Ankle flex/"Front of the boot"

A snowHead

Hi all -

So, I hear a lot of people talking about "being on the front of the boot" and "driving the ankle forwards to engage the tip of the ski" or similar. Is this actually optimal for a clean, efficient turn - skidded, steered or carved? As far as I understand it, all you're doing by trying to achieve this is bringing your point of fore/aft balance on the ski ahead of the centre of your foot - so you're moving the pivot point up, and while the tips may engage, the tails will be unweighted/sliding to at least a small extent. Surely engaging the whole ski (by balancing on the centre of it) is a much better idea?

I found this interesting - on a session with a gent who used to own Fernie's ski school, and is a CSIA4 examiner, he pointed out that people often flex because they assume they have to, rather than as a reaction to the required forces to generate higher edge angles and the higher performance skiing they allow. He demonstrated this by flexing at the ankles on a flat stationary ski - obviously, nothing happens.

As a disclaimer, yes, I understand it might be faster to achieve certain (likely race-orientated) outcomes, but it seems like a lot of instructors are very set on the "front of the boot" mentality and it all gets a bit washy when they try to explain why.

Anyway, thought I'd throw it out there and see what people think!

Dave

A snowHead

DaveC,
Had a morning out on Saturday with a level 4 instructor and L1 examiner. He said exactly the same as you are saying and demostrated it similarly. We spent pretty much all morning working on 'centering'. Centering was never achieved by forward ankle flex. He split the group into 2 with those whose weight was back (my group) and those whose weight was forward. I suspect the forward group , in his opinion , had too much flex from ankle causing them to not be centred and he discussed how weight too forward would cause the fronts to stem slightly and the backs to unweight and bobble. For me, the fronts go slightly apart occasionally as a function of not being centred.

I am now trying to be centred, dervied manily from hip flex

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People do get hung up on flexing the ankles, I had a ski school boss (2x demo team member) in the States who was obsessed with using dorsiflexion to bring people more forwards. I listened to him, and even changed the forward lean in my boots, it messed up my skiing a fair amount. I became excessively flexed in my other joints as a result, and never really realised that there were times when I had to extend. Though, it did teach me an important lesson and allow me to become more aware of how important my ankles are.

Obviously flexing your ankles in a stationary situation isn't going to do much, but in a high performance turn initiation, where you need to project your centre of mass down the hill, in order for it to be as far inside the turn as possible, achieving the highest edge angles, you are going to need to flex your ankles, otherwise your skis are going to get ahead of you. In the apex of the turn, when your outside leg is at it's longest, yes, you will be more neutral.

Similarly in moguls, fore aft balance is being constantly challenged by the changing terrain, if you jam your shins into the front of the boot the whole time you are going to go over the front, but if you never recentre by pulling your feet back (closing your ankle), you will be back.

Basically what I'm saying is that in dynamic, higher level skiing, there is no one way to be balanced, your ankle isn't going to be static, as the relationship between your skis and body is never static. So thinking about keeping your ankle in one state is unhelpful. That said, for beginners/intermediates, I often get them to think about feeling the front of the boot, as commonly the ankle joint is open, leading to their weight being aft.

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jimmer, I agree - what I'm really saying is that there's never any reason to *specifically* flex just your ankles (for performance, rather than as a cue) which is the implication I seem to keep picking up. Re-centering, or flexing proportionately in all joints, is pretty different to intentionally pressuring the front of the boot. What countries cert do you have, out of interest?

gryphea, yeah, I'm pretty sure the CSIA style must differ from BASI/PSIA etc.

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Hey DaveC, I have NZ level 3, but worked in the states and now have Aussie trainers in Japan. Looking at your signature, I realise that I 'know' you from natives, my username there is layzeeboy, I'm on here because I hurt my shoulder and am bored on the couch!

Anyhow, with the ankle idea, people do talk about 'pressuring' the front of the ski etc, in my experience excessive forward pressure just ends up with the tails washing out. But so many people skid around in the back seat, that getting them anywhere near that would be a big positive. I think a lot of the instructors who say that, just mean flexing the ankles to allow you to be centred, or try to use it as a cue to get people to move their CoM down the hill.

Gryphea, I'm intrigued as to how you are intending to be more centred from hip flex, does this mean you already had appropriate flex in your ankles and knees, but were leaning your upper body back?

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If I see a lack of movement in skiers it's almost always because they don't flex their ankle at all. If I see skiers dropping in to the back seat it's because they don't flex their ankle in proportion to knee and hip/waist flex. Sometimes getting people to focus on a joint which isn't moving as well as it should is a way of dealing with that issue. But it's movement that I'm interested in, not a fixed position. Suggesting that a client feels pressure on the front of their boot/shin, and pushing more as they approach the end of the turn seems to generate more movement in that joint in the people that I've taught. This is usually part of a sequence of drills which focus on flexion and extension, and not on trying to get their ankle to be fixed at X degrees of bend.

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Ditto rob@rar's comments.

A lot of the talk on ankle flex is effectively corrective. We are trying to move the skier forwards from a back position to a more centered position. We are also trying to get them to use their ankles as part of their up & down movements so they remain centered.

That said, pressuring the front of the ski at the start of the turn is an effective focus tool for people trying to move from a skidded turn to a more steered edged turn.

Here's where I disagree though - generally, saying "flex the ankle more" or "feel the front of the boot" doesn't work effectively because the way the skier is skiing means they're already stopping themselves doing it - an easier analogy is the hands forward to get forward thing. You can stick your hands forward while backseat pretty effectively, it's not particularly useful in a vacuum like that. You can tell a skier to try and flex the ankle more, feel the front of the boot more, but the immediate problem is whatever's stopping them doing that in the first place likely will continue to limit it, and then in the long term you get skiers who believe the front of the boot is their accelerator pedal and must be pressed into to ski well, which is something I see a lot of in higher level skiers and instructors. It's especially confusing since alongside the confusing "front of the boot" dogma, people assume ski boot stiffness is to give them more to press against, rather than effectively stiffening up the suspension provided by a short (in skiing) range of motion joint.

So, yeah, I really dislike people focusing on one joint and saying "flex this more", if it really is just essentially a cue to get someone centred.

Alan McGregor, I find that focus encourages an aggressive flex forward, bringing the hip forwards and bringing upper body into the equation. Mainly because that's what I'm trying to unlearn at the moment...

jimmer, hey buddy - hope the shoulder heals up soon. Did you dislocate it or just muscular?

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A ski boot, has a required 10° of flexion required to 'energise' it from the original delta, neutral position, this is pretty standard, however may vary from brand to brand, model to model.

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This thread started when I observed in another thread... [/quote]If the aim is to apply pressure on the tip of the ski by leaning into the front of the boot....

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well that didn't work...just read it all together

stiffdrink, you're in stiff boots because you expect to generate energy in a turn that a softer boot wouldn't allow you to control very well. For what it's worth, you want to be centred fore/aft but move your lateral balance to the inside (of the arc) to attain edge angles. You can continue to increase those angles by counterbalancing inclination with angulation.

If you want to make a turn shorter than your ski radius, you need to use pivoting to establish a steering angle - explained well by Fastman here - http://www.yourskicoach.com/SkiGlossary/Carve_Zone.html - and then combine edging and pivoting to steer the ski through the rest of the turn. You're not wrong that leaning into the front of the boot will decrease turn radius, but that happens because your fore/aft balance is ahead of the foot, and the point of balance is where the ski pivots from. If you're centred, that's under the foot, so you can effectively balance and manipulate the platform. If you flex forwards, you end up with a < shaped turn as the tail slides out and you're not balanced on the ski.

You know it makes sense.

You don't need to be traveling at that much speed, even at 50kg to bend a 'stiff' boot.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

SMALLZOOKEEPER, yep - depends how much you move laterally - I'm pretty sure you could travel at 100mph without bending a boot too if you straightline something smooth enough and have no fear!

A snowHead

Errr
Ok you all sound clever people, but ..

I can have teh same centre of gravity with an agreessive forward lean, a more "centred" position, or being back on my heels - it all depends on where my head, arms and big(ish) belly is.

I think (fwiw imho) that in an agressive forward lean your body weight is being transferred through your muscles
In a "more centred" position you are standing more upright, so accordingly more weight is being taken by your skeleton/bones

So presumably a skier takes the stance that allows them to take the weight and dynamic forces how they wish - muscles or bones (which is presumably a function of how knackered you are for the average skier, and whether you are finessing the turn for teh super skier)

A snowHead

sev112, kind of, yeah - you're right that you can balance centred fore/aft regardless of how closed or open your ankles are, so regardless of your ankle position you can end up centred. However, a locked forward front ankle is like bottomed out suspension in a car - not really very good at doing much - and once one joint is at an extreme, the others have to move to extremes to compensate and counterbalance. Optimally, you'll have all the joints ready to move.

Be careful not to confuse forward lean in boots with the state the ankle is in throughout a turn - forward lean is something that's decided by biomechanics and desired outcome, so (I think, this is my own conclusion), racer's boots tend to have a ton of forward lean because they're always dealing with high energy, high edge angle turns and are intending to deal with icy race courses, not bumps or powder. Same reason they ski flex 150 type boots, too. It's not about "using muscles vs bones" though - that's the wrong conclusion from reasonable logic. Being stacked skeletally allows you to use muscles for performance, rather than fighting to stay in balance.

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That's fair

I mentioned last year that i went to a physio cos of a lump on my achilles - after much laughing at various quirks in my ability to walk properly and having no posterior cruciate ligament strength/reistance etc etc , he pointed out that i had NO mobility in my ankle. SO after i laughed back at him an dtold i was a skier and i could nt ski if i had no ankle mobility , and what did he know, he proved me worng.

So alongside the achilles exercises, i spent several months learning to mobilise my ankle.

And now i have much more ability to flex my ankles than i ever had before, and dare i say it, i can now finesse a turn whereas i alwasys use dto rigidly skid them. God knows whether the 2 are linked, but they pretty much happened concurrently/overnight

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SMALLZOOKEEPER, I put a cheeky disclaimer in that I was guessing at that bit, but don't most race/plug boots have heaps of forward lean and are usually quite stiff? I have very very limited experience of racing, besides coaching six year old girls in the E1 program here... Smile

rob@rar, I don't mind talking about the ankle being open/closed, I've just never been able to mentally intergrate any mention of "being on the front of the boot" since it's pretty much the same beast as being backseat from a performance pov. Different shades, but still, not something I want to encourage. Generally I like mobility excercises (jumping etc), spectrum training (how far back, how far forwards), etc. You could also talk about pushing the foot through the turn, etc. There're tons of ways to attack it, but no mobility in just one joint is pretty rare in my experience? I can't imagine anyone manages to bend some joints and not others to that kind of extreme.

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DaveC. Your link shows Fastman illustrating the range of carving curvature available passively, ie the variation of curve radius from ski almost flat to ski high on edge but not actively bent. That is a pretty small range. Anything else is steering. Fortunately I didn't have to ski on 60s pattern skis with almost no sidecut but plenty of old videos showing skiers carving these by actively bending the ski. How to achieve that? Some is dynamic - the centripetal force bending the ski as you change direction and the faster you are and the tighter the intended arc the greater the force on the ski so the smaller the arc. Are you suggesting that it should all be dynamic with no lean into the front of the boot to curve the front of the ski at the start of the turn? Should I not do this? And will my French instructors agree??

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rob@rar, is reduced/no ankle movement a symptom or the cause? Keep in mind though, I bet you teach 100x the volume of intermediate adults likely to fall into the awkward fore/aft balance group whereas I rarely teach that kind of level.

stiffdrink, that's why I started the thread really, because I have no idea if your french instructors will agree - but - why would edging the tip of the ski and allowing the tail to unweight assist in bending the ski? The CSIA say pressuring it from under the middle of the foot, engaging both tip and tail, and increasing edge angle will bend the ski as pressure builds.

Link to Fastman's article was to use his explanation for turn shapes that require steering - I wanted "steering angle" which is what the CSIA call it but he only mentions "skid angle", which sort of the same thing but a little more off topic.

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DaveC. I suppose the question is what do I pressure with? I've only got centripetal force and body weight. To me I can only use body weight for a very short time before the ski rebounds. I can lean forward and put more of my weight on the front of the ski and bend the front of the ski a bit to increase the curvature of the front but as you say this lightens the tail. So weight forward at start of turn then move back once turn initiated or am I fooling myself and making it too complicated?

You know it makes sense.

Most beginners and early intermediates I see or teach adopt an aft position unless they are encouraged to flex their ankles and feel their shins on the front of their boots. Many will adopt an under-ankle flexed aft position even after they've been taught what not to do. Open (plantar-flexed) ankles must be the biggest problem with untrained skiers, and closed (dorsi-flexed) ankles is the first thing I teach any beginner group class. Of course once they are taught to ankle flex the next big thing is movement, and they need to have learnt to flex in order to be able to extend. The only over-ankle flexed skiers I've seen are skiers who've had a bit of training and whose boots are too soft or who've learnt to ankle flex but haven't learnt the very next thing, which is to move.

In general racers don't have marked forward leans in their boots. I suppose some might but most that I've seen don't. If your boots have a marked forward lean, your ankle's ability to dorsi-flex is already maxed out before you've started. Not a good way of getting good fore-aft balance, of having a good range of suspension to deal with big Gs, of being able to apply pressure to engage the sides of your shovels, extension would result in back pressure on the cuff etc etc etc.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

slikedges, I see it a lot in more advanced skiers and instructors, and it often manifests as rotation and a trailing outside foot. Approx 4 of the 8 people on the CSIA3 course I took a few weeks ago had the same symptoms - generally a bit more subtle, in the sense of a slight fore movement to initiate rather than crushing the front of the boot - and some of the responses in this thread back up my assumption of the general idea people have got about flexing into their tounges to turn. Like I said above though, I don't have a big issue with working with the ankle joint to help teach fore/aft balance, I just dislike the pressuring the front of the boot cue. The thread's drifted a bit, but really I'm trying to work out if there's an argument for dorsiflexion to initiate turns.

Thanks for the clarification on the racer stuff - I'm very newbish to the race scene. Just had the idea that plug boots had more aggressive forward lean.

stiffdrink, my gut feeling is that's far too complicated (I'm not even sure what centripetal force is!), but that's what I'm trying to figure out!

A snowHead

DaveC, hanging on the boots al lthe way through a turn can indeed be a problem as you point out but imo is rarely, if ever, seen in early stage skiers. i agree with other comments about gettign the ankle joint moving to encourage movement in all the joints.

there is definitely a case for dorsiflexion to initiate turns, just tipping the skis and standing on them doesnt produce really tight turns. no need if you are making long radius turns and just riding the sidecut but if you have to tighten things up getting fore and or pivoting seems to be needed.

In an effort to get in the modern era wink

i was on some long fattish (for me) skis for a week and on hard pistes the only way i could make short turns on those battleships was to put in really big for aft moves and dorsiflex like mad at the start of the turn.

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

DaveC,

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skimottaret, rob@rar, interesting you bring up fat skis with relation to getting up front. I picked up some 188 Bro Stiffs with a cheeky 40m sidecut as my touring ski a couple of weeks ago, and to call them interesting on groomers is an understatement. Just tipping them on edge generally makes them diverge a little and make me think I might die. However, setting a strong steering angle and continuing to edge and steer works fine, they do rail turns. I had to think of the pivoting effort it requires to do that though, which is pretty different to flexing forwards in the boot. Surely you're actually initiating the turn with your upper body if you're having to flex forward to initiate?

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DaveC, excellent thread.

Fore balanced, levering against the front of the boot cuff, is not a place you want to hang out. It's an inefficient balance state that requires extra work. It also doesn't allow the foot to load properly from heel to ball, so it can operate at it's full capacity. And finally, it hyper loads the front of the skis, so the tails can get light and smear.

For leisurely skiing, where turn shape is not critical, staying always center balanced is the most efficient balance state to employ. Don't bother pressing into the front of the boot at all.

When a sharper, more dynamic turn is required, it's very helpful to move into the front of the boot and hyper load the front of the ski at turn initiation. It immediately gets the turn cranking strongly. Even here, though, you don't want to stay fore. Once the turn has begun, and you know you've achieved the sharp turn initiation you need, move back to center for the remainder of the turn. If you want to make the turn even more dynamic and fun, you can exit the turn slightly aft, but you'd better be ready to make a dynamic fore move as you transition into the next turn.

Ankle flexion is a powerful fore/aft balance management tool. It takes very little flexion or extension of the ankle joint to make a big change in one's fore/aft state of balance. You can experience that right in front of your computer, by simple standing up and flexing and extending your ankle, and seeing how little of it you have to do to move the pressure on the base of your foot back and forth fron heel to ball. No other joint articulation (knee or waist) provides as much bang for the movement buck.

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DaveC, dorsiflexion at turn initiation loads the front of the skis so (if the ski is tipped) the new edges engage harder and faster. If you keep doing it through the turn you can get the ski to whip round faster but the tails will get light and may skid out. However if you meet something unexpected or you don't manage the forces there'll be no dorsiflexion left in your ankles to cope with it, so it isn't easy to do well. That's why you'd normally get centre balanced again quickly for the rest of the turn and steer to refine the turn. AIUI a pivot or stivot entry is for when you've got no time/space or when you've purposely chosen a more direct line to the gate but have the skills to smear or feather onto your edges deftly and quickly.

On reflection, though lack of ankle dorsiflexion is very prevalent on mountains too, I suspect it's something seen more with beginners in the domes where I teach. I think maybe it's a consequence of a compressed learning time and being over-terrained(!). My impression is that most on-mountain nursery slopes are less steep than the current domes in the south of England and this results in a greater instinctive fear of the slope factor so many learners will naturally push away from it, off the balls of their feet onto the backs of their boots. Of course the "snow" is usually slower than on a mountain. I actively teach them the two feelings of pressing their shins forwards and pressing their calves back so that they can recognise the difference. I tell them that the best position is a centre-fore position but encourage them to press with their shins as I know they'll tend to end up back otherwise. This is before we get to movement, about 2 hours later! So this also means that perhaps not enough time is spent ironing in a central stance before more challenging stuff once again supervenes, psychologically pushing them back. Just my musings.

S'far as racers go, pictures usually show clearly the ankle flexion during phases 1 and 3 of the turn. Pictures in phase 0 are less commonly seen and pictures in phase 2 aren't usually from an angle to show ankle flexion clearly and I think I'm right in saying that it's in these two phases that ankle dorsiflexion is least. So it might appear that racers' boots have a marked natural forward lean when it's really more that photographs tend to show them when they are actively driving forwards into their boots (phase 1) or dealing with pressure (phase 3).

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DaveC, sorry i should have qualified "fat skis" they were long 191 mantras with not a lot of side cut and quite a stiff ski, felt like a fat GS ski and short turns were very tough to do without loads of pivoting or lots of fore aft.

As Hurtle points out/ found out Smile

you dont need huge ankle flex to affect fore aft

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Ankle flex/"Front of the boot"

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