THE QUEST FOR THE PERFECT SKI BOOT SETUP
BY EXPERT SKI INSTRUCTOR JASON SIMPSON
What is the shape of your legs?
You’re bowlegged, eh?”, Tom exclaimed the first time we met in a coffee shop at Silver Star. Yes – I walk like a cowboy.
Intriguingly, for the first half of my life I had no awareness of the shape of my legs. It was during the pursuit of the CSIA L4 back in 1993 that I was made aware of it - my legs were not straight. It was suggested that my malalignment would hinder my chances of being successful. With the goal of passing, I willingly submitted to have my alignment tested. I discovered that I was 5 degrees out on my left leg and 3 degrees out on my right. Apparently, these were provocative numbers. I was so far out that complete correction was not possible, but we could get close. So began my lifelong pursuit of perfect alignment.
Knee over second toe theory of boot alignment
I quickly became acquainted with the accepted dogma of alignment. To ride a flat ski, my knee needed to track over my second toe when standing in an athletic stance. This would be achieved externally by placing wedges or shims under my bindings to tip my foot inwards. In hindsight, it is interesting that no attention was given to the fit of the boot or how it might be impacting my alignment.
Frustration and nagging pain keeps Jason wondering if there is more…
I followed the prescription, and I passed my Level 4. I am into my 31st year as an examiner. But to be honest, I have skied with nagging lower back and left knee pain most of my life. I assumed that this was just part of the sport. If you are going to ski for a living you will most likely deal with aches and pains. Additionally, I have always been frustrated to ski the way I truly wanted. While I was a good skier by most standards, I was haunted by the notion that I was not reaching my full potential. I was unable to move inside the turn as proficiently as I desired, I had hip rotation issues on my left footers, and often just felt “blocked”. I was constantly searching for ways to improve my performance and I believed they were technical in nature because I had dealt with the alignment stuff, or so I thought.
Boot canting and custom footbeds
Fast forward 10 years and I was finally able to get rid of my cumbersome shims in favor of boot planing. Much more precise than shims and freeing for many reasons. I also introduced a supportive custom footbed – any serious skier has a custom foot bed, right? Typically foot beds are fitted with closed-cell foam to fill up the space under the arch in an effort to stop the foot from collapsing to improve energy transfer to the skis. At the time It made sense to me. It made sense for decades. Within the echo chamber the evidence seemed logical, my mentors championed it, and so did I.
Jason try’s the boots undone drill
Now, back to Tom’s initial comment on my gait at the coffee shop. We finished our coffees, booted-up, and went skiing. We discussed many topics and worked through several drills. The day ended skiing with my boots undone in effort to reduce the effect of my “custom” setup. To my amazement, it felt great. There was power and a looseness, I didn’t feel blocked. I knew it was time to embrace a new paradigm.
A new approach
The new paradigm is simple and straight forward. It is predicated on the idea that we know intrinsically how to move and balance. The body is smart. While we share a similar human form there is an infinite number of combinations of bone length, joint angles, muscle type and flexibility, not to mention imbalances imparted by lifestyle, injuries, and more. We learn how to move within our individual setup. Your neuromuscular system has been perfected since birth so that you can walk, run, jump, climb, lift, and play sports (as well as your practice will allow). In our bare feet we are the truest to our nature. We are all athletic by design.
Unimpaired movement for athleticism
The key is to take the boot out of the equation. Make it a part of the body and its movement patterns. It should fit so well that you don’t know it is there. It reacts seamlessly to every input the skier makes. It should not place you in unnatural positions. The boot needs to be an environment that provides for the pain free and unimpaired movement of the bones, nerves, and muscles of your feet and ankles. The new paradigm has 3 key elements to create a functional ski boot; snug but free, cuff alignment, and no foot bed.
3 Key Elements
Click on each to find out more
Snug but Free
The lower shell must precisely accommodate the shape of your foot and ankle. Through a combination of grinding and punching the shell, the boot is sculpted to perfectly follow the contours of the foot and ankle. Special attention is placed on creating space for specific movements to help us edge and balance. Big Picture Skiing has a video titled “Edge Pressure 1,2,3” for more on this. The result is the foot is held snuggly but can still move. Movements of the foot are instantly transmitted to movement of the skis – no delay and no pain.
Perfect cuff alignment
The shin is free to move naturally. The cuff of the ski boot follows the natural shape of your own leg. Once again, there are numerous combinations of how the tibia and fibula are connected to the ankle. In my case, the cuffs needed to be tipped out to their maximum to accommodate the outward bow of my lower leg. It is important to purchase boots that have cuff alignment adjustment.
Basic flatter insole
This can be seen as the most controversial. Custom footbeds are a major add-on service in shops around the ski world. Boot-fitters have been trained to try and control your foot by filling up the space under your arch, sometimes with stiff foam, with best of intentions. Unwittingly, I now believe the actual result stops the foot from going through the very necessary movements of eversion, and inversion so the skier can finely control edge pressure without intervention. If you are going to use a custom footbed make sure it’s very flexible. A great experiment is to try the basic insole that most ski boots come with and see how that feels. If there is too much volume consider adding a volume reducer to create that snug fit without blocking the arches. BPS members can watch informative content like this webinar on the differences between “Custom vs Flatter Insoles”.
Knee alignment in ski boots
Hi it’s Tom Gellie jumping in here to explain a few things. I’ll pass the narrative back to Jason in just a sec I promise!
In boot fitting there is a general consensus that when our skis are flat, the centre of mass of each knee should align with the centre line of the boot (within about a degree or so). The reasoning behind this comes down to a few things.
When the knee is neutral you have equal access to the inside edge and outside edge of the skis.
There is less stress on the knee.
If the foot is neutral then the knee will also be neutral.
But many skiers knees do not line up over the middle seam of the boot when they are in ski boots. Just as Jason discovered he was told he was 5 degrees out of alignment on one side! But hold your horses just a moment. Is this down to you or is it your ski boots pushing you out of alignment? Read on to discover more.
Where you pressure the foot is where the knee goes
The centre of a persons knee generally lines up with where the centre of pressure is held in their feet (abnormalities aside). So if you have a habit of carrying more pressure on the inside edges of your feet, your knees will likely look knock kneed. If it’s the opposite, and you like standing on the outside edges of your feet, your knees will align more outward. Knees follow the foot pressure Very often our feet have different preferences! So if you carry more of your body weight on the outside edge of the left foot but the inside edge of the right foot, you will have one knee more in and one knee more outwardly aligned. As well as a rotation of your pelvis to the right. Maybe this is because you broke your left big toe many years ago and developed a way of walking that avoided pressure on that left big toe…? There’s also the fact that all of us are a bit asymmetrical and this is ok too.
My point is that most of the time we are not aware of how we stand on our feet daily. When you wear ski boots the shape and fit of the shell can very well push your feet, ankles and lower legs into a position they are not used to. For example if you have wide, low arched feet, a narrow ski boot can push your balance to the outside edge of your foot and make it difficult for you to stand neutral. Or if you have bowed lower legs like Jason and the cuff of the boot does not follow that shape it will force your knee in and nd the side of our foot is being pushed one way creating a rotation. Or our lower leg is being forced.
We may also not be taking into account the internal fit of the boot and how that is affecting balance on our feet. Even small areas of excess pressure on the feet and lower leg can make a person shift their stance. After Jason and I met for a day of skiing and discussed some of my views on ski boot setup he decided to give this approach of fitting his boots a go.
The nee aligns to where we pressure our feet
There is something I have learnt through many years of running my own body alignment practice, Functional Body. The centre of a persons knee generally lines up with where the centre of pressure is held in their feet (abnormalities aside). So if you have a habit of carrying more pressure on the inside edges of your feet, your knees will likely look knock kneed. If it’s the opposite and you like standing in the outside edges of your feet, your knees will align more outward. Very often our feet have different preferences! So if you carry more of your body weight on the outside edge of the left foot but the inside edge of the right foot, you will have one knee more in and one knee more outwardly aligned. As well as a rotation of your pelvis to the right. Maybe this is because you broke your left big toe many years ago and developed a way of walking that avoided pressure on that left big toe…? There could be many reasons why.
My point is that most of the time we are not aware of how we stand on our feet and when trying on ski boots may just let this habitual position show up. We may look misaligned because we are standing on the edges of our feet even just slightly. This will immediately change as soon as you need to be athletic and make a turn where you balance more on the outside foot in an turn and adjust the feet to control the pressure to the ski edges.
We may also not be taking into account the internal fit of the boot and how that is affecting balance on our feet. Even small areas of excess pressure on the feet and lower leg can make a person shift their stance. After Jason and I met for a day of skiing and discussed some of my views on ski boot setup he decided to give this approach of fitting his boots a go.
The in-rigger drill is a great drill I use to teach students about how tipping a ski over more and more helps them feel how it turns more and more! Videos like this and more available to Big Picture Skiing members.
High edge angles are not the goal every turn
I want you to realise two things at this stage. While higher edge angle turns are really fun and look “cool” their functionality has a certain place:
Higher edge angles will give you more control of your turn shape at higher speeds and on steeper slopes. I see many people making the mistake of trying for maximum edge angles on easy/moderate slopes and when they are not skiing fast enough to need it. This ends up creating balance issues and a skier that never learns to ski adaptively based on terrain. If you see A-framing or sitting back these can be indicators you are “over skiing the terrain”. I personally only use higher edge angles on steeper blue runs (red runs in Europe) and black runs. I have learnt to read a slope before I ski it and already know how much edge angle I would use.
You shouldn’t be looking to always use higher edge angles to tighten your turns or shape your turns. This is because high edge angles are also used to help the skier balance against higher forces. I’ll say this another way. You will need higher edge angles as a result of skiing at higher speeds and trying to make tighter turns. Take away speed in a turn and you dont need the higher angles. Still skiing fast but not trying to make tighter turns? You dont need high edge angles. If you are not ready to experience a lot more G-Force then keeping speed under control using some steering of the ski and creating some friction with slight skidding is much easier to manage. I have worked a lot on refining my steering skills to the point the untrained eye often cant see that I’m not carving certain parts of a turn. Smooth steering skills are actually harder to master than carving in my opinion. So consider also working on this side of your skiing.
This video is part of the Big Picture Skiing learning platform that includes over 100 lessons and tutorials. Designed for the self driven and curious learner.
Working on feeling and embracing the down
Perhaps you now realise you want to try and work on this down motion to drive higher edge angles beyond 50 degrees. I suggest you try the dryland exercise that is coming up. The tilting further part is really quite scary because you are moving further away from your base of support. You need to trust your skis will keep gripping (TIP: make sure the edges are freshly tuned!) and also be ok with the fact you might fall over a few times. Outside of skiing there are not many positive outcomes that result from you deliberately falling. However bigger edge angles in skiing require you to trust in this falling sensation part in order to continue tilting your skis to bend them. In order to help comprehend this change in motion going more towards falling try this. Visualise your ski pole standing upright then falling over. The first half of falling the handle of the pole (like your head) moves mostly sideways with a little bit of down. The second half of that fall the handle accelerates more downwards than sideways. So you would be experiencing similar motions to the ski pole. The first part feeling relatively slower to tilt, the second half of moving inside the turn is faster as gravity is able to pull you to earth more easily. Closer to free falling. Which is why this part feels the best but is the scariest and hardest to do!
Find some padded ground or even use a low sofa to practice the sideways and then DOWN. See demo video below these steps.
Stand in an athletic position.
Visualise yourself skiing and then start to tilt your legs and create pretend edge angles for skiing.
Notice there is a point where you need to let gravity take over and just let it pull you down onto the padded ground or sofa.
Repeat many times over so you can try and get used to letting go and gravity polling you down.
Keep practicing and refine your ski stance. Try and hold good form in your arms and upper body.
You can practice this same exercise on snow too but try and find some really soft snow to do it in so you don’t bruise yourself dropping onto your hips. I highly recommend doing the dryland version first.
Using padded ground to help you practice the down feeling in higher edge angle turns.
Common problem when getting lower
At this point I will point out a common mistake people make as they work on this "lowering" sensation. Because we sense "getting lower" mostly through where our head is in space people will try to get lower by bending at the hips to "feel lower". Your head drops and changes its position but the skis do not tilt further. Be mindful of this trap. You may also try to "feel lower" by bending both legs. Your outside leg isn't really bending at all. Yes your inside leg bends to allow your body to get lower but it can be difficult to distinguish bending only one leg. Many people when trying this bend both legs like in a squat as this is the only other relatable movement they have to work from. It is also due to the fact I pointed out earlier; you will be lowering/toppling quickly because gravity can pull you down more easily and your brain thinks "there is nothing ready to support us if we keep going! So let's just bend forward to feel lower."
The skier to the left is an example of this.
You must trust there are supporting turning forces as you tilt coming from the ski turning sharper. Invisible physics forces that are the same forces holding up Grand Prix motor bike riders and skate boarders riding a bowl. So pay attention to your outside quad muscles and try not to allow them to soften and bend the knee. Think that your outside leg is to be more like your ski pole, strong and straight as it tilts.
Advanced skiers you could try a variation on the crab walk drill to help you work on your edging.
Part of the comprehensive Big Picture Skiing video library available to Big Picture Skiing members.
Enjoy the process and manage expectations
There are several other factors you need to consider in order for this edging past 50 degrees to work out well for you. More than this blog article can cover. Factors like fore and aft balance, speed, radius of the ski, etc. I cover all of these with detailed videos in the video library as well as encourage you to work on other exercises and drills to help give you the right feelings. There is an app version too so you can download videos for offline viewing.
I hope that this article has helped you perceive what you might be searching to feel for with your body in motion when carving at higher edge angles. Also it may have been surprising to see how little the ski actually bends even at around 45 degrees. Perhaps it will give you incentive to try and push the speed and edge angles a little more. Get to the point where you really feel the ski flex! It's an addictive rush of adrenaline when you get it right. If you liked this article and are interested in learning more about skiing from my perspective I have a library of ski technique videos on everything from bumps to carving. All aimed to make you a better skier. Enjoy your turns.
Written by Tom Gellie
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