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How to get rid of a one legged A- frame

contesstant

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Absolutely, yes. It would appear that my current alignment of the boot cuffs are for a bow legged person.. I have no idea why that would be the case though. Seems like that would be if someone were trying to correct me versus following my leg angle. Do some boot fitters do that? Everything I've read says NOT to do this, so it seems weird that they are set this way.
I'm surprised your fitter either 1) set them that way or 2) didn't even look at them.
It's worth messing with them for sure. There should be one on each side of the boot, and you'll want to turn both screws to tilt inward more. It's amazing how much a tiny bit can be felt. The other option is of course to visit a fitter again and ask them to check your cuff alignment and adjust it as needed.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
I'm surprised your fitter either 1) set them that way or 2) didn't even look at them.
It's worth messing with them for sure. There should be one on each side of the boot, and you'll want to turn both screws to tilt inward more. It's amazing how much a tiny bit can be felt. The other option is of course to visit a fitter again and ask them to check your cuff alignment and adjust it as needed.

I agree!! Like I said, my current fitter didn’t do these boots, but I went to a very highly recommended person who others on this site use and love. So I am very surprised, and not sure how this would have happened. It was several years ago now, and I just don’t recall if we did an alignment analysis once my footbeds were made etc. No one else has worked on the boots at all since then except my regular fitter stretched the fifth metatarsal area a bit for me last season. To do that he had me in just the shells and he was like your cuff looks really off.. Then he had me get into the full boot with liners and buckled everything and was again like yeah this alignment isn’t right, and look how much it’s squeezing the inside of your calves.. I should have just let him adjust it then, but I really didn’t want to start tinkering with things, apparently this sentiment isn’t always the best. That’s when he was like okay you can try it on your own if you want when you’re ready. I really didn’t realize how off the cuffs looked though until I put them on today and stood in front of a mirror, now I can’t ignore it because they very obviously do not follow my lower leg angle at all. Let the overthinking commence! Lol I figure I’ll try and move it and if it still doesn’t seem right I’ll have a fitter do it. It’s tough now because my fitter of choice is in VT, but I’ll be pretty exclusively in ME this season. However, the cuff adjustment certainly shouldn’t be rocket science, so it doesn’t really matter who does that if it gives me trouble. I also need to replace a Hotronics heating element in one boot so I need to head to a shop anyway.
 

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
....plain as day in a mirror, especially without ski pants on, my boot cuffs point in the exact opposite direction as my legs do. So I was wondering, could this contribute to having a harder time rolling to the outside edge on my right leg where things are seemingly more pronounced? ....

Yes. Poor cuff alignment messes with everything in your skiing.

The cuff should line up with your lower leg. Boots have hinge joints on the outsides of the ankle area that should allow the cuffs to be set permanently by someone (not the person standing in the boot) to match the tilt of your lower legs.

Once done, this setting should not move on its own. This alignment of the cuff to the lower leg is sometimes called "cuff canting." When called that, it gets mixed up with "boot sole canting." That's done when other things have not worked to fix problems in your skiing. Not all bootfitters do boot sole canting. It involves putting wedges onto the underneath part of the boot, to lift either the inside of the whole boot or the outside. The lugs that fit into the bindings then need to be ground back to their proper size, so doing this can be an overnight operation. Since these two things are entirely different, people who are particular with their words call what we are talking about "cuff alignment" instead of cuff canting.

Cuff canting is one of the first things done in bootfitting, totally standard, and it's done right after a custom footbed is put in. It sounds like your original bootfitter wanted to do it, but in the name of "the customer is always right" he gave in to your caution and worry about tinkering with the boots and didn't do it.

Note: If you start out without a custom footbed, it's still done, and it might need to be redone after you get one. Looking in the mirror every season every now and then will let you know if the cuff alignment has gotten out of whack somehow.

Cuff alignment definitely impacts your tipping. You can stuff folded up trial maps down into the sides of the cuffs until you get this fixed, to stop the "loose steering wheel" effect of the cuff gaps. People will disagree on whether to stuff them on the tight side - to move the cuff/leg, or on the loose side - to fill the gap. Trial-and-error will tell you which works best for you.
 
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liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Right. When you buy boots, the boots often have the appropriate wrench to adjust the cuff alignment in a little plastic ziplock bag stuffed down in the boot box. The wrenches look really weird. I can't find a picture online, sorry.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
Cuff canting is one of the first things done in bootfitting, totally standard, and it's done right after a custom footbed is put in. It sounds like your original bootfitter wanted to do it, but in the name of "the customer is always right" he gave in to your caution and worry about tinkering with the boots and didn't do it.

This is true of my current boot fitter I went to last season for some additional 5th metatarsal stretching. I started really improving on my bump skiing (for me, I still have plenty to improve on there) after I removed my heel lifts early last season, and I was afraid of throwing something else out of wack by tinkering with the cuffs at that point.

However, I don’t understand why the original person who fit me, made me new footbeds, and sold me these boots didn’t do the alignment at that point..
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
If you happen to have any Ikea knock-down furniture, hex wrench from those will likely work

Hmmmm I did buy an Ikea shelving unit earlier this year for ski gear/clothing organization in my closet. Goodness knows where the little tools went though, I’ll have to look around a bit more.
 

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Not all bootfitters are equal. Not all bootfitting sessions are equal.
Even the highly recommended ones do people wrong sometimes.
Ideally, building a strong relationship with a competent bootfitter near you is best, so that the bootfitter remembers not only your name but what was done to the boot last time, who takes an interest in your stories about your skiing situation, and who is committed to helping you ski better.

But that doesn't usually happen, sadly.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
Not all bootfitters are equal. Not all bootfitting sessions are equal.
Even the highly recommended ones do people wrong sometimes.
Ideally, building a strong relationship with a competent bootfitter near you is best, so that the bootfitter remembers not only your name but what was done to the boot last time, who takes an interest in your stories about your skiing situation, and who is committed to helping you ski better.

But that doesn't usually happen, sadly.

This is why I’m pretty much in analysis paralysis to pick a bootfitter for AT boots too lol. My fitter doesn’t carry the boots I’m most interested in for that purpose, and I met with someone else who has a lot of options for me and seemed great, but he’s even further away in Northern Vermont. So I’m like do I go there and potentially have issues getting back there if I need tweaks later, or do I try and find someone closer to my home or mountain that has the boots I’m most interested in for that? I really wish I was someone who had great luck with boots right out of the box! Haha
 

contesstant

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Not all bootfitters are equal. Not all bootfitting sessions are equal.
Even the highly recommended ones do people wrong sometimes.
Ideally, building a strong relationship with a competent bootfitter near you is best, so that the bootfitter remembers not only your name but what was done to the boot last time, who takes an interest in your stories about your skiing situation, and who is committed to helping you ski better.

But that doesn't usually happen, sadly.
So true about the highly recommended ones can do wrong at times. I paid a lot to go see one in Park City that was highly recommended. I ended up ripping out everything he did, and going with different boots.

Missyski, you're probably onto something here with the cuff alignment. I'm sure you're anxious to get out and try things out!
 

Skisailor

Angel Diva
This is sad, funny and true all at the same time. One of the first flights I took after 9/11 I had my cuff cant allen wrench in the bottom of my knapsack. Security confiscated it!! It was a teeny elbow shaped piece only an inch long. I showed them how it went with my ski boots but they took it anyway. I was like - really??!!! How am I going to break into the cockpit with that?!! Lol.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
This is sad, funny and true all at the same time. One of the first flights I took after 9/11 I had my cuff cant allen wrench in the bottom of my knapsack. Security confiscated it!! It was a teeny elbow shaped piece only an inch long. I showed them how it went with my ski boots but they took it anyway. I was like - really??!!! How am I going to break into the cockpit with that?!! Lol.

Wow! :eek:
 

Pequenita

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
This is why I’m pretty much in analysis paralysis to pick a bootfitter for AT boots too lol. My fitter doesn’t carry the boots I’m most interested in for that purpose, and I met with someone else who has a lot of options for me and seemed great, but he’s even further away in Northern Vermont. So I’m like do I go there and potentially have issues getting back there if I need tweaks later, or do I try and find someone closer to my home or mountain that has the boots I’m most interested in for that? I really wish I was someone who had great luck with boots right out of the box! Haha

The "good" thing about AT boots is that there is so much less to choose from, so the paralysis is less likely to occur. Once you figure out the binding type you want, the compatible boots basically come in narrow, regular, and wide width.
 

Pequenita

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Absolutely, yes. It would appear that my current alignment of the boot cuffs are for a bow legged person.. I have no idea why that would be the case though. Seems like that would be if someone were trying to correct me versus following my leg angle. Do some boot fitters do that? Everything I've read says NOT to do this, so it seems weird that they are set this way.

Someone in another thread related to the boot I have said that their cuff adjustment mechanism didn't lock and the cuff had moved over the course of the season, and someone else that I know marked with whiteout (dark boots) on their boots where the cuff adjustment line would match on the metal and the boot. So it's possible that yours moved if it doesn't lock...
 

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
....P.S. I’ve been trying to consciously uncurve my pelvis for the past two days thanks to this thread haha! In the car, at work, in the shower..

One of the things I've discovered since I started working on embedding this pelvis thing a couple of years ago is that now, when I successfully do it while walking and running, I can feel my feet roll from heel to ball-of-foot along the outside edge of the foot. Which means the excessive pronation I used to have is no longer happening. Probably the knees are no longer falling in since the pronation is minimized. Holding the pelvis this way also keeps my toes pointing straight ahead, not out to the sides. Another thing is that I can now feel the iliopsoas and glutes moving my femurs fore-aft. That's so cool.

When I lose my focus and allow the bottom of my pelvis to move backward (on autopilot), I lose all of those good things.

I wore corrective shoes as a toddler for some reason; my parents are gone now so I can't ask what was being corrected. I wonder if it worked, and if so what those corrective shoes corrected. They certainly did not fix the overpronation and the outwardly pointing toes, unless they were originally far worse.
 

vickie

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
They certainly did not fix the overpronation and the outwardly pointing toes, unless they were originally far worse.
Or the shoes addressed something entirely different and today's issues are an unintended consequence.

I got the then-standard treatment for dental braces 45 years ago. I have some alignment issues and TMJ stuff that could be related to the initial problem or the treatment.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
I now have a hex key that fits, so planning to play with my boots today, yay! Funny enough, I had a dream about this last night.. I adjusted the boot cuffs by the tiniest bit and everything felt AMAZING after that. They were even way easier to put on for some reason, boy do I have skiing on the brain! :rotf:
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
Okay, so I just finished playing with my boots.. it was way harder than I thought it would be from the online instructions I had read elsewhere that also lined up with what @elemmac posted btw! We tried to do it that way with boots on and buckled, all the bolts loosened and flexing then tightening.. nothing changed in the setting. So then I’m like hmmmm is this why I have this alignment, maybe this is right?? Or maybe the boot is stuck in this configuration since that’s how it’s been for years. So I take the boots off, and I cannot for the life of me get anything to move. So then I take my liners out, bingo I was able to get them as negative as possible I believe. I’m not too worried about doing it this way rather than the more precise flex method because my fitter had said to go as far as I could as the shell can’t move enough to fully match my legs anyway. So I put my boots back on, not knowing what to expect, and it felt REALLY good! (This could maybe be a placebo effect though!? Lol).

The specifics I felt so far are:

1) I just felt like I was standing flat without something pushing into the insides of my legs. I guess I didn’t realize how they felt kind of wrong before. Walking even felt way less awkward than usual. It felt more balanced than when I had just been standing in them the other way. Wow, can that small movement really improve how my balance feels standing flat? I hope so, but it’s so hard to know if that will translate onto my skis and snow.. And, maybe it’s just wishful thinking..

2) My inner calves are not getting completely squeezed where they actually blob up a bit over the the top of my boot on the inside. There is still a tiny pinch (visual, not painful), but it’s much much less.

3) Then I went and looked in the mirror, hopping upstairs in my boots feeling all balanced and great still! Lol They are not moved enough to follow my leg, but it is noticeably better visually as well than the other day. I wish I’d taken a before and after picture!

4). Tried some edging side to side in my boots, felt much more fluid than it was previously where it was noticeably harder to tip onto my right pinkie toe.

I also have some questions:

1) How tight do I need to make all of the screws? I went pretty tight, where things certainly don’t move either way easily. I just know I have a tendency of over tightening things in general, and don’t want to strip these screw heads.

2) The outside screws had red goop on them, presumably lock tight? Not a ton, but a little. Should I add more?

3) Should I go see a fitter to make sure I am on the right track and everything is now set safely before skiing, or should I be good to go?

Anything I’m missing besides snow????
 
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