MissySki
Angel Diva
So I have an A-frame, and always have. There was one pair of boots that we corrected for it with a lift and sole canting years ago. My pictures and video looked so pretty without the A frame.. but I had some other problems in that boot and ended up with really bad knee strain by the end of the season. I wasn't sure if fiddling with the canting was part of the knee strain issue, and it ended up deterring me from wanting to do it again with the next pairs of boots I went into. Fast forward to now, and I have generally been told over the years that I ski with matching angles on my skis and have just adapted to compensating for my knock knees when skiing.
Recently I skied with an instructor I haven't skied with for years, he is very race background oriented and is the person who pushed me to deal with my alignment issues way back when. He once again told me that I obviously have managed to compensate for my knees in my skiing and do it well, I tend to stick one knee behind the other in my turns to allow the room necessary to feel and adjust my edging on the downhill ski. Without doing that my knees likely would just get in each other's way and hit before I could get as high on edge as I want to. I don't consciously do this, but looking at some of my instructor recorded video from Taos, that's exactly what it does look like. His message was basically that he thinks I would benefit from revisiting the alignment work, even if it's just trying out some temporary solutions to see how it goes, because even though I can compensate for my knees it will never allow me to ski as efficiently as if I didn't have to use those extra movement patterns.
It has gotten me also thinking about bumps over the years and my struggles to improve there. And I wonder.. could this be an issue that has slowed the speed of which I'm able to progress there? I'm thinking about steeper tighter bumps where you want your feet a bit closer together and you are using faster movements.. how could it not cause more of a struggle if my knees are kind of fighting for space in tighter quarters? Or maybe it doesn't make as much of a difference since you also aren't trying to edge as much there anyway?
I'm just curious if anyone else has thought about this stuff with an A-frame and how it does or doesn't inhibit one's skiing in different terrain types. And also, if you have had canting done for an A-frame are you happy with it? What process was used to determine how much canting to do? Was it all measurements with your bootfitter, or did you do a bunch of trial and error with shims or tape etc. on your bindings on snow to start? Thinking about making permanent modifications to my boot soles gives me a bunch of anxiety.. but I also would love to rid myself of the A-frame issue so it's not a variable I have to think about or subconsciously make inefficient adjustments for.
Recently I skied with an instructor I haven't skied with for years, he is very race background oriented and is the person who pushed me to deal with my alignment issues way back when. He once again told me that I obviously have managed to compensate for my knees in my skiing and do it well, I tend to stick one knee behind the other in my turns to allow the room necessary to feel and adjust my edging on the downhill ski. Without doing that my knees likely would just get in each other's way and hit before I could get as high on edge as I want to. I don't consciously do this, but looking at some of my instructor recorded video from Taos, that's exactly what it does look like. His message was basically that he thinks I would benefit from revisiting the alignment work, even if it's just trying out some temporary solutions to see how it goes, because even though I can compensate for my knees it will never allow me to ski as efficiently as if I didn't have to use those extra movement patterns.
It has gotten me also thinking about bumps over the years and my struggles to improve there. And I wonder.. could this be an issue that has slowed the speed of which I'm able to progress there? I'm thinking about steeper tighter bumps where you want your feet a bit closer together and you are using faster movements.. how could it not cause more of a struggle if my knees are kind of fighting for space in tighter quarters? Or maybe it doesn't make as much of a difference since you also aren't trying to edge as much there anyway?
I'm just curious if anyone else has thought about this stuff with an A-frame and how it does or doesn't inhibit one's skiing in different terrain types. And also, if you have had canting done for an A-frame are you happy with it? What process was used to determine how much canting to do? Was it all measurements with your bootfitter, or did you do a bunch of trial and error with shims or tape etc. on your bindings on snow to start? Thinking about making permanent modifications to my boot soles gives me a bunch of anxiety.. but I also would love to rid myself of the A-frame issue so it's not a variable I have to think about or subconsciously make inefficient adjustments for.