A Personal Alignment Story

[Si]

Just my own story - an abridged version. Maybe it will be helpful to others.

I have been working on alignment since before I attended my first PMTS camp 4 or 5 years ago. This has included a number of alignment checks using various methods in addition to HH's on slope evalution. I have used under-binding cants and attempted to make "internal adjustments" to get properly aligned. I currently have footbeds from HH (done in fall '03) at which time I had an alignment check, including an in shop boot sole cant recommendaton, done. I currently ski on Dalbello boots with some limited lateral cuff alignment, forward lean, and boot board ramp angle adjustments.

With HH's boot sole canting recommendation I spent a lot of time on the snow using canting tabs to confirm this was right for me. The right side was pretty straight forward to lock in at the reccomended cant angle although it took some playing with cuff cant, forward lean and boot board ramp angle to really get it right. I permanently canted the boot sole early last season by placing canting strips under the external toe and heel pads, filling in with appropriate epoxy, and routing the toe and heel on top to DIN.

The left has been much more difficult to get aligned. The recommended canting still left me in a relatively unbalanced position. Without canting my one footed skiing was pretty well balanced but my alignment in turns was poor with inability to get on edge, a strong rotary component to my edging, and pressure centered through my heel. With canting my turn issues only improved slightly and the one footed balance was poorer. After over a year of working on this trying to find the right combination of boot sole cant, forward lean, boot board ramp, and cuff cant I was unsuccessful. So I decided to lock in one of the variables, boot sole cant (per HH's recommendation), and see if I could find a combination of others that would make this work. Just over the holiday I have finally made some good progress by punching out the medial ankle area on the boot to give improved lateral movement (for the second time) and using combinations of adjustment (which I swear I've used before). This included a need to move the cuff alignment as far away as allowed (not all that much) from the standard "neutral" position.

Bottom line to this long story (and this is a VERY condensed version) is that I am just now apporaching a reasonable alignment on the left. If I had to guess I would say the left boot sole canting is 1/2 (or maybe even a full) degree more than would have been optimal but I am not sure about this. I certainly won't take it down given the success I am finally having and the improvement I am seeing.

So, the lesson as far as I'm concerned is that alignemnt is not always very straightforward and that it may very well require a skier to take control of the process for themselves. This requires some reasonable confidence in one's skiing skills, a lot of information on alignment, and a great deal of trial and error.

Note: I spend all day touring in the backcountry yesterday (where I still use my alpine boots and an AT binding) and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the improved alignemnt I've recently discovered had quite an obvious effect on my "skinning" skills. I guess this is not really so surprising but I never even thought of this benefit.

[Biowolf]

Si:
Did you move the cuff to the inside or the outside of neutral.

[Si]

Biowolf,

While the record of what I did may be something to learn from I'm not sure the final cuff position is relative for others. Nevertheless here's the deal.

I have moved the cuff position from full inside to full outside over the course of my explorations. Depending on the other settings (I have only referenced those that I could fairly easily change given the boots I have) there were times when full inside worked best and times when full outside worked best. Interestingly, neutral was rarely the best position.

I did a pressure distribution study (a shop friend had a system for that) at one time and based on that moved the cuff to the far outside without any sole canting. This provided some improvement over just sole canting (recommended to be 1.5 degrees thick side out).

When I finally decided to go with the 1.5 degree thick side out sole canting I placed the cuff in neutral but wasn't very happy with the result. I felt like my knee was too far inside (A framing) on my right turns, I felt a lot of rotary when I pressured the ski, and my one footed balance on flat terrain was too far to the inside. At this point I moved the cuff to the far outside (in some indirect fashion counteracting the sole canting) and everything was moderately improved. When I then increased the boot board ramp to max and blew out the inside ankle of the boot, all of a sudden I moved my focus of pressure much closer to my arch (from its original location under the heel) and the "rotary" I was getting was greatly reduced.

Hope that helps somehow.

A footnote: When HH did my footbeds, the left heel was adjusted to meet the needs of some assymetry in my ankle movments. My suspicion is that moving the cuff canting to the outside may be working along the same direction in my case.

[Si]

With the improved alignment I have been achieving I have seen substantial improvement of my skiing in powder, crude, bumps, trees, etc. in addition to hard pack and groomed (not where I normally ski).

Anyone else care to comment on alignment effects (not just sole or binding lateral canting) in a wide range of snow and skiing environments away from the groomed?

[Harald R H]

Be careful not to get too carried away with alignment suggestions from personal experience or self analysis. Every person and skier has different individual leg and foot configurations.

There are far too many variables and combinations that can work for one person that will completely reduce performance for others. Unless you have the fact sheets from complete evaluations and assessments that are clued in about: tibia varum, eversion, knee tracking, boot selection and dorsi flexion, you can not make general comments on what might work for others, especially if you have found certain idiosyncrasies for your own needs.

For example, race boots rarely should have the cuffs tipped out, as it over loads the ski. Overloading makes the ski jump when on higher edge angles in loaded carved turns. Its also hard on the knees. (personal experience)

Lower level skiers may find tipping boot cuffs out effective, as it feels like they can get to the edge sooner. It also makes the skis feels like they grip better, but that doesn?t mean the body angles increase. In many cases it?s the reverse. The end goal is to increase body angles to achieve higher ski edge angles. A grippe edge feels good for awhile, but limits skiing development in the long run.

Similarly, we often find intermediate skiers like to be over canted because they feel better, immediate, edge grip, but this holds the body from developing angles. Sometimes you have to reduce canting to feel how far your body can tip before it achieves grip. Letting the body fall into the turn is an expert?s move. Having the confidence to allow the body to develop angles before strong edge engagement is what experts look for. Early strong edge engagement limits body inclination efforts as the skis become too reactive and resistant to further tipping effort.

It is for this reason Harb Ski Systems does on snow evaluations with almost all alignment changes in our skiers. The best way to get your boots and skis dialed is to attend a week long camp where a coach and alignment specialist skis with you everyday and after skiing makes any necessary changes. This makes a lot of sense when buying new boots. Get them right out of the box and keep them right for years to come.

By the way all of our Harb Ski Systems coaches are trained boot fitters, footbed technicians and alignment specialists.

[Guest]

In case I didn't make it clear enough I didn't post this topic to suggest the specifics of my case would at all relate to others. What I tried to point out was the complexity of the process and the fact that even a couple of on-slope evals., footbeds, and alignment analysis by Harb systems didn't leave me with alignment I was totally satisfied with.

The point is that I had to go further on my own to achieve the level of alignment I have now (which while I am satisfied still has room for improvement). I'm not especially focusing on the ability to edge and create angles here, either. I am talking about being able to go equally to each edge of the ski, ride the ski flat on falt terrain, have my legs aligned during a turn to support good musculoskeletal support, and easily find balance of my body over the skies. I am pretty confident that I have not done anything in my alignemnt that represents a crutch for lack of technique or ability.

I was very satisfied with the help I got from Harb Systems and you, Harald in both making positive changes in my alignement and learning a lot (no claim of being an expert here) about alignment. By far and away, your approach was the one the made the most sense and worked the best (and I did try suggestions from a number of others). I don't suggest that you couldn't have worked further with me to develop even better alignment than I have now, but I didn't have the proximity or necessarily the funding to work on my alignment with you to the extent that I have personally.

I am convinced that for SOME (not all) the alignment process is something they will either have to spend a lot of time and money on to work with an expert such as yourself for an extended period or they can continue (with a good start from appropriate professionals) to work on it for themselves.

[John Mason]

Similarly, we often find intermediate skiers like to be over canted because they feel better, immediate, edge grip, but this holds the body from developing angles. Sometimes you have to reduce canting to feel how far your body can tip before it achieves grip. Letting the body fall into the turn is an expert?s move. Having the confidence to allow the body to develop angles before strong edge engagement is what experts look for. Early strong edge engagement limits body inclination efforts as the skis become too reactive and resistant to further tipping effort.

As HH has pointed out, the Witherall book differs in many regards in alignment philosophy and this is one of those points. Where Witherall likes a slight knock need alignment as a goal for quicker edging, this is oppisite of what HH wrote above. (why would we need "help" to cause opposing edge engagement?!)

Harald, the goal I got from our alignment clinic day was neutrality. Easy one ski balance with neutral edging. Neither edge is trying to engage once the canting is correct. The other thing I took from that day at camp was that as people's balance ability and foot/ankle strength improve, canting should be reassessed because people can and do adjust what canting works best for them over time. I would assume at some point people stabalize around a particullar cant amount.

I know myself we've reassessed and adjusted slightly over the last year.

Fore Aft alignment can make the ski seem to engage late if it's back seat or the technique is back seat. This is all a very dynamic relationship and I value the 3rd party eyes to the level of necessity. There is no substitute for on-slope assessment. (just some of the many reasons why SBS has flaws - it's by definition an gross oversimplification of all the variables going on)

[Harald]

Si, this is not directed at you, as I have not seen you ski in three years. Perceived skiing technique and the way one likes to ski, is often a reason skiers set themselves up outside of the neutral ranges, but they may be creating limitations in development. I just wanted to point out that skiers should be aware of technical changes that develop from alignment experimentation. Alignment that feels good to them, might actually cause skiing limitations.

In response to the Witherall preference for aligning inside of center by 1 plus degree, which is about ? of an inch or more inside of center. This is a great place for PSIA steering advocates, as it really rotates the knees and causes the ?A frame? and skidded tails. In many cases an ?A frame? still looks like good angulation to PSIA instructors.

We see this often from the forward lean culprits such as Tecnica and Lange, especially when foamed with a Conformable liner.

[Si]

Thanks for the clarification, Harald. In my case, I locked in my canting per the recommended degree (by you in an alignment check in fall of last season) as I found I was working with too many variables to make good progress. After doing that, and finding successful further changes in boot board ramp angle and forward lean, I found myself a little bit too far inside. As you said and I agree, one shouldn't be aligned inside at all but just balanced. It was at that point I changed the cuff angle from neutral (the Dalbello I have doesn't let you move it very far without further boot modification) to slightly outside. This helped. Had I not canted my boot soles I would have just tried to reduce the thick side out canting by 1/2 of a degree.

BTW, this was all on the left. At this point, on the right (which I have always felt pretty good about) I would also move my leg out with an additional 1/2 degree of thick side in cant at this point if I could. But being within 1/2 degree on each side is quite satisfactory now that my fore/aft balance has improved on my left and the two side are nearer to symmetric. Obviously, I would love to have a way to simply change my boot sole canting on a permanent basis but it still seems like that's a ways off.

Back to my question, I would still like to hear form others about effects of good alignment away from the groomed, as I have noticed fairly substantial effects.

[alignment]

Si:
One thing I noticed and which doesn't make sense is that my alignment needs seem to change with snow conditions. On hardpack I seem to be off on my right boot and on soft snow on my left. And I ski on three different boots. The problem is always the same. The only time these issues disappared was when I demoed the Fischer boot. Off the shelf, I felt perfect.

[HRH]

Alignment Guest,

Your inconsistency with alignment might have a great deal to do with your footbed. If a footbed is too rigid, it will apply direct tipping pressure to the ski edge on hard snow, but then lock the foot/ankle out of everson, so the knee has to drive into the turn.

On softer snow the ski drops into the snow, the knee immediately moves into the turn so you get a knocked kneed position.

With a footbed that is designed with proper flexibility and movement for your foot and ankle mobility, you would be able to adjust the pressure to the edge with ankle and foot movement appropriately for the snow surface conditions.

[Harald Harb]

Sorry got lazy, my initials are HRH