Minerva Hase/Nikita Volodin: Ready for New Challenges

World Pair Skating Champions Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin are preparing for the new season at home in Berlin. In this Pirouette interview, they talk about their plans for the season and why they are looking forward to facing new competition.

How are you doing, and when did summer training start?

Minerva: We’re doing well. We resumed summer training at the end of May, after I finished my army training course. We have another two weeks off in July because I haven’t taken any vacation yet. Things are going pretty well so far. We actually spent the whole month of June focusing solely on step exercises because we want to correct a few minor issues we carried over from last season before we dive back into full element training. So we’ve been doing alternative training and a lot of rehabilitation training at the Olympic Training Center.

What do you do during rehabilitation training?

Minerva: A lot of stability training, a lot of strengthening the muscle groups that are too weak and that caused injuries or problems. You’re basically rebuilding your body so that everything is back where it’s supposed to be and you’re no longer making those compensatory movements. Injuries happen when you make movements that aren’t correct. You try to retrain yourself to do things the right way.