Skiing Myth #5 - A Frames

A snowHead

Cozy little ski chalets Laughing

In recent years, it's been fashionable to talk and focus on "parallel shins".

In my view, this was mainly to acomplish one thing - "Simultaneous Edge Change".

More recently, the focus has shifted from parallel shins, to "are the skis doing the right thing on the snow", because, someone could have an A-frame and yet both skis are doing good things on the snow. Purely down to:

1. Individual bio-mechanics (eg; male vs. female)
2. Alignment
3. Outside knee being used to fine tune, A-Frames are often mistaken for healthy knee angulation
4. Tactics (Bode etc.)

To summarise, as long as a near simultaneous edge change is happening, and both skis are being worked effectively, parallel shins should not be the focus. It is, however, still a target worth shooting for, but bear in mind that other factors such as those above, could influence achieving that goal.

Just make sure those edge changes are (near) simultaneous though, before dismissing your A-Frame!

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A snowHead

veeeight, Apparently the division between men and women being either bandy or knock kneed is 50-50. Hard to believe, but statistically correct I'm told by those who know! I don't think it's a recent thing; when I was a teenager (and yes, that was a long time ago), my DHO race trainers (Bunny Field, Kenny Dixon et al) were yelling at me "not to ski like a girl" which I took to mean the same thing!

The problem is that a lot of A frames exist because the skier is rotating the outside hip throuch the turn and consequently blocking the ability of the hips to stay facing slightly outside (see you diagram) the turn.

Anyway, I glad you think it's OK, since I saw a photo of me displaying a small A frame last year. Embarassed

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

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veeeight, I have a middle aged lady client who, due to the shape of her legs, skis in a permanent snowplough. Well a massive A frame anyway. Her tibias both just stick out from her knees. Her femurs are fairly straight. She gets all stressed because peeps keep telling her she's ploughing, but she can't actually help it. It's too extreme at her age to do any correctiion, so she just has to live with it. I'm trying to persuade her to get footbeds made though - but she can't really afford it. Sad

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

easiski, but, but, but, why not do an underbinding cant just to let her get the skis flat? Not correction, adaptation?

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comprex, Because she has no money to spend on things like that, doesn't have her own skis, and only gets to ski thanks to her twin sister inviting her to come with! She's not a serious skier at all, and it doesn't really matter as far as her abilty to ski is concerned - easy blues are really her limit. It's just the comments that get her going. However for someone in their late 50's to make any changes at all is possibly dangerous and certainly inadvisable IMO. All her life she's done everything with her legs that shape, if you cant you force the leg into an unnatural position, which will pressure muscles that haven't really been used for many decades, and possibly damage the knees too. No - best left alone, or with just a nice balanced footbed (in France they're not allowed to "correct" unless they're fully qualified to do so). Sensible idea I think!