Moving weight forward

Jacaru wrote:

Trencher wrote:

Jacaru wrote:Hello


I am actively trying to solve this to no avail. While I try not to lean on the back of my boots, I find it really difficult to lean on the front of them during a turn. The natural way to be stable for me is a neutral stance, at some times leaning backwards when I want to come to a stop when losing it.

Could be that you have some boot fitting issues. Boots should set up the skier's stance where a you will feel comfortable skiing with some pressure on the front of the boot cuff. The heels should not lift when you do this.

Trencher

What I meant is that I step up with strong pressure in the front of my foot, and my heels raise as the foam of the boot permits. Lol I for sure have boot fitting issues. I have always been renting ( read for 13 years). I just bought ones and they hurt, ouch! They didn't hurt at the shop.

If you were used to rental boots, chances are that what felt like a good fit at the store, was because the foam had not packed in. Once you start skiing in them, the foam gets packed in, and the boots are really too big. In this situation, people often have to over tighten the lower buckles, which is uncomfortable, or painful. It could also be that you need some heel lift under the footbed. If you ski that often, it would be very worth while investing in boots that set you up in the correct stance. Unless you know what you are doing, that means seeing a good boot fitter.

Lessons may help a bit, but you are flogging a dead horse, if your boots are working against you.

Trencher

I hestitate to reply as I am not a great skiier. But I know all about the feeling of instinctively leaning backwards, then trying to compensate in a way that upper legs get tired very fast.

It gets even worse on moguls as the slight lean-back is accentuated as you go up the mogul, and it is easy to fall.

One way I tried to compensate is to lean way forwards to overcompensate. It sort of works, and made me feel like I had a racing posture (???), but is not good style & not recommended.

For me getting the boots done up nice and snug helped. I put them on. then tighten them. Then tighten them again after the first run.

As noted above, keeping arms forwards, at least until better balance comes more naturally, seems to help. Probably I should practice without poles sometimes, but I do like the exercise where you hold the poles up horizontal, like a tea tray, rather than actually using them, as that seems to straighten out posture & balance.

What I am working on now is keeping upper body more static altogether, and turning with the legs. I find it best to practice and get it right (or something like right) first on easy slopes, and slowly.

This week I was given my first try in powder by GF, who expressly instructed me to lean back a bit, putting more weight on upper legs. But that is something else, and a totally different feeling than being on the piste, and using the upper legs to fight an instinctive response to lean back.

Maybe good skiers do not undestand this. I told GF how I have this tendency for my weight to go backwards. She just said something like, 'Why would you want to lean back? You know you should be in the knees. I cannot get my head round it. Just make sure your boots are done up tight.'

All of which I guess, in summary, just seconds Trencher's point about boots being a good fit.

PS, my boots are my own, anyway they are fairly flexible, and the shop did not make a big deal about fitting them properly, but they did heat them up and put them on real tight while hot, so the foam molded to my shape. Do they do that with rental boots? Probably not. The guy in the shop looked at my very old boots, with single latches, and said, 'These old boots are not bad, but look, the foam has got old and lost its resilience, so they do not fit closely.'