Reverse Alignment Reeducation.

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Reverse Alignment Reeducation.

Postby piggyslayer » Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:30 pm

Reverse Alignment Reeducation.

I did not know how to name the tread, maybe there is a better name for what I am about to write. I hope people will find that interesting.

I have a fore-foot varus (pronation) and a bit pronated heel on my left and right foot. This make me effectively knock kneed and I tend to collapse my knees inwards when flexing.

As I have posted some 5 months ago I had problem with one legged turns on Harb Carvers, I also was far more 2-footed on Carvers that I wanted to be. I found it strange since in my current alignment I had no problem with doing one legged drills on skis (I attributed this to the fact that Harb Carvers have much higher platform and thus maybe more sensitive to alignment issues).

I tried whatever I could and eventually I gave up and started working on my alignment.
I added thin shims under the Harb Carver bindings on the BTE side. This did not help much.
I then added a fatter pieces creating canting of 3 degs and I started turning on one leg! After couple of days of training I changed the shim to smaller ? 2 degs, I am still turning!!!
After couple of days of skating I reduced the correction to 1 deg or less and I am still turning on one leg!
I think I will be able to go back to 0 degs and stay with my original alignment which is all in the footbed.

I believe, many of us knock kneed or bowlegged people need to ?experience? or get a taste on what it is like to be on the other side.
Let me know if you have a comment about this experiment.

Robert
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Canting

Postby Biowolf » Sat Dec 11, 2004 10:10 pm

PS, that is equivalent to my experience with canting. What feels good one day does not feel that great the next. Very risky to have ones boots ground (even diffrent snow conditions seem to require different cants). Alignment issues often go much deeper than stance (old injuries, scar tissues, misaligned spine etc.) and can not be solved by canting and footbeds, only by boody work.
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feet

Postby HRH » Sun Dec 12, 2004 10:03 pm

It's me, Harald, I didn't bother to log in!

Piggyslayer, you are discovering the most important information. You have to find your skiing needs and it is a matter of finding your feet. I learned to ski on leather boots and skied on leather for eighteen years. I won the Canadian junior national championships on leather boots. In those days you had to ski with your ankles and feet. When I changed to plastic in 1971, I was lost for a year. Today we continue to be confined by plastic boots compared to the leather where the feet and ankles are not so locked. Now with the Harb Carvers you are learning to ski with your feet, it will payoff when you get on snow.

I?m not saying there aren?t physical limitations that can be helped by alignment, but the Carvers will teach balance better than skis. When you keep the boot unbuckled on carvers you will need to invoke the kinetic chain and the ankle movement muscles. This type of action strengthens your skiing muscles and your balance.

I often try to change alignment on intermediate skiers on the slopes with no obvious change whether I put the cant on the inside or the outside. This tells me they are skiing with everything but what is inside the ski boots, the most important part. Their ankles and feet are numb. It is my job to wake up the feet and ankles, and teach them how to ski with the base of the kinetic chain. Skiers are often so muscle bound, so tight they don?t know how to let go. When ever someone is asked to do something in skiing they never do it enough. They hold back. I think it is often a matter of loosening up the skier before you get their best performance.

I just had that experience with three different skiers in the last week. We worked on relaxing to access the ankle, boot and body angles. We worked on taking time and becoming patient, with the beginning of the turns, what a difference in their skiing! They had huge breakthroughs. This is in the context of PMTS of course, because steering and rotary movements don?t allow the skier to relax, those movements create muscle activity detriment to patience and relaxation. Then the skier has to deal with the obvious over reactive movements and effects caused by steering and rotary, so they can?t possibly be patient.

Transitions in PMTS are so different than transitions in PSIA, can we explain why?
HRH
 

Postby piggyslayer » Mon Dec 13, 2004 9:34 am

Harald. Thanks. You know how I ski and know that I have learned to use big and small muscles all over (except for my foot) :wink: :( . It became an obsession for me to focus on my feet when using Harb Carvers. And it is so true that old habits die hard.

As you have stated in the book and in some posts lack of foot awareness is typical for folks (like me) with foot pronation problems and probably for other knock kneed skiers as well.

That may explain why ?over aligning? helped in learning 1 legged turns and why it is becoming easier (knock, knock) for me skate with weight on stance leg and unweighted free leg.
Hah, it is simple, skiing/Harb Carving with feet benefits if the kinetic chain parts above the feet are in right place.
To avoid limitation of alignment problems, going over the ?other? side for alignment allows my body to learn how else the kinetic chain can react.
It is soft of like having inertia in kinetic chain , even if I am aligned close to neutral the chain likes to do what it used to do.

This is an experiment on my part, I do not feel comfortable if other people start experimenting with adding shims their sets of Carvers because of me.

Hope (knock, knock, knock ?) I will try what I have learned on snow soon :D , still waiting for my first day on snow :( .

Robert
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Postby bud » Wed Dec 15, 2004 6:54 pm

I respectfully disagree that one could be undercanted by three degrees and "retrain" anything to be able to ski efficiently without fixing the cause. I also disagree that you can fix canting issues with footbeds! Changing the varus/valgus on footbeds does not create the same changes that canting does and it is easy to prove. If you were actually off by three degrees (which is quite a bit) and you made valid adjustments to your equipment it would take a few days of skiing to adapt to your new found edges. Once you had adapted you would have a difficult time going back to the way you were. I would suggest just go ahead and get a professional assessment and get it done then forget about it. You will ski better without trying and be able to focus on your "kenetic chain" or something else of importance to you. No one can argue the benefits of balancing your boots.
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Postby piggyslayer » Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:26 pm

I have currently about 1/2 (meaning half) deg canting (thin shim under my binding) and find it sufficient.
My 3 deg adjustment was an idea I had: idea to feel and learn how it is to be bowlegged and learn from it. This adjustment was temporary.
I am quite confident that my footbeds are all I need, I may benefit from minimal canting < 1deg and this is to be determined.

The whole point of this post was to explore what I learned by moving all the way to bowlegged stance and slowly moving back from it.

Bud, sorry, I do not understand your point.

FYI: I have expert made footbeds in my ski boots and I was aligned before I started the experiment.

Robert
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