Alignment question

[Tommi]

First of all, this is my first post here. I live in Scandinavia, Finland near Helsinki.

A couple a days ago I received the PMTS material I ordered, and I must say I'm VERY satisfied with the quality of the videos and books. The way Harald Harb describes skiing movements is (at least for me) very easy to understand. Thank you all who have been a part of the production for an excellent job.

To my question..
I am a powerful, 6ft 2"" bow-legged skier. I love to 'power-carve' with full edge hold. However, I have always had the feeling that something is wrong, because I have to use so much force in order to get solid edging. My knees hurt quite often.. I also ski easy slalom runs marked with short stubbys. Here I can feel the problem I have.. especially now when I looked at the PMTS books describing the importance of alignment.

For efficient and 'relaxed' short turns, its impossible for me to get a narrow enough stance. The (poor?) bootfitting I have had, has compensated my bow-leggedness with the boot sole 'canting' adjustment. It could be wrong..it should be done (mainly?) by orthotics supporting the inner footbed and/or canting the whole boot with shims, right?

But the main problem is that I do not fully understand the relationship between the 'hinge point' alignment, = ankle-knee-thigh being in-line versus having such a curved leg bone structure. The bow-leggedness I have comes 70% from the bone between knee and ankle (sorry do not remember that in english), not so much from the knee.

I just bought new boots, Atomic T11, which fits very well and has a good bottom shape with good inside support.

So what would be the correct way of aligning this kind of feet?? I heard there is some top-level specialist in Helsinki. He's helping at least some top athletes with their boots etc. ergonomics stuff. Maybe I should visit him.. A pity I can't easily visit any of your top level alignment centers. I sometimes have working trips to the US, but quite seldom. Is there any example in the net about aligning a bow-legged skier, I've only found some knocked-knee examples?

best regards to all and have fun skiing

Tommi

[LewBobSki]

Tommi, Do your Atomic boots have the removable sole lugs that can be tilted with washers? I know Atomic has this canting system on some of their boots.

Warren Witherell wrote a book in the early 90's called "The Athletic Skier" that steps you through alignment. Craig McNeil has also written some good articles on this topic. See if this link to one of Craig's article works: http://www.howtoski.net/sub_boots3.htm

You will need a carpenter's square, a felt tipped pen, a flat, level surface,some shorts and a friend to help you.

The basic idea is to find and mark the center of the knee mass. (I use a furniture clamp as a caliper but I am sure there are more sophisticated ways.) Mark the center seam at the toe of the boot with magic marker.

With your boots on, get in your normal skiing stance, with slight pressure on the front of the boot. Have your friend line the vertical edge of the square with the mark on right knee with the horizontal edge of the square on the floor at 90 degrees to the bootsole. Then have him (or her) mark the front of the bootsole where the square lines up. It should be 1/4 to 3/4 of an inch to the insideof the center of the bootsole. If you are not within this range, try shimming the outside edge of the boot until you get close to 1/2 inch inside of center. You can use a number of materials to shim. I have used washers or coins of different thicknesses. When you get the right alignment you know by the thickness of your shim where to start in your canting experiment.

This is a basic starting point. Witherell suggests getting insoles and fore/aft aligment correct before messing with canting. Repeat for left knee.

If you can get hold of "The Athletic Skier" it will systematically step you through the process using pictures and much better explanations. You should get your footbed made, and fore/aft alignment done before working on the canting.

Good luck, and I hope this is understandable to you. LewBob

[Harald]

Dear Tommi,

Welcome to the forum. Since I don?t have time these days to answer many questions, I am usually brief and to the point. First, Warren?s book is dated, by today?s standards. You will not find any information in it that is valid for your needs or for needs of skiers on shaped skis. Warren?s book is based on pre-shaped skis. The whole alignment world changed since then due to ski and boot development. In fact, many of Warren?s measuring techniques are flawed, even for that time period.

I am guessing since I can?t measure you over the internet that you have tibia varum, which is a curve in the tibia. In the past ten years, my company, Harb Ski Systems, has done over two thousand evaluations for alignment and we have skied with at least one thousand seven hundred of these people. We have aligned more skiers and evaluated the final results on snow beyond any other alignment process. We do this because we know skiers and we want to help them in the final solution. Tibia varum is common with skiers who think they are bow-legged.

The solution is to locate your center of knee mass and align it with a right angle from the knee to the boot. Your knee mass center should align approximately one centimeter outside the boot centerline for skiers like you. Your foot should be flat in the boot, without any material holding the arch of the foot. All world cup racers are using a soft arch footbed or no footbed. We do special modifications to boots for skiers who have rigid feet, which is the case with many bow-legged skiers.

The trend is clearly to a narrower stance for the top slalom skiers, you are on the right track. The only top ten slalom skier who still skis wide is Pranger and he is having difficulty scoring with the best. The Mario Matt days are over, that was a fad and a consequence of short term coaching. Those that followed that trend are missing the turn nature of shaped ski technique.

I hope this helps, try to experiment with pieces of plastic, credit card thickness, taped to one side of the boot sole. You may find your own best alignment with this method.

[Biowolf]

Harald, I cant help but noticing that there are some contraveral statements in your last quote. Both Pranger and Matt finished in the top ten in Aspen. Pranger was leading in 5 WC slaoms last year after the first run and Benjamin Raich (who won in Aspen) is not known for his narrow stance. By the way, are you "staatl. gepr. Schilehrer" ?

[Tommi]

Thank you very much for your replies.

I made the measurements yesterday already, and my knees are actually at approx 1 cm outside of the boot centers (the sole adjustments are at max out). It's not too bad to ski like this. I feel having a bit of outer edge pressure with narrow stance. Another thing I noted was the rather flexible binding installation I have in my slaloms (Salomon Equipe 3V with plates). I have to check the bindings, the tail pieces flex surprisingly much on the plate.

I absolutely agree with you Harald on the slalom world cup skiers. Our Kalle and many other of the best do not use excessively wide stance. In the last slalom race it could clearly be seen, Matt and Pranger are the only top ten racers with a very wide stance. Manni has tremendous force and is quite successful. Super-Mario seems to have problems.. Wide stance seems to result in more hip/mid body rotation which makes the edge change slow, see Pranger going thru the verticals, looks difficult..

I'll get the 1 degree shims to the boots from Atomic soon, and I'll experiment with those. If thats not enough, I'll make glassfibre fittings between the sole and the toe/heel pieces. I'll keep you informed.

Have fun,

Tommi

[Tommi]

Today I had a session at the local slope (hehe, it's the world famous snowboarding site called Talma ski, where most of the finnish snowboard pro's have started.. can you believe the height difference? Its 5500cm as the locals say, yes, 55m = 165ft. Now you know why i need slaloms with 11m radius ) However, its only 10miles away.

I concentrated on two things, release and 'relaxing' the stance foot. My grin was so wide after some runs that I was afraid people think that I have lost my mind.. Because I noted two dramatic things. First, I had had a small steering of the stance ski in the beginning of the turn. Second, I noticed that I have to press my stance ski knee with quite a force inside to get even angulation for both feet. I made several one ski release exercises as described in the book #2. Again, I felt the excess edge when beginning the release and not enough edge angle at the lower half of the turn.

I tried to see why this happens in the lift. As I stand on both skis I can see my kneecenters just at approx 1 cm out of the ski-centers. When I gently lift my other foot and stand on one ski only, my stance foot knee goes at least 5 cm inwards to a completely knock-kneed position! So when I have pressure on my foot, the knee moves inwards and I feel that I have to twist my ankle very much to get inside pressure. The right foot is much worse. I have to see a doctor who can verify that my right foot is shorter as well. So I think I need shims which take the 'unloaded' stance even further out!

Some asymmetry is there also, because
- I can make (shaky) turns standing on right ski only, on left ski I just cant get my weight outside even with all sorts of twists with upper body
- release from left turn to right is easier, I can make nice 'Gr?nigen' turns right but not left

To summarise all this (sorry for the long post) I think I can see very much hope for improvement for my future skiing. I just have to get that alignment to a reasonable level. After that I can proceed..

Harald, your training material literally opened my eyes! In just a couple of days..

[Tommi]

Current setup that feels a lot better:
- 1 degrees outwards canting with plastic shims inserted between the sole and the toe/heel pieces
- additional insole in the right boot, to make the fit better and raise the foot slightly (my right foot is slightly flatter and approx 3 mm longer..)

Again, on the hill yesterday the practise movements reveal problems in my physical condition: the release and transition from right to left seem to suffer mainly from unsymmetry in my center body movements, I am stiff!! Especially twisting my hips left.. I have accustomed to some pain in the lower back and pelvic area, which destroys my balance on the left foot.
After trying to 'feel my feet' as I am standing for example in the ski lift (symmetrical-POMA telescope) I note that I have my weight mainly on my right foot, most of the time..

I have reserved an appointment with my doctor about my feet and lower back pain problems. I have also located the top specialists in this business in Finland, The sports medicine center of the university of Helsinki. They have two specialists who are helping athletes with stance problems. They have several tools and cures for these problems, video analysis from movements, specialised orthotics etc.

Hey, I thought my passion was skiing! This is changing to to an episode of 'ER'

[Joseph]

Tommi,

When you add temporary canting strips between the boot and the binding, make sure that they are added only under the heel. The toe has no spring, so if you stuff much more than a half degree shim between your boot sole and the binding, you are more than likely out of din specs. Be careful. Otherwise you could be seeking out specialists for a far worse reason. Heel only. Bear in mind that this is going to be slightly different alignment from canting both the toe and heel. Usually it is about 1/2 degree on the weak side using a temporary shim under the heel. So you may need to cant 1.5 degrees to get your desired 1 degree result.

Also be careful with what the so called specialists tell you about alignment. Doctors are great when you need surgery or are sick, but very few of them understand the mechanics of skiing, the geometry of a ski boot, or the question of dynamic alignment on skiis. If you really want to have your alignment and footbeds done right with 100% confidence, you need to make a plane reservation and we can fit you in at the alignment center.

[tommy]

Tommi, I'm knock-kneed, and have found canting (by duct-taping pieces of old credit cards) on the inside of the boot heel very helpful.

An other thing I've found useful to assess my canting is one ski skiing: when that goes well, i.e. I'm able to make controlled turns in both directions on single ski, the canting seems to be "just right".

Cheers,
Tommy

[Tommi]

Tommi,

When you add temporary canting strips between the boot and the binding, make sure that they are added only under the heel. The toe has no spring, so if you stuff much more than a half degree shim between your boot sole and the binding, you are more than likely out of din specs. Be

I did not do that. The boot has toe/heel pieces screwed to the bottom of the sole. I put the shims in between. See (atomic site is flash, could not make a link there..):
http://www.alpineskicenter.com/Atomic-T ... 21010.html

Tommi,
Also be careful with what the so called specialists tell you about alignment. Doctors are great when you need surgery or are sick, but

I'm afraid you're right, in many cases. However, the sports medicine center has vast experience on all kinds of sports and they were recommended by a colleque of mine, an expert skier. I'm optimistic..

[Tommi]

I am guessing since I can?t measure you over the internet that you have tibia varum, which is a curve in the tibia... Tibia varum is common with skiers who think they are bow-legged.

I have continued evaluating my stance and alignment. I've studied many sites about the leg bone structure, the joints and possible problems.
I've made a couple of changes to the boots and now I think I have a setup which is very close to optimum.
I have made lots of measurements and 'tests' with my feet. I definitely have the tibias bent, so Harald's guess was surprisingly good based on my previous short description. My findings so far are:
- tibia varum, medium on left foot, medium+ on right foot
- without boots, feet at normal stance, when I stand up, the knee centers are approx out 0..-1 deg; when I get lower, approx at the forward lean angles of the boots (knees on top of toes), my knees track inwards to approx +1..+2 deg; when I get even lower, so that my heels begin to rise, my knees get even closer
- if I do a squat with my feet pressed together, there is approx 1.5 cm gap when standing tall, and the knees touch each other when my knees are approx 2in forward of my toes, from vertical plane
- my left ankle has lateral movement and lots of muscle symmetrically to both sides
- my right ankle is very unsymmetrical, almost all movement is to 'outside' , due to the curved tibia? I have very little muscle power to rotate my right ankle laterally 'inwards' (LTE rises)
- my right heel is not giving good support laterally, it's sort of 'collapsed' from the outer/back area

From this I have readjusted the boots so that
- I removed the cants
- made more mods to the shells, so that the cuffs can be aligned correctly, the boots were problematic as the adjustment was not enough, so i made new adjustment plates to the cuff alignment screws

I'll have orthotics made in the sports medicine center after my vacation next week.

But one question remains, what can be done to compensate the tracking, which seems to be a bit to the inside (I feel this especially on the right foot, I lose grip more often on the left turns )? My new boots are stiffer, and based on very short experience I think these are better than my old boots, which were softer.

I would also like to hear from other skiers here, who have tibia varum or otherwise similar alignment problems like I have. Any other hints or ski exercises that reveal other potential problems for skiers having feet like mine.

New skis coming tomorrow and 1 week vacation beginning on sunday..yeaah! Skiing, of course!

Have fun,

TommI

[Harald Harb]

Tommi,

The experience we have with tibial varum and long legged folks with the Atomic boot you are using is; we had to tilt the skier/boot further toward bow legged (tilt the medial , big toe side, high) to achieve better edging balance, due to the rotary nature of that model.

[Tommi]

I'll experiment, thanks for the tip!