 Poster: A snowHead
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elbrus, you've probably not seen it as it was before you joined but there was a long thread on the involvement of the ankles here. Some good stuff, two fairly entrenched camps, and some of the usual frank exchange of views as well  .
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I stumbled across this on (yet) another forum, written yesterday:
The author talks in this instance of having a footbed that prevents any ankle movement in the boot, where someone had posted a footbed so that the foot/ankle was in the inverted position. It also briefly touches on that controversial topic of moving ankles within the boot:
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I’ve seen it out there and available. Some footbed makers have been for many years adding tremendous inversion to there footbeds, already in the molding and posting process, (lifting the whole medial side).
If you look at the biomechanics, you are essentially inverting the foot and ankle, which initially brings or forces the knee mass lateral or worst, it uses up ankle and foot inversion and blocks eversion range of the subtaler joint (making the peroneals useless. .) It may also cause forefoot problems.
This then causes skiers to use more adductor leverage to bring the knee mass back inside the ski edge. This is possibly a ski technique by itself, but not one I advocate, as it adds stress to the knee and it also causes greater rotational forces to occur from higher in the body. I try to reduce these gross influences, with shaped skis especially. This approach will also have some bearing and may cause difficulty for some widths of skis and the effect on the access to tipping of those skis. I’m talking about ski width. A wide ski already requires more leverage to tip. On hard snow the resistance is strong from such skis. If the foot and ankle are locked up by a device induced inverted position, the ankle has little capability for leveraging the boot, co-contraction (balancing movements and stabilizing the joint) or adding controlled fine tuning balance.
My approach is to make the footbed properly from the start. If more posting is desired or if the foot bed is old, some posting can extend the life of the footbed for a short period. But it depends tremendously on the type of foot. This approach would be very harmful to the cavus foot with little range or flexibility.
With Erik Schlopy for example, we do the exact opposite, we make the medial side of the boot board compressible by 2 mm. This helps him evert his foot, as his feet are very rigid and he has difficulty getting his ankle to move medially toward the side of the boot. (a related topic for further disscussion would be foot and ankle movements for levering the boot and ski, and why is it necessary to access the medial side of the boot with the ankle to control edging and make fine tuning adjustments.)
What I find is more usual out in the ski world, is that the worst of all combinations are being used and applied to feet and ankles that are totally functional and are actually being compromised with footbed devices. Example: A hard or rigid arched footbed with a radically lifted arch applied, made with no regard for the measurements of individuals or consideration of subtler alignment and no forefoot position taken in consideration.
There may be some benefits to strengthening the medial side of the foot by lifting the footbed or boot board. It sure makes a skier feel like there is a strong edge on the ski, but this is often not a high edge angle or strong edging. There is a difference between the performance related outcomes of these definitions.
A locked or restricted foot causes balancing to occur higher in the kinetic chain. I look at these things logically and I try not to overdo any particular point in the system or joint areas.
Remember, we can all sometimes be fooled by what we perceive as a good adjustment, just because it feels different, not because it is actually producing better performance. The body has a great ability to adjust, especially to incorrect alignment, and after awhile it may even begin to feel natural.
I am, just as most skiers are, susceptible to even extreme alignment variations, sometimes I think I’m accessing my edges and angles better, but after I see some video and analyze the situation, I usually go back to the tried and true measurement. Our bodies are very good at fooling us.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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veeeight, ankles that can move? surely not! and Schlopy is a high level skier... surely he would not want a compressible section on medial side of footbed? 
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I am not following much of the technical bio-mechanics in this, But I think what little tiger is getting at, and which occured to me, is :
What is the boot cuff doing against my lower leg ?
It is tight. It restricts movement, so even if all these subtle footbed things are going on, then it is the cuff flex - laterally and fore-aft that is making the most difference to the way the ski edges ? What is going on here ?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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V8, have you found the original author of that article yet? I remember it from his site years ago.
lampbus, smaller movements than most of those consciously possible at the knee and hip.
here is an experiment: take a firm pillow that is a slight challenge to stand on with one foot. Now take a large box that fits over the pillow without touching it. Put a hole in the middle of the top just large enough for your shin and calf. Thread your foot into the box. Can you still stand on the pillow on one foot without moving the box?
I'll bet you can.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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lampbus, LT was being sarcastic. She is a huge fan (as I am) that the kinetic chain starts at (rolling) the ankle.
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veeeight, I like to use the word pronate - it is what I have been taught is needed and matches with my understanding from my physio and podiatrist friends... Similarly it is very clear when doing an ILE transition that you are pressuring a supinated foot and you can feel the natural drive into pronation... The word "roll" never quite did it for me... (but then I actually had to have an instructor play with my feet in a coffee shop to show me what he wanted them to do and let me get the "feel" for it)
I have had the physio (she works Oz and Whistler) comment on the amount of work I was doing on edging in my lessons - my calves told the story when she was doing a deep tissue massage.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Is what we are saying here that pros like to have the ability to laterally roll their foot in a bit? This makes perfect sense to me when I attempt to think about how it feels skiing while sat in ordinary shoes at a desk. I'd guess however that we are talking about relative small ranges of movement e.g. not enough to cause a blister.
Maybe for me it happens accidentally through a boot that isn't totally custom fitted. When I consciously think of what I am doing within my boot e.g. telemark "turning the corkscrew" with the ball of the rear foot my foot is hardly flopping around therefore I think of it more as a mental trigger than a real biomechanical change.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| fatbob wrote: |
| Is what we are saying here that pros like to have the ability to laterally roll their foot in a bit? This makes perfect sense to me when I attempt to think about how it feels skiing while sat in ordinary shoes at a desk. I'd guess however that we are talking about relative small ranges of movement e.g. not enough to cause a blister. |
Tell it to my Bonts. 
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Maybe for me it happens accidentally through a boot that isn't totally custom fitted. |
Don't forget: if the heel moves the magic is gone.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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fatbob, Two schools of thought here: One that thinks that it's purely a mental trigger, and another that actually promotes movement within the boot (long discussion and thread on edging somewhere) to the extent of punching out the shell to provide room if necessary, to start off the kinetic chain from the foot.
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"Kinetic chain" is certainly the buzzword ("buzz phrase"?) in ski teaching these days.
Not being a physiologist I don't really know what it means. If it means that movements in one joint set off movements in another joint, via established nerve pathways, then perhaps you would have to call this miniscule ankle pronation a "neuronal trigger", rather than a "mental trigger".
(As opposed to a "neurotic trigger" which might be something this guy would possess: http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/facelift/lecter0103.jpg )
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You know it makes sense.
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veeeight, I'd like to see a study for correlation between heel width and boot punchout at ankle.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Rolling the foot can have an impact on alignment, so maybe what is happening is that you modify the point at which movement of the knee makes a change in ski edge angle. In effect going to an over canted stance during a turn.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| rjs wrote: |
| Rolling the foot can have an impact on alignment, |
Yes pronation aids edging... as does appropriate counter... it also affects shape of arch(the big one most folks talk about when they discuss feet)... etc etc... supination has its uses also...
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Martin Bell, crikey, I'm glad to see you don't understand this! Me neither!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Martin's just in denial
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Dat's better dan being in de Mississippi!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Thought I'd revive this thread as it makes a bit more sense to me know. Just got back from a session with the race club at my local dry slope and we spent some time working on drills for edge control. The coach talked about ankles for accuracy, knees for strength, hips for power. Today we were focusing on ankles, running some stubbies set without any offset to try to get a feel for just using ankles to gently initiate turns which barely took you out of the fall line. I'm pleased that I'd read this thread and thought about Euan's EOSB homework now!
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rob@rar, that's interesting. I suggested it to Adrian a couple of months ago, and he got me to introduce it to the club about a month ago (in that case just skiing free), following on from the discussion we had after veeeight posted this. It's an exercise I've also been doing the last few weeks to get more accurate/efficient line selection around the poles/stubbies - aiming to really take the stubby out with the shinguards.
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Pete and Adrian were the coaches today, with Pete leading mostly. He talked about it, mentioning that it was an important part of the Canadian approach.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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GrahamN, wrote: But if we are being technical then it would appear that three of the four muscles constituting the hamstrings are attached to the pelvis and are involved in hip extension (and as they attach below the knee are also involved in knee flexion), so to say "they do not have any part to play with your hips" is also "codswallop".
I suggest you stop misleading people on this site about your rubbish information and do your homework properly by consulting the much wise internet. The hamstrings make up of only 3 muscle groups, not 4, wally. And they have nothing to do with the hips.
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| chris wrote: |
| Scarlet Pimpernel, harsh! As an unsuspecting and gullible skier I have taken advice from GrahamN, before and would trust what he has to say. His standard is in the top 5 per cent of people I have skiied with. |
All I can say is.. You all must be lousy skiers!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Scarlet Pimpernel, technically the hamstrings are indeed made up of three named muscles, but one of these has 2 distinct bits to it so GrahamN's statement that there are four muscles is only slightly misleading. However he's quite right in saying that the true hamstrings (semimembranosus, semitendinosus and long head of biceps femoris) go from pelvis to below the knee and are thus involved in both hip extension and knee flexion.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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GrahamN, Look on the bright side, I'm not going to get involved in this one.
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| Scarlet Pimpernel wrote: |
| I suggest you stop misleading people on this site about your rubbish information and do your homework properly by consulting the much wise internet. The hamstrings make up of only 3 muscle groups, not 4, wally. And they have nothing to do with the hips. |
That is exactly what I did, here. Quite clearly identified as 4 components - including biceps femoris(short head) and biceps femoris(long head), with different origin points - and only the short head not involved in hip extension. (But from what slikedges says, I guess they join before the insertion point - although that's not at all obvious from the diagram). If you have a medical qualification, as you seem to imply, I suggest you need to do some revision.
Clearly it's get at Graham day.
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FAQ
) is also CSCF-trained.