SERIOUSLY have you ever seen someone skate like her? Ever? I’ve been enchanted by skating ever since I was a kid, practicing taking off from different edges of my feet on the patio whenever the Olympic coverage would go to commercial. Occasionally I would raid my endless supply of hand-me-downs from my cool NY cousins to find something that could stand in for a sparkly skating costume. In the end, I got into power skating via my hockey exploits, but it’s always been the solo artistic programs that refuse to stop squeezing my heart. And I have never melted into sobs like I did after watching this skate. (I would have embedded the video, but NBC won’t let me, sorry!)

How casual and relaxed. Completely in control, technically incredible, everything intentional and coherent. Authentic. This performance comes after years spent away from the sport. At the time she retired, she was a world champion, doing the most aggressive programs—including quads—in history. When she entered puberty, encountering the poisonous culture endemic to so many performing disciplines, she was told to starve herself, even as her body was trying to grow. Her center of gravity changed, and she was told to find her prepubescent body to keep up with the crazy degree of difficulty in her competition routines. It became joyless, and she continued only out of duty and habit. At 16, the age when everything should be ramping up, she walked away from competitive skating.

How did she end up an Olympic gold medalist after all that?

I watched an interview with Brian Boitano, where he described Alysa realizing she still loved skating and had more art to share with the world, but not on terms set by USA Skating or external parties who would want her to change. She wanted to eat whatever she wanted- because she knows herself best. She wanted to choose her own music. Have a say in every step. This should not be legendary, but such is the infantilization of women in sport that it is. Here’s the important part: Boitano detailed the programs of the women who were headed for the world championships and Olympics in 2025 and 2026. Every one was markedly easier than the programs Alysa was performing before retiring. Some of her programs were more difficult than the men’s! So little miss Athlete of the Moment was able to skate out of her mind with joy, artistry, technique, and complete abandon because her performance was simple compared with her preparation.

So stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but…

…this is what we should be doing ALL THE TIME. It’s why we take straight sixteenth notes and add confusing rhythms. Why we play scales with 8, 12, and 24 notes to a bow. Why the Popper High School exists. Why sprinters put weights in their shoes, and goalies have white pucks fired at them. We train in the hardest dojo available so the actual sparring we do in performance feels effortless.

BUT it only works if you have a robust foundation, and it’s the rare adult learner who hasn’t got a few vulnerabilities in this area; it’s simply part of the thing. The trick is what comes next: any skill will remain unpredictable without strong fundamentals, and lots of players I encounter find plausible sounding justifications for ignoring them.

Imagine living in California with a cracked foundation beneath your home. It happened early, maybe even as the house was being built. As a result, the walls don’t meet at exactly 90º. There is a slight bulge in one room, very hard to pick up on, but you can see it in the meniscus of your tea, the gentle slope from high to low. You know the foundation, the thing your very safety relies on, is cracked, and the next earthquake could cause the entire thing to collapse. But you’re busy living in the house, so you keep filling it with glittering objects and admiring the pleasing aspects of this, the place you live. Of course, visitors are immediately struck by the listing structure and don’t even notice the décor. What you imagine is only perceptible internally feels like walking into the famously distorted room Van Gogh occupied during his time in Arles.

To even a modestly discerning observer, every note played by someone with weak fundamentals is shot through with the essence of instability. It’s like saying words in another language without knowing their meaning: you’re just making sounds. The clip below demonstrates the full effect. 😂

Without understanding the meaning, there can be no art. Only fear, dread, and the persistent sense that everything is a guess; that this is unknowable.

The last 25 years of my life have been focused almost exclusively on thoroughly, jubilantly, entirely rejecting that idea and coming up with all kinds of ways to make sure you believe—and benefit from—it. This is all knowable, no matter where you are or want to go. The best time to install an impermeable foundation was when you first started. The next best time is today.

Alysa Liu’s performance is the example I did not know I was searching for to illustrate the reciprocal nature of expressive artistry and technique. And though I never shy away from telling difficult truths, the main thing I want you to take away as I close this out is that this is about joy. Joy that you are entitled to. Joy that, were there some other way to access it, I would evangelize about with equal fervor. Joy that comes when you rebuild your forever home on a foundation that supports you, every step of the way.