The closure of spirit

Having to bring the knees together for your feet to be flat on the snow produces a closure of your lower limbs that fold themselves inwards. This stresses your joints and triggers an emotional closure, as physiology affects psychology.

The confidence loss

Having to ski with legs collapsing inwards at the knees like a newborn “Bambi” lowers confidence.

Slow progress

When nothing is done to correct misalignment the compensatory movements and the associated emotions are preventing the jaw, the pelvis and the ankles from working properly making progress illusive.

Uncomfortable feet in your boots

Despite marketing claims,relatively little goes on in ski boot research and development. Ski boots do not take into account our alignment needs, our balance needs, our mobility needs, our comfort needs, our well being needs or our need for greater harmony.

Back in 1997

I was so excited about alignment that I sent out letters to ski schools across France to share my ideas with other professionals. I thought some, at least, would reply and that the benefits of proper alignment would begin to be more broadly appreciated. None of the ski schools responded. However, the director of one school showed my letter to Michel Gros, a member of Rossignol’s racing department. From my mail shot the only call I received was from Michel of Rossignol.

Michel invited me to Austria that year to diagnose the alignment of Rossignol’s sponsored racers. Rossignol’s main interest was to find out if I could do something about the abnormally poor performance of their star racer Jure Kosir since he had switched to Rossignol boots.

Jure Kosir was an outstanding racer

He had been number two in world cup ratings in slalom until he changed his make of ski boots. For sponsorship reasons, Jure, who had been racing on Nordica boots, had switched to Rossignol boots. In doing so he dropped from second to twenty first place in the world cup rankings. Somehow the good anatomical synergy that existed between Jure and his Nordica boots was broken once he was in Rossignol boots. I diagnosed him to be over-canted – he had to pull his knees out to have his feet flat on the snow. The next day we had him ski with and without adjustments with the astonishing, but not surprising, gain of 70/100 of a second advantage after alignment on a 33 second course.   To put this in perspective, this advantage, over a world cup course, would be the difference between coming first or nowhere.

Results

Intrigued by the results, Michel took me to the Rossignol factory where I saw how race boots are made and what sort of tinkering goes on to tweak them. What I learned at Rossignol was that the mould used to press the melted plastic into shape can be adjusted to give the boot more or less of a built-in edge angle. Jure Kosir’s boots were built with more edge angle than he had previously had on his Nordicas and, as a result, his skiing had deteriorated. Rossignol’s empirical thinking was to give their racers more edge angle hoping to get more speed out of them, but in Jure Kosir’s case the adjustment was too great.

Even in a major ski company like Rossignol, tweaking racers’ boots is still based on black art formulas based on beliefs that the industry has not questioned for eons. No laser scan assessment, no biomechanical assessment, no muscle test – only age old empirical hit and miss procedures. I gave Michel the specific angle adjustments needed to be made to Jure’s boots for him to consistently ski with 70/100 gains and that is all that I ever did with Rossignol aside from having a few dinners with them now and again.

Alignment is fundamental. It is the first thing that should be addressed before moving onto the snow.

During ski lessons, I pull out little pieces of black plastic cants from my pocket and temporarily place them between my clients’ ski boots and their bindings. I do not tell them exactly what I am doing. I just ask them to say if their skiing is easier with the adjustment in place.

The response: “What have you done? I can turn so much better! Is this psychological or is it real?” I then give them the option of removing the cants to compare. Most of them don’t want the cants removed in case it takes away the wonderful new feeling they are experiencing. It’s amazing how little pieces of plastic can put a smile on people’s faces.

In the light of this enthusiasm, common sense suggests that all skiers should be checked out and aligned before even moving one inch on the slopes. People would learn faster, have more fun, and feel a rewarding sense of accomplishment.