I was actually wondering as I was reading through this thread whether your right leg was shorter. I read somewhere a while ago that two common side-effects of an actual/measured (not functional) leg length discrepancy are pronation of the foot on the short leg (which could be affecting your ankle/knee alignment) and also a larger foot. I have no idea why this is, though.
-
Women skiers, this is the place for you -- an online community without the male-orientation you'll find in conventional ski magazines and internet ski forums. At TheSkiDiva.com, you can connect with other women to talk about skiing in a way that you can relate to, about things that you find of interest. Be sure to join our community to participate (women only, please!). Registration is fast and simple. Just be sure to add [email protected] to your address book so your registration activation emails won't be routed as spam. And please give careful consideration to your user name -- it will not be changed once your registration is confirmed.
Help Needed: How wide is the ideal skiing stance?
- Thread starter MissySki
- Start date
I was actually wondering as I was reading through this thread whether your right leg was shorter. I read somewhere a while ago that two common side-effects of an actual/measured (not functional) leg length discrepancy are pronation of the foot on the short leg (which could be affecting your ankle/knee alignment) and also a larger foot. I have no idea why this is, though.
MissySki
Angel Diva
Interesting, this is in fact also my larger foot by around half a size. I only know my leg measures longer because when I was younger a doctor thought I might have scoliosis (curvature of the spine), but when I was brought to a specialist they determined my spine was fine, it was my slight difference in hip height due to my leg length difference that was throwing things off. I can't recall the exact measured difference though, and I don't notice the difference functionally either.
Kind of cool to break down the anatomy of what's going on in my skiing! Hopefully this will make things easier to correct.
vanhoskier
Angel Diva
Updates requested after you visit your boot fitter!
BTW, I have a leg length discrepancy also...but I don't remember which is longer. I need to get it remeasured because modifications can be made to my boots for this as well.
BTW, I have a leg length discrepancy also...but I don't remember which is longer. I need to get it remeasured because modifications can be made to my boots for this as well.
MissySki
Angel Diva
I will definitely keep updating. I feel it best if I play a little with the tape stuff etc. this Friday when I ski, and then sometime during the weekend I'll bring all my questions and findings to the boot fitter. Figure it might speed up the trial and error part of them just making random adjustments! .
Also, I think they probably think I'm a major pain by now with how many issues I had b4 the Fischers, so I will bring video proof with me! Haha
. Also, I think they probably think I'm a major pain by now with how many issues I had b4 the Fischers, so I will bring video proof with me! Haha
MissySki
Angel Diva
Is it strange that I did a full 2 day women's clinic last season and the instructor didn't point out that I could have an alignment issue? I remember she kept having me work on getting both of my knees to be at the same angle throughout my turns, and it was really uncomfortable and difficult, for one side. It just seems to me that when I see video of myself now that it looks downright awkward and painful (even though I don't actually feel that when skiing) the angle my right knee turns in at when I'm just going straight, why wouldn't an instructor question it?
MissySki
Angel Diva
I had DH do a quick measurement yesterday because I was curious and couldn't remember the exact length difference either. He found that my right leg is around 1/4 inch shorter than my left. I'm sure we were not 100% accurate, but rings a bell as being around what I was told years ago if I had to hazard a guess.
vanhoskier
Angel Diva
How did he make the measurement?
MissySki
Angel Diva
So I went out today and played with duct tape on my boots. I started with a couple of warm up runs with no tape. Then we added 4 strips to the inside half of my right boot to get to a 1 degree offset. It felt different in a good way, but not significantly so, DH said he could see a positive change though. Next we added two more strips of tape to go another 1/2 degree. Well as soon as I stepped into my skis wow could I feel a huge difference, my skis felt flat and I felt wonderfully balanced all the way up to my hips! DH said things looked very symmetrical between my left and right legs at this point. Tried to add another 1/2 degree and immediately upon getting into my binding I felt off and too far to my right outside edge at that point, my knee also started feeling strained so we took the extra tape off without me making any turns at 2 degrees. Lastly I decided to take off one more piece of tape, so I should be at 1.25 degrees and this felt great as well. Then I took off all the tape and skied the rest if the day as usual.
I was amazed at how much of a difference you can see with so little tape! I now feel pretty certain that my ideal offset would be anywhere between 1.25 and 1.5 degrees. Now I have to figure out what to do with that. All in all a very successful experiment!. I'm looking forward to checking out the camera footage we got to visualize the change I felt. Boy can you glide better on the flats when you aren't dragging an edge!!
I was amazed at how much of a difference you can see with so little tape! I now feel pretty certain that my ideal offset would be anywhere between 1.25 and 1.5 degrees. Now I have to figure out what to do with that. All in all a very successful experiment!
. I'm looking forward to checking out the camera footage we got to visualize the change I felt. Boy can you glide better on the flats when you aren't dragging an edge!!
Serafina
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
umm...I skimmed this thread but didn't see what I'm looking for which is this: what kind of sticks are you riding, and what surface are you riding them ON? My optimal width-of-stance depends on which sticks I'm on (it is wider on my Rossi S3s than it is on my Volkl Tierras,. for example) and what I'm skiing (wider on uniform surfaces, wider on powder, narrower in the crud, narrower on the steeps). If I'm skiing a steep, I need to make sure that my stance is narrower because otherwise it does totally evil things to my center of gravity, having one ski a lot further down the incline than another. If I'm skiing crud, I need to make sure my stance is narrower because it's better to have both skis on the same surface, rather than one on loose chopped up stuff and one on packed-powder. If I'm skiing on totally groomed surface without a huge pitch, it doesn't seem to matter very much.
josiegroper
Certified Ski Diva
When I first learned to ski eons ago, the correct stance was with your feet practically touching each other throughout. I worked long and hard and mastered that... then along come these shaped skis and they suddenly say not to! Well, I still keep them pretty darn close together, but I don't think it is necessary, just habit! Some of the guys I ski with are probably hip width apart and they are awesome skiers, and they are always nagging me to open my stance a bit...
The one guy I ski with, has only one thing to say... "are you having fun? if you are, then you are doing it right!"
The one guy I ski with, has only one thing to say... "are you having fun? if you are, then you are doing it right!"
MissySki
Angel Diva
Hi Serafina,
I first noticed my stance on video footage while on my black pearls and then my Auras. The terrain was anything from a flat switchback to double diamond steep groomers or up to 3 or 4 inches of fresh snow. So essentially it didn't matter where I was..
Now that I have experimented with the duct tape stuff, I don't think it was actually the width of my whole stance that looked so off to me, but what goes on below my knees makes it all look off. I was stemming into my turns and so I looked wide and in a wedge at the beginning of a turn from behind before things would straighten out.
Once I got to 1.5 degrees offset with the tape and watched that video, the stemming stopped and my feet naturally seemed closer together because I wasn't stemming to initiate a turn. I don't think the width changed much overall besides at turn initiation since there was no wedge, but the overall picture looked much more natural since my right knee wasn't jutting into my left knee anymore.
My balance felt good, but different in my turns, so I know it'll be an adjustment once I get stuff with my boots straightened out to break whatever coping habits I've developed unknowingly due to my anatomy all of this time..
Josie,
I definitely have fun! However, I've known for a little while that something was off with my turn initiation at times, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong. It especially gets worse when I'm tired, so I think I am probably able to muscle my turns in the beginning of the day and they don't feel as bad, and then when I fatigue it's more difficult to overcome the issue and I start stemming etc to compensate. Now that I've seemed to pinpoint the issue it's like turning a light on in a dark tunnel, everything I couldn't see is really obvious!
I first noticed my stance on video footage while on my black pearls and then my Auras. The terrain was anything from a flat switchback to double diamond steep groomers or up to 3 or 4 inches of fresh snow. So essentially it didn't matter where I was..
Now that I have experimented with the duct tape stuff, I don't think it was actually the width of my whole stance that looked so off to me, but what goes on below my knees makes it all look off. I was stemming into my turns and so I looked wide and in a wedge at the beginning of a turn from behind before things would straighten out.
Once I got to 1.5 degrees offset with the tape and watched that video, the stemming stopped and my feet naturally seemed closer together because I wasn't stemming to initiate a turn. I don't think the width changed much overall besides at turn initiation since there was no wedge, but the overall picture looked much more natural since my right knee wasn't jutting into my left knee anymore.
My balance felt good, but different in my turns, so I know it'll be an adjustment once I get stuff with my boots straightened out to break whatever coping habits I've developed unknowingly due to my anatomy all of this time..
Josie,
I definitely have fun! However, I've known for a little while that something was off with my turn initiation at times, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong. It especially gets worse when I'm tired, so I think I am probably able to muscle my turns in the beginning of the day and they don't feel as bad, and then when I fatigue it's more difficult to overcome the issue and I start stemming etc to compensate. Now that I've seemed to pinpoint the issue it's like turning a light on in a dark tunnel, everything I couldn't see is really obvious!
MissySki
Angel Diva
So I went to my bootfitter today with all of my concerns and tape experimenting results. Glad I did the tape because he said if I hadn't he would have had me do so before doing canting because he likes to be sure people are ok with the new positioning they are going to be in before making permanent changes to their boots. Apparently some folks in the past would have the work done and then hate the new position because their muscle memory had them in a different position for so long. I assured him that I loved the improvement I attained with the tape even if I may need to upgrade my muscle memory a little going forward.
He did all sorts of drawing on my knees and measuring while I stood on these block type things that held in my boot and had plastic pieces protruding out with lines all over it which he used to see how my knees aligned. I didn't really ask how that all worked though today shame on me. Usually I ask lots of questions, but I guess I was being lazy today, as well as being nervous to make permanent changes to my boots.. He tried some different canting wedges under my right foot until things were nice and lined up to his specs. He got that I needed 1 degree on my right side and nothing on the left. (We had some discrepancy on the amount of tape that constitutes a degree as I thought 4 was 1 degree, but he said he considers every 3 pieces 0.5 degree. So my 6 pieces that I thought were around 1.5 degrees he thinks coincides with his 1 degree measuurements. I hope this will be the case as I felt not much difference with 1 degree when I was skiing and a really great difference with what I was calling 1.5 degrees.) I am willing to follow his guidance since duct tape obviously isn't as accurate as his measurements will be, and I certainly am no expert and don't want to hurt my knee by overdoing anything. I'll be nervous about it until I get to try it out I'm sure..
One caveat is that he wants to call Fischer before proceeding to make sure the typical plates can be added and lugs ground etc. since I have the Vacuum boots and they are made of a different plastic than other ski boots. He thinks it should be fine, but hasn't canted anyone in them yet and so wants to check it out.. Fingers crossed! If all systems are go, I should not get a call this week and I'll get my canted boot this Friday and hopefully get to try it out this weekend!
He did all sorts of drawing on my knees and measuring while I stood on these block type things that held in my boot and had plastic pieces protruding out with lines all over it which he used to see how my knees aligned. I didn't really ask how that all worked though today shame on me. Usually I ask lots of questions, but I guess I was being lazy today, as well as being nervous to make permanent changes to my boots.. He tried some different canting wedges under my right foot until things were nice and lined up to his specs. He got that I needed 1 degree on my right side and nothing on the left. (We had some discrepancy on the amount of tape that constitutes a degree as I thought 4 was 1 degree, but he said he considers every 3 pieces 0.5 degree. So my 6 pieces that I thought were around 1.5 degrees he thinks coincides with his 1 degree measuurements. I hope this will be the case as I felt not much difference with 1 degree when I was skiing and a really great difference with what I was calling 1.5 degrees.) I am willing to follow his guidance since duct tape obviously isn't as accurate as his measurements will be, and I certainly am no expert and don't want to hurt my knee by overdoing anything. I'll be nervous about it until I get to try it out I'm sure..
One caveat is that he wants to call Fischer before proceeding to make sure the typical plates can be added and lugs ground etc. since I have the Vacuum boots and they are made of a different plastic than other ski boots. He thinks it should be fine, but hasn't canted anyone in them yet and so wants to check it out.. Fingers crossed! If all systems are go, I should not get a call this week and I'll get my canted boot this Friday and hopefully get to try it out this weekend!
snow addict
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I thought the ideal skiing stance was roughly your shoulder width. At least I was told that what I had to be aiming for. I find it works for me everywhere.
