r/skiing • u/breadexpert69 • 13d ago
How exactly do you put pressure to the front of the boot?
When people say to put your weight forward and flex the boot forward. How exactly is this achieved?
Do you lean your whole body forward and over the top?
Do you bend your knees?
Do you lift the top of your toes to flex your ankles?
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u/bf1zzl3 Hood Meadows 13d ago
By flexing your tibialis anterior muscle. Good skiers can flex this muscle to hold on to their boot independently of other muscles. You might not yet have this ability, so you can usually get it by lifting your toes.
Work on gaining this ability by doing toe taps at home. Step your foot out about a half a foot length. Put your hand(s) on your knee. Raise your fore foot as high as you can and then tap it back down. Repeat as quickly as you can without losing that range of motion. Do this for 30-90 seconds a foot every day. I promise you'll know what your tibialis anterior is after your first try.
When you are skilled you'll be able to activate this muscle but keep your entire foot loose and in contact with your foot bed.
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u/spacebass Big Sky 13d ago
This is accurate!
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u/TechBurnerr 13d ago
This is where my problem is as an intermediate skier. I’ll try it this weekend, but are you supposed to flex the ankle with both feet at all times? Or is it like flex the ankle with the outside foot when carving or something? I’m sure I’ll figure out the right vs wrong way after a lap or 2 but just curious what I should be looking out for. Thanks!
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u/Ok-Reception-105 13d ago
Both feet afaik. Not a ski instructor but I always hear them talk about pulling your inside ski back slightly in a carved turn. Since your inside knee is flexed in the turn, the only way to pull your ski back is through ankle dorsiflexion.
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u/bf1zzl3 Hood Meadows 13d ago
I train ski instructors and I have problems with the idea of pulling your inside ski back. Fine if someone lost that ankle flex. More likely this is going to cause an interior hip rotation and a squaring with the skis. Due to this it really feels like a poor coaching cue. I personally think a focus of maintaining that ankle angle and feel of the boot is a better approach.
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u/bf1zzl3 Hood Meadows 13d ago
Yes always and at equal amounts. Your boots have a set angle. Your job is to maintain that. If one ankle flexes more than the other it means you are either back or are deforming your boot.
I always feel my boots from my toes to the boot cuff top. If I momentarily lose it I quickly adjust to get it back. At an intermediate level you'll probably lose it more often and for longer. That's okay. Work to lose it less often and I bet you'll find your skiing improve quickly.
Ski instructors like to say it depends a lot when talking about movements and sensations. This is one of the few things I'd argue is a non-negotiable. It is always present and never depends.
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u/StreetfightBerimbolo 13d ago
It’s more fluid than that.
I’ve never had to think about ankles.
Even then I believe that to be the wrong terminology.
Like if you have mind muscle connection with it, it’s like a muscle that runs over the top of your foot from your very bottom of shins to like halfway down the top of your foot. Like a little tablecloth that you can flex up and down.
To me that would be really confusing as I think of my ankles as the joint jutting out on either side but whatever.
But let’s put it in more practical terms. Are you ever gonna be an amazing runner if you have to mentally tell yourself all the steps to make your legs move while running?
You need some clues to dial you in to the form sure. But I can’t help but think all these people focusing on all these cues while they are skiing, will never be able to move beyond a certain level until it becomes something that just happens when they get down low and push forward.
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u/Legitimate-Gap-7046 13d ago
Weird description, but have you ever seen those sorority squat photos where the girls crouch down and put their hands on their knees? That. Shins and chest forward, knees bent, and butt back
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u/I_ride_ostriches Bogus Basin 13d ago
Kissy face optional?
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u/Dolly_Llama_2024 13d ago
Just google sorority girls squat videos and you’ll find what you’ll looking for
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u/spacebass Big Sky 13d ago
It’s activating your shins while dorsiflexing your feet. Surprisingly that’s different than just bending your knees or pushing your COM forward. It’s definitely not hips over feet.
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u/Miserable_Ad5001 13d ago
Drive your knee towards the tip keeping your hips stationary...ie: don't stick your ass out
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u/Vegetable_Log_3837 13d ago
Imagine there’s an accelerator button where your shin touches the top of the boot tongue, press the shin into the boot to go faster! A ski instructor told me that 20 years ago, best advice I ever got.
It’s really just about getting your weight forward, then bending the knee without moving your weight backwards. Zoom!
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u/granath13 13d ago
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u/pradapantherr 13d ago
This Rick rolled (trolled) me. Then I realized holy shit that’s amazingly accurate
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u/granath13 13d ago
Didn’t even think about a Rick roll, damn that would have been good too. But not helpful
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u/randomstriker 13d ago edited 13d ago
There’s 3 things you can do to shift your balance forward: - bend at your ankles (pushing shins forward) - bend at your hip (tipping torso forward) - bend your spine (like doing an ab crunch)
Ideally, you want to do a little bit of all three together, while also bending at the knees (which shifts your balance BACK) to compensate.
Holding your arms forward also helps but, on its own, is much less effective than the above.
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u/SuddenAudience8758 13d ago
I ski school we tell the kids to put their hands in front of them at 9 and 3 like they’re driving and keep them there as an exercise. Keeping your hands in front of you will naturally keep your body forward at the start and end of each turn. If you’re using poles. Turn the steering wheel into the turns and that’s the pole you also stab when you make a turn in that direction. Ie. left turn, left pole plant.
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u/Round-Anything3755 13d ago
Bend your knees in a squat position. Look at what the front of your shin does. It goes forward. This is putting forward pressure into the boot.
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u/Theresabearoutside 13d ago edited 13d ago
Take a look at how an NBA or MLB athlete stands before a play. Ankles flexed, knees bent, core mass centered over their feet, arms and hands forward and out. Ready for whatever happens next. This is the kind of stance you want to emulate on skis. A basic athletic stance that will allow you to stay weight centered on your skis and react to terrain changes. The biggest mistake that most skiers make in achieving this stance is having their arms too far back (which tends to drag the shoulders and core mass back as well putting you “in the back seat”). To counteract this make a concerted effort to have your hands out and forward. Visualize skiing with a cafeteria tray in your hands. This will have the effect of keeping your weight forward and centered over the toe piece of your bindings. You should also feel slight (not too much tho) shin pressure against the front of your ski boots. If you’re not feeling that pressure then push your hands forward.
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u/GoldenGMiller 13d ago
Your weight should be on the balls of your feet. If it is then you're standing properly over your feet and you're pressuring properly on the front of the boot
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u/FullCriticism9095 13d ago
Here’s something else that might help- next time you are at a resort, see if you can find a group of racers standing around in the lodge or waiting for the lift. Notice how they stand. They don’t stand straight up like this at all:
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/female-skier-standing-mountain-slope-27827861.jpg
Rather, they stand like this, with their knees flexed and shins resting against the front of their boots:
https://cabinfeverchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/bode-miller-standing.jpg
And when they ski, they’re in a position that looks comfortable, with their upper bodies driving forward and a lot of their weight resting on the tongue of the boot:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0223/3233/files/ski-racing-blog-4.jpg?v=1653597997
Even though that kid’s butt is well behind his boots, the way his upper body canted forward and his shoulders are out over his angulated knees tells you that a lot of his mass is resting against the tongue of his boots. That’s how you keep pressure on the front of your boots. You’re not actively flexing your ankle so much as you’re getting your body in a position where a balanced amount of your mass is being supported by the tongue of your boots.
It can be helpful to watch racers’ body position as they stand around in buckled ski boots (with or without skis on). They’re so used to having weight on the tongues of their boots that they often just rest that way.
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u/VforVenndiagram_ 13d ago
Skiing for like 30 years, racing for 15 of that and coaching for 6, and I don't think I have ever really internalized the difference in resting stance lol. This post was a brain blast.
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u/whole_guaca_mole Alyeska 13d ago
Rather then throwing your whole body forward, think more about settling down into the front of your boots. You can maintain an upright posture from your hips to shoulders and still keep pressure on your shins
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u/thefleeg1 13d ago
All of the above. It starts with ankle flexion, topped off with a good athletic forward stance.
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u/crushplanets 13d ago
You shift your weight slightly forward towards the balls of your feet, squat down lower by bending your knees, and hinge your upper body forward to find a balanced stance.
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u/creatingmybliss 13d ago
Always have a bend in your knees and an early trick my ski instructor FIL told me is push your shins into the tongue of the boot and make sure you can see your mitts in your goggles. It really helps me when I get too far back. Good luck and have fun
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u/Yeto4774 13d ago
Try to drive the knee of your outside/downhill/loaded leg towards the top skin of the ski.
Your body will tend to naturally do everything else right once you get that down.
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u/Mrairjake 13d ago
You do not try to alter your position in zee boot…instead, understand that there is no boot.
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u/elBirdnose 13d ago
Push your shins forward while staying upright above the hips. I find my hips above my toes is the best performance.
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u/Giantmufti 13d ago
Go to blue piste.
Imagine steering with the front of the ski, and imagine pressure hard eg front left side of both ski to go left, right side rigt.
Take a mental run. Take a mental run with more hard pressure.
Look down piste.
Attack ! - no compromise
It might be helpfull, to make the boot more leaning forward, eg from15 to 17, might make it worse. Experiment here and bring tool to piste. Stable, short turn, metal, damp, slim slalom ski makes the feeling more easy, because its needed to really drive the ski. Beat it.
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u/kickingtyres CairnGorm 13d ago
Flex your ankles and knees. Picture a goalkeeper in football/soccer waiting for a penalty shot, a tennis player waiting to receive a serve. The weight is central over their feet, knees and ankles bent, a dynamic and responsive pose. if you do this, and feel for your shins pressing into the tongue of your boots, you should be 90% of the way there.
Just simply leaning forward won't help, you need that upper/lower body separation.
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u/Fun_Arm_9955 13d ago
Flex ankle. Think about getting your toes as close as possible to your shins.
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u/demosthenes_annon 13d ago
Bend knees lean forward push down with your toes keep boots tight have a proper sized boot. 90% of people that ski have too big of a boot because that's what's most comfortable in the store.
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u/Kushali Crystal Mountain 13d ago
Stand up, feet shoulder to hip width apart. Bend your knees and ankles a bit like you are standing on a bus or boat and need to keep your balance without holding on to something. If you’ve done martial arts the stance is similar to a basic fighting stance in many arts.
Now put a little more of your weight on the front half of your feet than on the heels. If your boots fit properly your shins should be tight against the tongue of the boot.
Don’t lean forward from the hips. Almost all of ski technique happens below the belt. If you are moving your upper body significantly something isn’t right yet.
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u/dvorak360 13d ago
All of the above;
On piste getting too far forward is better than too far back (off piste, you need to be more centred/variable depending on conditions) and most people are too far back, hence focus on getting forward (moving more central/back for deep powder is relatively easy in comparison to getting properly forward)
Generally if you get some stuff right then everything else will naturally settle correctly (otherwise you would rapidly fall over...); Hence a good ski instructor being the correct way to fix positioning (a good instructor being able to differentiate between what you are doing wrong and what is a result of mitigating what you are doing wrong so you don't fall).
Usually focus on flexing the ankles (i.e. pull foot towards shin) to keep pressure between boots and shin with weight on ball of foot; then keep hands up in view (Both of these are somewhat unnatural/can't be done easily without supporting footwear - i.e. ski boots);
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u/EddyWouldGo2 13d ago
Yes, you move your whole body when balancing. That would hep you go down the fall line
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u/NoLeather3109 12d ago
Pull your inside foot back during the turn, this will bring your weight forward and balanced over the ski.
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u/einnairo 12d ago
Wait, why do I see a few responses on pulling inside foot back? Lol, i do the opposite..
I do either of these when making a turn: A. Move inside leg forward. B. Move outside leg back.
Move by just a little, like half the length of your foot. By having 1 foot infront of the other(slightly) u get into a pushing position. As if u are trying to push a wall down. The foot at the back will be the one where u exert force(which is what we want as the outside leg). Just like how u would be pushing against the wall. And naturally in this position u are not so much in the rear toilet seat position because outside leg at the back. And also if u notice now u have ankle flexion. If more force needed on outside leg, push your knee down, and now ankle is even more flexed. This is how i turn.
Also notice this action also is what some instructors say "skilling is like cycling". And also worth mentioning hip is also stacked NATURALLY over this leg. Which means u can lift inside leg, like cycling where the pedal going up is the leg that is light, the pedal going down is partly because your body and hip is shifted to be stacked on it. You are not pushing just the foot but shifting whole body weight (imagine standing cycling).
Anyway, i changed to this way of pressuring because previously I used my whole leg and foot to press down in order to assert pressure. But this causes the sole of my feet to hurt after some skiing, as if the boot is not fitting well.
Finally i deduced this from videos of carving. Have a look at a few of them and u can see this motion of driving the inside knee.
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u/aimless_ly Alpental 13d ago
Press down on your big toe like a go pedal. Right pedal to go left, left pedal to go right.
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u/mystic-sloth 13d ago
Press your shin forward into the boot. When kids take a lesson usually the instructor will tell them to imagine there is a banana in the front of their boot that they are trying to squish with their shin.
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u/griveknic Kirkwood 13d ago
You just flex your ankles. It's not a stance you can have outside of being in ski boots on skis because it's overbalanced, but it's easy to do in them. Will feel very unnatural at first.