and thought about them. So everything worked out perfectly.
- What are you dreaming about now?
- To have as many good children as possible in gymnastics. To have someone to choose from, whom to train. For them to compete with each other. To make it interesting. And, of course, I really want international competitions.
I sometimes sit and think: we have girls born in 2008 who now would have a very real chance to get into the main team and go to the Games in Paris. What if there is no Olympics? To wait for the next Games is four more years of work, but what is four years in gymnastics? Well, you're already old. Therefore, we are trying not to train our athletes for a momentary result, but to instill in them a love for what they do. So that even at the age of 20 it would be interesting and fun for them to train.
- I absolutely understand why a huge number of girls go to figure skating. The sport has been heard for several years, everyone wants to be like Alina Zagitova or Alexandra Trusova. But gymnastics has always been a rather chamber sport. Children who are now coming to gymnastics understand why they need it?
- I think so. At first it's just a game, then when they get into our hands, we try to do our best to continue to maintain interest in training. Now all our children are enjoying the training camp, they all want to come again and again, they want to train. I think it's already good.
- In comparison with your generation, have children become different?
- They are modern. They have a different upbringing, different music, different interests. One Internet is worth something with tiktok and everything else.
- I hope they don’t take selfies on the balance beam during training?
— No, in this regard, everything is strict with us. I constantly say: if you are doing something, you should do it 100%. It is clear that it happens that someone is lazy or does not want to do something, does not really strain, but even in these cases I do not scold girls. I just call them to me and explain that I don’t need them to do gymnastics because I don’t want to. I know too well: if you don’t want to, no one will ever force you. And here is a small example. I ask: “If you want to go to the toilet, do you run there as fast as you can? So it is here: if you really want to do gymnastics, you will go and do it. Everyone is thinking.
I saw in some video how you drive your daughter along a log. Is she with you all the time?
- Alice came a couple of times with me to the collection. This happens only in those moments when parents are not in Moscow. That's when I take my daughter to the "Round". Then I take it back, and the parents take care of the child again.
- Do not you feel a guilt complex about this?
- My mother and I somehow initially had an agreement on this matter, when I was still training. I remember that the pregnant woman asked: “Mom, will you sit with my child?” She says, "Of course I will." She replied: "Well, then I will work."
- Many years ago, at the Atlanta Olympics, I witnessed how a very young wrestler Vadik Bogiev won a gold medal and announced right on the mat that he was ending his career. He then told me: “Life is what happens around while we are making other plans. I don't want my life to pass by." What makes you, an interesting young woman who has won everything that was possible in sports, limit your own life to the rather narrow framework of the “Round Lake”?
“Maybe it’s still love for children. I really love them all so much, I want to help them so much, to give as much as possible, that it turns me on, or something.
- Do you have enough time for yourself? Doesn’t it pull at least sometimes to get beyond the boundaries of the profession, relatively speaking?
“Definitely not now. Yes, and I don’t complain about my life yet, everything in it absolutely suits me. I wanted to rest so badly when I finished performing that I spent a whole year at home with great pleasure and did not even try to look for a new job. I switched to completely different concerns, completely moved away from sports. Probably, it was necessary in order to make an absolutely conscious decision to return to the hall again.
- During this time, you were not offered to go into politics, to some public organizations, to become a deputy, for example?
- Somebody, but definitely not a deputy. Dad said that with my character and hypertrophied sense of justice, I would be kicked out of there very quickly.
- Your sports age fell on a period when there were a lot of outstanding figures in gymnastics. Which of them, in your opinion, has really changed this sport?
- Svetlana Khorkina, Alexei Nemov and, probably, the generation of Mikhail Voronin, Nikolai Andrianov, Alexander Dityatin. I can’t single out one person, but I think that it was the Soviet generation that gave a very big impetus to the development of world gymnastics. Plus our absolutely outstanding coaches.
The result is always a combination of efforts. It is impossible to separate that here, for example, sports success, and here - coaching. It's just that there are always fewer coaches. Now only fans of their work generally work in this profession. After all, I know approximately how much coaches in the regions receive. I know what it takes for them to come to the training camp, because each such visit is immediately minus the salary. And still, people come, live for their athletes, live for gymnastics. I'm not an exception.
Do you dream of your own performances at night?
“Fortunately, no. Now more often I dream that we are coming to some competitions, where it suddenly turns out that someone cannot perform, is ill or has not arrived. And the coaches come to me: “Aliya, come on. Can you…”
Original article can be found at - https://russian.rt.com/sport/article/1169414-mustafina-intervyu-trener-ves-deti?fbclid=PAAaYBm23aFqpZgN90uWcf44PGy4Fh-9SpPU3m130qElCRvxPrxbQZwZVFHOg_aem_AU3ODnL5dqpecMRvSa1u8F6TxT6UQWmLG2AegW1QheKsZqeIwRFlOFIA2UUlWr48Muc
Comments
Post a Comment