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Which Equipment choices or adjustments REALLY matter to your skiing?
 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead

skimottaret wrote:
@Valkyrie, have you checked what your ankle flex is on both legs ? download a phone spirit level app and check em out. Your issue could be more of a lack of ankle dorsiflexion and not ramp angle. by memory you needed to flex the boots more... Remind me when I see you next and I can measure you up and have a closer look...

I measure dorsiflexion both weighted and unweighted. Unweighted do it sitting in a chair and get your tibia perpendicular to the floor. press the phone onto the side of your foot and raise your toes to max and get your reading.. 20 deg ish is pretty normal, 30 is good. 15 or less and I would suggest you need to do some foam rolling and stretches, under 10 and see a boot fitter for heel lifts to position your foot correctly inside the boot. These are all very approximate and you may have bone restricting movements, previous injuries etc... etc...


My dorsiflexion is poor in both ankles (under 15 degrees), but my left ankle is worse than my right. Never had any injuries to my ankles but in my old (softer) boots I would occasionally get a real intense pain in my left ankle when my ankle seemed to hit a hard travel stop. My boots already have heel lifts that were fitted just to improve the fit. I've always had the spoilers in my boots fitted down below the top of my boots, I might try setting them higher or taking them out to see if a more upright lower leg makes a difference.
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person

@Valkyrie, That makes more sense and ties up with what I saw Smile I would strongly suggest doing a lot of stretching of the calves AND hamstrings. There are lots of exercises on line but make sure you work both parts of the calf muscle, the soleus and gastro thingy mabob.. 10 minutes a day will make a big difference. Downward facing dogs is your friend for the hammies Smile Also foam rolling of the calves and base of foot can help dramatically.

The pain in your softer boots was most likely your ankle being forced into flexing beyond its range of movement and you were lucky you didn't get a tear. Somewhat counter intuitively people with limited flex should be in STIFFER boots that don't move as much. A super soft boot may flex 20 degrees or more and if your ankle can only bend 15 degrees you can tear things !. Similar to ACLs snapping when bindings don't release.

The heel lifts were probably put in by your fitter, not necessarily to decrease volume and tighten the fit, but rather to put your ankle in the mid range of your new boots flex pattern. Hard to explain without diagrams but most ski boots (depending on their stiffness and your weight/strength) only flex 10-15 degrees. if you only have 15 degrees of dorsiflexion it is essential that your ankle is in the correct neutral position within the boot so that it is matched and centred to your Boots range of motion. It is critical with people who have limited dorsiflexion to be fit in their boots so that the ankle neutral position and fully flexed position matches the boot.

Most recreational boots will have an internal ramp angle (aka zeppa angle) of typically 4 deg. Then you have to consider the boots forward lean angle which is typically around 12-14 for rec / touring boots and 15-17 for race boots.

as your foot is constrained within your boot it will be set in a flexed neutral position of lets say 14 deg (forward lean) less 4 (Zeppa angle) to give a net 10 degrees of neutral dorsiflexion. The heel lift they put in effectively increases the internal ramp angle and in turn reduces the total amount your ankle is dorsiflexed when in its neutral position.

In a similar way the spoiler in the back of you boot Increases your forward lean and effectively increases the neutral dorsiflexion. Not good if your ankle cant flex enough... be careful with removing this though as your fitter may have kept that in to put your ankle joint in the right place... Maybe not though as only good fitters will worry about such things...

Make sense ?
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