MA Request for East Coast skier

Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby HighAngles » Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:51 pm

go-large - my concern is with your incorrect use of the terminology and the real-world net effect of these changes. It seems that you are conflating cuff alignment and true canting done at the boot sole. These are not interchangeable. I believe that you probably already know this, and yet you are referring to shoving trail maps into a boot cuff as canting. As a temporary improvement, the trail maps "fix" can be used and has been used to help a blatantly poor stance alignment issue while on-slope, but it should be recognized as a limited solution to a larger problem. The goal of cuff alignment is to match the boot cuff angle to our lower leg anatomy, while canting is to bring our center of knee mass into alignment over our feet. Using cuff changes to modify how the ski interfaces with the snow will not actually achieve full alignment (at least not how it is defined and understood here).
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby go_large_or_go_home » Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:22 pm

HighAngles: Please show me where I used the word CANT....or indeed any other words other than alignment..

You are correct, I do know the difference and I understand the process of ski boot alignment..

At no point did I state anything other than this was a quick fix to address a very common issue that plagues a huge number of skiers..I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I hadn’t had real success with this temporary fix and discussed it with DH and Walker..getting somewhere close to neutral is better than ignoring it. Getting your boots properly aligned is an expensive choice to make especially going in blind to the benefits AND no experience with pmts skiing..so why deny anyone the chance to get the benefit of of getting somewhere close?

I deliberately kept the language I used very non specific other than to describe an overall issue and a fix. I can’t speak for the website or the photos that I posted - not my work, just used to show demonstrate the idea..
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby Robert0325 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:58 pm

RyanAllen wrote: They aren't doing many of the ACBES drills at the camps I attended recently, and a few campers (myself included) had a very difficult time unlearning the lift and tip. We were told to stop doing that, and I quote, "lifting is not tipping." The lift and tip will also tend to trigger a extension of the inside leg, also very difficult to unlearn (personal experience here!).

Wow, this is contentious. I'd like to hear what Max101 would make of it?
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby h.harb » Fri Jan 15, 2021 5:43 pm

Ryan said: No disrespect intended to the forum member, but I would not do that. Your cuff alignment will be completely FUBAR'd among a myriad of other unintended consequences. If you can't get to HSS for help, start with the Alignment Manual and related video's. At least then you will be better educated to try and find a local shop that can help. Or better yet, just go to HSS anyway.


Quote by Ryan Allen, totally correct, there are no quick fixes, and you may and will be doing yourself and others on this forum more harm by suggesting this. If the techs on the world cup and the athletes themselves can't figure it out cuff direction; even at times for Mikaela Shiffrin, how do you expect to be able to do it yourself? You may have stumbled on something for yourself, but everyone is different and the degrees of change, even the smallest are crucial.

I also point out (in my first book) with PMTS and poor alignment you can still make progress over any other systems, plus you are going in the right direction with PMTS movements. To suggest that PMTS can't be done without perfect alignment is absolutely incorrect and an insult. There are skiers on the world cup that use PMTS movements, however aren't even close to perfectly aligned. Without these PMTS movements, they wouldn't be there, to begin with.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby h.harb » Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:31 pm

RyanAllen wrote: They aren't doing many of the ACBES drills at the camps I attended recently, and a few campers (myself included) had a very difficult time unlearning the lift and tip. We were told to stop doing that, and I quote, "lifting is not tipping." The lift and tip will also tend to trigger a extension of the inside leg, also very difficult to unlearn (personal experience here!).

Wow, this is contentious. I'd like to hear what Max101 would make of it?

Although this may sound somewhat controversial yes, maybe not quite contentious. I will explain how comments like this arise. This is common that when someone reaches a certain level of PMTS and they don't understand on their own what the goal is or the next step is so they overplay what they learned initially (or remembered) which brought them to a higher level. First, if you read or watched/studied my book 1 and book two videos & books, you will have encountered a very crucial point in an expert skier's development, which has been in the same place in our system for over 15 years. "Lifting is learning, flexing to release is an expert skier."

Everyone who comes to our camps the first time doesn't have a good understanding or ability to change their balance from one foot to the other. In fact, they don't know how to do it. In this case, you have to teach the steps that develop "balance transfer", this is most important and your first step to evolving to PMTS and Expert Skiing. To create awareness you have to lift one foot to get yourself all the way over to transfer to the other foot.

We have not abandoned lifting; we have in fact refined it and modified it slightly to improve the results. You are correct to point out that we explain that "lifting isn't tipping". However, we never taught lifting as a separate movement. (You have to go one step at a time) People who are new to transfer and balancing hesitate because they are unsure; so they freeze after lifting. Therefore; the reason we have skiers incorporate lifting and tipping as one movement, which we do from the beginning, this approach integrates and simplifies movements, but many skiers don't practice the combination correctly on their own. "Practice creates habits, only perfect practice creates good results."

Just as an example, we often have to re-teach getting the old stance ski off the ground with the top-level groups because their lifting isn't sufficient. Lifting through "retraction" is the highest level of skiing. If for your own skiing or others in your group, you needed more to put more emphasis on tipping, that's normal and that has always been the goal.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby h.harb » Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:39 pm

go-large - my concern is with your incorrect use of the terminology and the real-world net effect of these changes. It seems that you are conflating cuff alignment and true canting done at the boot sole. These are not interchangeable. I believe that you probably already know this, and yet you are referring to shoving trail maps into a boot cuff as canting. As a temporary improvement, the trail maps "fix" can be used and has been used to help a blatantly poor stance alignment issue while on-slope, but it should be recognized as a limited solution to a larger problem. The goal of cuff alignment is to match the boot cuff angle to our lower leg anatomy, while canting is to bring our center of knee mass into alignment over our feet. Using cuff changes to modify how the ski interfaces with the snow will not actually achieve full alignment (at least not how it is defined and understood here).


Absolutely correct!
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby h.harb » Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:47 pm

Campers and readers the worst thing you can do with your boots and your alignment is self-medicate! You are trying to do what a layman would do; giving cancer treatment advice to his parents.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby go_large_or_go_home » Sat Jan 16, 2021 3:55 am

h.harb wrote:To suggest that PMTS can't be done without perfect alignment is absolutely incorrect and an insult.


Certainly not what I meant and I sincerely apologise if that is how it read.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby Marc » Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:34 am

Could the Fischer SOMA boots (duck stance) exacerbate Daves A-frame?
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby h.harb » Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:12 am

Without alignment, pmts is almost impossible, especially if you fall into the the ‘majority‘ of skiers issues with boot alignment.


I don't want to belabor this but here is the direct quote from your post.

Advising people to stuff trail maps into their boots that worked for you, won't work for 90 percent of skiers. You were lucky if it worked for you. In almost every case cuff adjustment isn't boot alignment. The steps include involved management and evaluation to get the system right and adjust it. This requires a complimentary amount of under boot canting that is coordinated and properly evaluated. If you move the leg by pushing it one side or the other at the cuff, you will make the under boot alignment worst in almost every case. Which would compromise the skier further. Every boot is different and every person's leg is different. Therefore a personal success is great to be happy about, but not universally applicable. Suggesting or recommending this as a quick fix for skiers isn't appropriate and can be dangerous if it compromises the skier's ability to turn differently than they are accustomed to.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby h.harb » Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:26 am

Fischer Soma boots have always been very difficult to be able to ski correctly right out of the box. They require extensive alignment and cuff adjustments. Sometimes the boot doesn't allow for enough adjustments for the needs of the skier.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby go_large_or_go_home » Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:01 pm

Bollocking accepted...

Poor choice of words on my part.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby davey » Mon Jan 18, 2021 7:34 pm

Regarding the Fischer SOMA boots, the reason I wanted to try this boot was because I'm significantly duck stanced. It's pretty obvious when I sitting on the chairlift and I observe most other skiers on the lift with their skis dangling at a slight angle to each other, while mine want to go like 75 degrees apart. When my my feet are parallel, hip width apart and I flex my knees, my knees really want to come together. Only when my feet are angled apart do my knees track straight.

The funny thing is that I'm actually bowlegged outside of skiing. Standing straight up with my feet together, there is about one inch separating my knees. When I ski, however, I become knock-kneed, I suspect because of my duck stance feet.

I've experimented with under the boot canting, cuff canting and also wedging under my footbeds but it never really fixed the issue. Many years ago, without knowing any better, I got a custom footbed which was made of hard cork. After finding PMTS, I now know this was a big mistake and of course it didn't help me. These days, I obviously don't want to go to just any boot alignment shop. I hope to one day to get a PMTS certified alignment, but I wonder if my legs can even be helped.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby h.harb » Tue Jan 19, 2021 4:31 am

Yes, it can be helped and I've coached numerous racers that made it to the World Cup with duck-footed stances. Of course, as I always say, "without a complete analysis of all the boot possibilities getting just enough information to be dangerous", that is not the way to go.

Helluvaskier has been doing well on his own, but he has studied, and with my advice, now for almost 15 years, it has worked out. Same with Reilly McGlashan, after I gave him advice in posts about 8 years ago, which made a huge difference, he came and took the Alignment course.

One trip to our shop can cut that time down to one session. I would start in a neutral boot like a head raptor, not a Fisher. Salomon and Dalbello are out. Lange and Nordica can be ok. Atomic is easy to work on but they have to fit well out of the box, or they are a fitting nightmare in the 150 race boot. All of this depends on the evaluation. The list of determining the boot for an individual is long. Do you have a rigid foot or a flexible foot, is it wide at the ankle bones or narrow and straight, how much range of motion does it have, is there low ankle tibial varum, high tib varum, is there tib torsion? It is really hard to figure all this on your own. Determining all this makes boot selection more relevant and successful. Each boot is different, last width, flex, forward lean, ramp, then there are binding choices, ramp, and delta. The variables are endless. So it's not an easy answer.
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Re: MA Request for East Coast skier

Postby HeluvaSkier » Wed Jan 20, 2021 8:05 am

h.harb wrote:Fischer Soma boots have always been very difficult to be able to ski correctly right out of the box. They require extensive alignment and cuff adjustments. Sometimes the boot doesn't allow for enough adjustments for the needs of the skier.


I think it is important to reiterate Harald's comment here. Out of the box, Fischer cuffs are strong (e.g. at neutral, they aren't very neutral), and their insert system, while a great solution, has minimal range of adjustment. Compare that with Lange/Rossi WC boots or Nordica WC boots, and you'll see that these brands (and Tecnica's WC boot and Dalbello's WC boot by extension) have more than 2x the cuff adjustability of Fischer boots out of the box. What's worse, is the SOMA stance in Fischer boots, causes cuff adjustment to be extra sensitive, requiring absolute precision, often outside of the available range of adjustment.
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