BLOG

Here’s Our Stance, What’s Yours? – By Gunner Wolf – Granite Chief, Truckee

There are many ingredients to a properly fit ski boot. One of the most underrated and overlooked aspects are stance or balance which is both lateral canting and fore and aft balance. Being canted and balanced correctly not only improves your skiing experience but also helps your comfort level tremendously because you are now standing in the boot where the manufacture intended you to be, not pre-loading the boot with your foot sliding to the outer sides of the boot. In this article I will be discussing lateral canting as well as fore and aft balance, or stance.

First, it is imperative that the skier is fitted with a custom unweighted insole built with the foot in a neutral stance. After the insole is built and installed into the boot, the method commonly used to correct the lateral stance issues is called cuff alignment, which utilizes the movement of the upper cuff of the boot and aligns it with the skier’s leg shaft or a neutral cuff cant. The neutral cuff cant is the preferred method in most situations, but many times there is more correction required than normal. When the knees are severely rotated to the inside or out, we use the movement of the cuff to forcibly move the lower leg in or out to achieve our goal of the proverbial flat ski. Many times just moving the upper cuff is all that is needed, however we find that most of the time, the cuff is not adjusted enough and more adjusting done.

Next, in order to determine if any more correction is necessary, we use our laser guided balance system along with cant strips placed under the boot sole at varying degrees to mimic the feel of a flat ski. Years ago we found that what a plumb bob or laser showed to us was more of a reference for us to follow to see what additional correction might be needed, NOT the perfect answer to balance a boot.

We also found that what the skier feels is the bottom line and what we are looking for in a shop situation is when the skier is on a hard flat surface with feet skiers width apart, they should be able to roll the boot in on edge without forcing it, and it should then return to a flat boot without slapping; thus, creating a smooth transition to get on edge and back to a flat ski. Our technique enables the skier to feel what we are trying to achieve, and also allows them to understand what canting or balancing a boot really consists of. Once the cuff has been adjusted, if further adjusting is still required, we use one of two techniques.

The first technique is the planing of the boot sole. More often than not this method takes the boot sole down to be incompatible with the binding tolerances which then requires a lifter, which is normally 3mm thick, and is installed on the bottom of the boot. Next, the top of the heel and toe lugs must be cut with a special router bit designed to cut the boot lugs bringing it back to D.I.N binding tolerances. The lifts not only bring the boot back to binding tolerances, but they also increase the skiers leverage, putting them a little up off of the ski which is something that many coaches like. Here at Granite Chief, we lift and plane ski boots on a regular basis. However, the only drawback to this technique is that if the canting is not quite right and or the skier does not like the way the boot skis, you have basically locked the skier into a situation that is difficult to correct.

The second technique we use here at the Chief is a correction technique called posting, which is achieved by adhering a high density beveled material to the bottom of the custom insole, in turn moving the foot inside the boot. The advantage of this technique is that the correction can be skied with, and changed later on if necessary. We find this technique especially useful for young racers who are still growing, because the cant can change several times throughout the season, so they won’t be locked into a planed boot with nowhere else to go. We see the scenario way to often where a skier or racer either has too much edge with a chattering in the turn, or they can’t get on their edge and their ski keeps washing out. Once any needed changes are made using the posting of the footbed, and things are skiing correctly, the posting can be duplicated in planing the sole of the boot.

This then brings up two schools of thought. You can move the boot to the foot by planing, or move the foot to the boot by posting. The latter gives the boot fitter much more flexibility in fine tuning the lateral balance of the boot and obtaining that flat ski. So, maybe the answer is a little of both, especially when working with large degrees of correction which sometimes will lead to the skiers biomechanics and physiology to actually fight the over-correction. So when it comes down to it, what seems apparent as to the amount of correction as per plumb bob, laser, etc., is too much. However, this is easily adjusted when using posting material. Another school of thought we have used is to get the skier close to being balanced as possible through planing the boot and then finishing the process with posting the footbed.

For individuals who aren’t familiar with the proper feel, we are able to demonstrate what an unbalanced boot feels like by having them stand on a flat hard surface and then adding lifts to varying degrees under their heels or toes, duplicating what too much pressure or too little pressure feels like on the ball of the foot. By doing this we are looking for equal weight or slightly forward pressure between the ball of the foot and the heel. Too much pressure forward makes the initiation phase of the turn difficult, thus burying your tip; while too little pressure makes the initiation phase difficult, while putting you in the back seat at the finish of the turn. When it comes down to it, skiing will be the true test of the fore and aft balance. Luckily, it is very easy to change this stance if after you go skiing, it still doesn’t feel right to you. We have also been told that it even feels better to walk in when the boot is balanced correctly.

Your NASTC coach’s expert eye will be able to help you determine if you are a candidate for boot balancing.  This is one of the equipment pieces that we look at during all of our NASTC camps.  The NASTC Portillo camp will be the next opportunity to have this looked at, so if you need work done, you can get it dialed in before next season begins.