113. How Ski Boot Alignment Impacts Performance and Knee Health Part 8 (feat. Tom Gellie from Big Picture Skiing)

If you're a skier looking to prevent or recover from injury and ultimately ski for a lifetime, you're in the right place. The LegaSki podcast, short for Legacy Rehab and Performance Skiing, is certain to help you ski faster, stronger, longer, and with greater confidence. If you just discovered the podcast or you've been listening for a while, it would help me out if you'd leave a rating and review. That way I know how to improve the podcast for the future. All right, let's get into the episode. Hey, Legacy listeners, welcome back to another episode of the Legacy Podcast. Today I am joined once again by Tom Gellie of Big Picture Skiing, and Tom was on the podcast for episode 25, very long time ago. But if you are in the skiing world or you're online, there's a good chance you've known Tom. And, um, today we're going to be continuing our discussion on boot fit, alignment, injury prevention, and also ski performance, and just trying to learn a little bit more about Tom. So, um, if you're not familiar with Tom, with who Tom is, I'm just going to give chance to intro, and then we'll go from there.

Great, thanks Greg. Well, I am just an obsessed skier, I would say. I started sort of skiing later in life than, you know, other people. Being from Australia, we, you know, the snow is not close by to everybody, and we don't have long seasons. But I just fell in love with it, started instructing, uh, back-to-back winters many, many years, and now really enjoy the challenge of teaching people through video content and tutorials and challenging myself that way. Sort of combining— I've always been interested in video editing when I was young. I would always play around and make like music videos with my friends and stuff like that. So it's sort of now, yeah, really fun trying to coach really well through video, make great video content that hits the point like really fast. And yeah, and, and then to your point about boot fitting, uh, I've had lots of issues along the way, partly because of the shape of my legs— we can go into— and then also bony, bony feet. And then spending a lot of time in ski boots back-to-back winters. And, and Australia, with the fluctuating temperatures, is more punishing on your feet than, say, somewhere that's really nice and cold all the time. So yes, I've, uh, I've really had to take an interest in ski boot fitting and learn a lot of stuff myself, because if I wanted to stay in this industry, I needed to make sure I could take care of my feet and get my alignment right to get more out of my skiing and help my— the technical side grow.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think from this discussion we had before, you know, we talked a lot about injury prevention, kind of preseason training, what we can do on that aspect, how the foot relates. And we dabbled a little bit into this idea of structure and function and how they interrelate. And I know, Tom, as I've just been looking at your content, you do an excellent job of kind of looking at what is the role of the foot and how does that kind of intermingle with everything else. And as I've dived more into this idea of looking into alignment, I think this is something that we as physiotherapists or physical therapists are always trying to improve upon. Because if we can get someone to move more efficiently, then I think not not only does it reduce their risk of injury but also increases their performance.

Totally. Yes. And I'm curious, because you've just chatted to— I think you said 9 different boot fitters— around their thoughts on how they do it, what's really important. So I really want to know from you first what you've discovered and maybe some things that you're still maybe less clear on.

Yeah, I think that's a great, uh, starting point. I think the number one thing is there's not one way to skin the cat. Just like in physiotherapy, there's not one way to fix a problem. And I think from all these bootfitters' experience, they have all these different types of trainings, all different types of backgrounds. But ultimately, I think it's the number one thing that I've learned is I think from myself in particular, really understanding like what does the individual or what do I specifically want to get out of like a bootfit session and then curating the bootfit session to help me achieve that. Achieve my goals. So for example, like myself, yes, I want my boots to be comfortable, but I'm someone that now that I've been skiing for a few more years, and actually like not just skiing casually but actually trying to increase my performance, I want that performance, uh, style fit. Where before when I just got into it, I was like, oh, you know, I just want my feet to be comfortable so they don't hurt on the hill. And, uh, the, the approach is I think very different for what the goals are of fitting. So as I've talked to a lot of these guys, it's like, okay, number one question is like, what are your goals of like what you want your boot fit session to look like? And then based on that, then they can give a little bit more advice.

Okay, cool. But then getting into the more nitty gritty, what are some of the things you've learned there? Like what's— yeah, what, what have you found out there or less clarity on?

Yeah, totally. I mean, so a little background on myself. So when I first got my boots, you know, I thought it was just standard. You go and get your boots heat molded and then once they're molded to your feet, You're good to go. That was like 5 years ago. Over the time, I've had my pronation assessed from the ground. And based on your pronation angles, they really determine, all right, well, can you actually sit flat? And I think a lot of the boot fitters that I've talked to start from a bottom-up approach. So they start by looking at the mobility of the forefoot, hindfoot, and seeing, can your foot actually sit flat? And from there they recommended, all right, well, getting a footbed so that way you could get your foot to kind of sit flat, sit neutral inside the boot. That's kind of like step 1. And then I think step 2 was, okay, looking at like the size of the boot, like, are you in too long of a boot? 'Cause you can't make a boot go shorter. You can only make it a little bit wider. So if your boot is too long, you kind of have to go get a new boot. But if it's a little bit too narrow, you can always mold out the forefoot to give more space there. It's really hard to make a boot smaller. So that's something that I've learned. And when I actually went to the local boot fitter here that had me come in for an assessment, we actually determined that, yeah, my boot is actually a little bit too big for what I'm looking at. And to my original point, while it was comfortable, it really wasn't that performance fit that I was looking for. So that was something that's interesting too. We dabbled a little bit about liners, but we didn't go into too much detail because we were really focused on the structure of the boot. But then something I also was cued into was like the cuff and like not necessarily like if it's canted for your leg, but does the cuff align with the shape of your tibia or your leg bone? And that's something that I had never heard before. And I was like, oh, I think maybe you had commented one of my videos a while ago. It's like, Hey, if your cuff is pushing you like medially, it doesn't matter like what's going on or like how strong you are, like it's going to force you there and now you're trying to fight against the boot. So that's something that I went to the local boot fitter to ask him about and he's like, I think your boot is decent and it should be adjusted, but unfortunately the boot that I currently have can't be adjusted. So I need to get new boots is essentially what he was telling me. And then the last thing that I was learning about is just like canting. And I think there's different philosophies of canting the bottom of the boot. And for the measurement for my foot, they said, actually, Greg, you're in a pretty good alignment from the bottom. And we don't necessarily need to cant your boot or use the technology called Cantology to help get you to sit neutrally. But I think essentially from what I learned is my foot is pretty good. Um, there's some things that we can do to help me like access the first to the fifth ray a little bit better just based on how the mobility of my forefoot is. Um, and ultimately if I wanted to make changes, I have to get new boots. Okay.

All right. Okay, I've just been going there through my brain how I would lay out some thoughts. So, okay, where things Oh God, where do I start? This is, this is tricky, um, because I would say I have maybe a little bit different of a viewpoint from a lot of bootfitters, and I get in, um, or some of them don't like what I say because it is, is different. So I'm going to try and explain why I maybe have some different viewpoints. So I guess the first thing I've learned over time is, and this is actually pretty simple, people can feel this themselves, that how your foot posture is and where your knee sits is very much determined by just where the pressure, or where the center of pressure, is under that foot. So for example, if you stand on your left leg, a single balance, and you try and put all the pressure on the very lateral pinky side of your foot and you just sit out there your knee will also sit outward. Okay? And if you put all the weight to the inside edge of your foot and as little as possible on the pinky toe edge, your knee will sit itself over the top of that point. So when people stand on two feet, if you have an old injury on your right leg, your right hip, anywhere, shoulder, that makes you shift your mass more to the left. And so you put more pressure on the outer edge of your left foot, more pressure on the inner edge of your right foot. Someone stands and looks at you from back here and they go, oh, your left foot is supinated, your right foot is pronated, look, your knee's in. And even when they go to stand on that foot, because they're maybe trying to avoid something, or that's totally fixed now, or fine, they just balance themselves. Because this is the cool thing about the human body, you can take out something like you can like, on, like, totally injure, like, a muscle in your lower leg or your hip, but still get around and limp around. Like, you do it on a car, you, like, break an axle, the thing doesn't work. Human, you can figure out a way around it, you know, take 90% of the pressure off. So the first thing is, I guess, to the point of, like, people are pronated, people are supinated, that sort of stuff, or you're more prone on your right than your left. I've now gone, oh wait, hang on a sec, that's just a general pattern of a lot of time where you position yourselves, where you put pressure. And so when you ski, a lot of the time when you ski well, you're going outside foot to outside foot. And as you get better, you, you fix like the side. Like everyone, you probably remember starting, you know, it was always easy to turn one way, right, Greg? The other way, not as easy. Yeah, everybody has that. It gets better the more time you spend on it, thankfully. And you know, if you haven't got a lot of time practicing being on the inside edge of your left foot and balancing there for a whole entire long turn, then you just need to get good at that. If your default is to actually stand more on the outer edge, of course you're going to look like you have these problems. So I guess one thing is there's, there's a lot of stuff going on in people's skiing that is just down to them not being aware of where they are moving and positioning their body, and then therefore the pressure goes. Um, so there's one thing. Another thing I— so as I got better at skiing, I got better boots like you're doing now. And then I got in some high-performance boots one time and noticed, like, I felt straight away that I couldn't ski as well as the pair of boots before, even though they were stiffer, they were more high-performance. And then through speaking to different people, like, oh, your, your alignment's off, you need to get those boots canted. And so I felt like my knees were inwards, caving inwards, and I used to use too much knee angulation, like the knee would drive all the angles, not, not a combination of the ankle, knee, and the hip. And so I went and got, got an assessment on that, and sure found out that one, like, both my knees were in So the knees were sitting too far inside, like an A-frame almost kind of position. And I got these cant strips, they're actually from Harold Harb, he made them. So this store, they had them, and I got to put them under my boots like in the store and straight away like change with the different angles, 1 degree. It basically under your boot tips the boot out or in, and tipped it out until my knees felt like they were centered again. And was like, oh, this is it. Why have I never discovered this before? Uh, and then so got them put on my boots permanently. Big change, really, uh, really, really helped. So I thought then I was telling everybody, you need to get checked for canting. Like a lot of people, you know, and I would be out with clients putting things under their boots and helping them, and then they'd go and get their boots canted and would ski better and feel better. I was like, okay, that's it. Until then, I changed to, uh, the boots I'm in now, these Fischer boots, which had a different— they were vacuum fitted boots. So that was one thing. The whole entire shell was heated and would mold, and wouldn't just mold to like the bony shapes, it actually kind of tilted and set to whatever angle your legs were at. And, um, so I got these boots done, no canting, nothing like that done. And went out and skied the next day and felt better again, better than I had been on these other boots that were canted. I was like, why don't I need to cant these boots? Yet I thought I was a person that had to have canting. That's what you'll find, people— skiers will say, I have to have 2 degrees on my left, 1 degree on my right, like that's, that's me, that's my person. And I get in these boots, none of that's happened, and suddenly I feel better and just as centered I was like, why is that? So what, like, what, what do you think might have changed, if I was to throw that to you, Greg, between these ones and, uh, and the ones before?

Yeah, I mean, uh, from like physiotherapy background, I think maybe if we think about crutches and the canting kind of helping you get there into an optimal position, I think maybe that's what it was doing before and allowing you to get into a position that you like maybe weren't used to accessing before, whereas maybe now as you've like built that skill over time, you go into a different boot and now you can like, um, this is just me thinking, like now you can actually access that and now it's like more of a motor control to help, like it fits well to where you can control that with your leg and, and do it naturally.

Okay, so the interesting thing was if you actually looked at these boots these new ones, they actually came out different. And looking at the back of them— so if you look at a pair of— imagine looking at a pair of boots from the back, the cuffs usually look straight up and down, like vertical. These ones, after they'd got molded, had, had a bow-legged shape in them. So when the plastic got soft and then they wrapped around my leg and they put the cold compression things and, and then cooled it, it set more like a a bow-legged shape. So essentially, these new boots were following the shape of my foot and leg more closely to how I was built. So I don't have— I have this tibial varum going on. I have less muscle mass on the inside, and the tibias are curved a little bit outwards. And so these boots, the shell followed my leg all the way up and allowed my foot to just rest the way it wanted, because I'm pretty good at balancing. I know how to put pressure wherever I want on my foot. And however my leg comes out of that foot, whether it's in a straight line, straight up, inwards and then outwards, or outwards and inwards, this boot allowed that. And so as soon as I wanted to roll on the edge, there was plastic cuff against the inner part that moved with it. It wasn't in a different position that wasn't where my leg was. So I was like, oh wow, crazy. So what if canting a whole lot of the time, what it's doing is it's actually— it is, it's changing the sole of the foot, but it's also— the main thing it's changing is the upper calf angle, and it's moving the plastic closer or further away and getting it lined up with the bones on your leg. So when you move it left and right, tip it in and out, you get response straight away, and it doesn't start off in a position that is already pushing you out of whack. So I was like, right, I need to explore this further. So then did that with some other people's boots. It's like, don't get canting, see if you can try start from flat but get the cuffs really adjusted. And the problem here is, as you just discovered, you don't have in your boots any adjustment. A lot of boots have like very minimal adjustment. So it just happened that these Fischer ones had a lot, and that the— it was like Jello almost in the— to start with, like, just to help you imagine it, to then match my legs. I was like, well, that makes a lot more sense. Like, if I was to go— you go get— I mean, same with a footbed. A footbed is matched to the sole of your foot, and a lot of people think that's the footbed that is the most important thing. And while I say what's under your foot is, is important, though, if, if you could get— you get that all lined up straight, but then this plastic chimney going up your leg is not where you want to be. It doesn't matter how good that footbed is, you can't manipulate it, and you don't want to change someone's foot to being in a weird in or out position to try and move the leg to match the shell, the upper part, which is where a lot of people are trying to address it. They are— I find anyways a lot of, oh, you need a different footbed, get a better footbed, it's not the, the other part. Whereas I've just found not the case. So that upper section is super, super important. Um, any questions or anything of where I'm going to clarify?

I do, I do. Yeah, so I had a question, and, and one of the boot fitters was talking about, uh, cuff alignment. Is that different than what you're referring to? Because the way he described it was kind of like shifting how the cuff sits, but it sounds like this Fischer boot has even more adjustability compared to what normal cuff alignment would be. Can you clarify that for myself?

Yes, yes. So what they're talking about often— so people talk about canting and then cuff alignment, and in the boot fitting world, would you say that you say just going to adjust the cuff, you don't change the sole angle? It's, it's literally like being able to change your lower leg angle. To match. And so what I discovered is that's super important. And most of the boots, like yours, Greg, on others, like a Lang boot, even some of the top of the line ones, they have one adjustment for the cuff. Like, so you can maybe change it 1.5 degrees. I don't know what the number is, but say you can change it that. If you have two, an inner and an outer, then you can change it 1.5 and 1.5 and get 3. Okay, so most boots don't have that much adjustability. And, and as you would know, seeing all the different clients, people walk in with some very different on the spectrum leg shapes, you know, muscles more built up on the outer, the inner. Um, and one thing I found with my leg, like my fibula, the outer side, and the muscles there are more built up. And so I had to actually like get the cuff out of the way there, align it way further over. Like I've even— the boots I've got currently now, I have custom-made aluminum my friends made them to fit in on the side so I can get another 2 degrees further. And it's the best. It's like the most easy I've felt to ski because I'm not changing the sole of my foot. Because can you change the sole of your foot? And if you change it in or out, you actually bias the foot to wanting to push against it. So say if you— if we're all standing on like a, um, like a, uh, a speed hump. Okay, so bare feet, and we kind of straddle a speed hump with our feet, and it's a steep speed hump. You can imagine like the speed hump's trying to tip our feet outwards, so we stand on the outer edge of it. To counteract that, you press inwards. Now it's the other way around. Imagine you're standing in this V-shaped valley. It's trying to tip you in, you press outwards. So you activate muscles to stay and balance outwards. So you push against where something's pushing you. Just like if you push me at the front, I'll push you know, back at you in response to try and stay where I'm at. So when you, when you mess with canting, you, you also mess with that part. So what I really liked about this cuff alignment change, only getting that part right, was my foot, the way it's for 42 years now used to balancing and changing to perturbations and everything, it could just do that wherever it wanted. But then the lower leg wasn't interfered with and pushed. So I wasn't kind of finding this compensatory position. So does that make sense?

Yeah, no, that totally does. And I think this is part of kind of the discussion of what I wanted to have, especially with people that are more on the extreme. So kind of maybe a follow-up question with you, like, is, do you think there's a limit or have you seen a limit for people that are in that knock-kneed position or more of like a bow-legged position of like, how far are you willing to take that cuff to match their bow-leggedness or their knock-kneedness before you're like, aye, cuz I think I, I asked this to the Bootfitter and he's like, if you go too far, it's dangerous. But it's like, well, how are you measuring what's dangerous and what's not? And like, what are your opinions on that?

Yeah, I— that, that I can't give a really— I don't know, I guess the answer would be I have— I don't know. Um, I've seen people— I think there's a couple limitations. One, Like I mentioned, my boots, I've got like 5 degrees of cuff alignment available, and I don't think any boots out there have that unless you're making custom cuff alignment bolts. So I think that's the extreme. I've found it only to benefit my legs. They don't feel as strained because it's just following the shape of my leg. But then I, I guess I'm picturing in my head some, you know, some friends like Dad who has like really bow legs, you know, like that, the really end of the spectrum. And I think in that situation, when you kind of definitely beyond the norm— and this is just what I think now, I don't know for sure— but there I think you might need canting and other things to, to help, um, that point. But yeah, I know I've heard that as well, like canting, like don't go beyond 3 degrees, that's dangerous, that's too much. And I think with canting, yes, because you're messing with not only the angle of the lower leg, you're messing with the foot. So then you're standing someone like really on the outer edge, and then you go and ski and put forces against that. The sole of the foot is now not lined up with the base angle of the ski, so you're getting these different positions, and there's going to be torque, that sort of stuff. So I can see where that would be a problem. And I guess one, one other issue is, so say you hear this, like, great, okay, I'm just going to go down, get my boots cuff aligned, not worry about canting. The problem is not a lot of boots have this cuff alignment range adjusted to them. Um, often, you know, people that might need it are like an intermediate, and so those boots definitely don't have— like Archie, his young boots, there's no range in those. It's just like however it is, it is. So yeah, the extreme ends, I think that's where you got to go find these, these guru boot fitters have been doing for ages and have had to solve those problems over time, like Like a friend I got, Brent Armsbury, he's, he's dealt with all sorts of really wacky different feet and legs and, and people that have had car accidents, motorbike accidents, had to really think outside the box to make something work. And yeah, if you have that approach, like you mentioned the beginning, fit to the individual, then I think if that person has that, that mindset, they will be able to come up with a solution. And, and then discussion between the two will be like, look, this is special, and maybe don't ski in these situations or be mindful of, of speed. So there's my, there's my answer to your question.

Yeah, it's just very interesting because one of the things that kind of sparked this, um, decision of wanting to talk to different boot fitters was, um, uh, one of my friends who's a surgeon, he's like, oh, I do this structural alignment surgery for some of these people that are like extremely knock-kneed or extremely bowlegged. And I was like, well, you know, this could be an issue for like skiers, some skiers where it's like it doesn't matter how much you work on their hip abductors, their anatomy is just going to put them into a knock-knee position. And I was telling him, this is crazy that you're doing a preventative surgery to help someone's alignment. But at the same time, it's like, well, could this be beneficial? I don't want to completely throw the baby out with the bathwater, but is this something that we need to consider for those extreme, extreme cases?

Yeah, that does sound pretty crazy, doesn't it? But I don't know. I guess you just have to— take it case by case there. I guess, like, to finish up maybe this bit on extreme ends, I've also found, back to like technique side, as you start getting people focused on what they're trying to achieve through their feet, like where they're trying to put pressure, how they're trying to align things, where they're trying to balance, I do find that the range that is— maybe you might go, oh, it's a boot fit problem, starts actually becoming less. So there's definitely technique or the awareness, like skilled athleticism, that is, that is a piece of the puzzle. Um, as well as like, we've— I've kind of mostly talked about lateral alignment here. All the other angles also do play into it as well. Um, yeah, and I found like the other thing I've realized over time is ankle flex. As you know, like, ankle flex, biggest thing, most common, like, early on in your career mistake when you're trying to get good at skiing is not having enough ankle flex and that sort of stuff. So here's the interesting thing I've found there. A lot of the times, boots, the design— even you probably saw I went to Dubai and I had to rent ski equipment that was really upright. Those things block you. Again, like the lateral thing, if you have a very upright boot and it's too big, Greg, and so to get that fit right you tighten the buckles really tight, now suddenly that cuff comes straighter and straighter and kind of constrains your leg. And you could have 30 degrees of ankle flexion naturally, but you try and come against that plastic thing and it doesn't move. And if you don't know that that's what you should be doing, and that's the boot that you started out with, haven't skied for 2 years, and people like, flex your ankle, flex your ankle, and you're like, I'm trying, it shouldn't be that hard. So I have found that getting that part right and making sure the boot has some good angles— like, if you're not just the person that's like, I just ski to the lunch spot, or I don't care about really making turns, I just like going fast, like, this don't worry. But if you're trying to get better and you enjoy making a turn and you want to, want to do that, I think that angles of the boot really, really make a difference.

Yeah, we were kind of talking about this with one of the other podcasts too, and I asked a little bit about like boot stiffness and what's the ideal boot stiffness. And, um, interesting discussion because I was like, well, if you can't get forward because the boot's too stiff, well, do you need to go into a softer boot? Or is that just because your angle isn't there? And it was explained it could be a combination of both, but oftentimes it can't go.

Yeah, it can be definitely a combination of both. Even like the height of the cuff, like I've seen this trend lately, like the new— the boots that my wife's in recently, we got them last year. So this K2 boot, super comfortable, had bone on the bottom, and my wife had been complaining of like burning ball of foot pain a lot of the time in her life. These, these boots any of that, honey? Nope. This is like, yes, thank God we can get through a day and she's not going to try and like pull out early because the boots are painful. Get out there, great, expecting there's going to be the perfect day. At the end of the day, like partway through, she's like, I can't ski the ski very well, I feel like I can't flex my ankle. And these boots weren't that much stiffer. Then we get home and I compared to the old ones, the cuff height on the new boots, same kind of flex, the cuff height was literally like 2.5, 3 centimeters taller on her. She's short, she's like 156 centimeters tall. This kah fight was like way, way taller. So the height of the plastic really can affect your ability to get leverage. It's just like, you know, me putting my hands against your shoulders, Greg, and saying push forward. If I put my hands on your hips, you know, you've got that ability to move higher up. So you block the leg higher up and it gets harder. So I've done it with my son's boots, with her boots. I just trim that bit down. And another thing I've realized is, to help production costs of a ski boot, ski boot upper cuffs will cover 2 to 3 size ranges for the lower shell. So say a, say a 22.5 lower and a 23.5 lower they will share often the same upper cuff. So if you're the 22.5 small foot, you get given the same cuff as someone who's a size bigger, who could even be, you know, then also taller again to cover that range. And a lot of people don't realize that. And so then you can just go to boot fitter, or you can even just get a heat gun and a sharp knife— be careful— and just trim it down yourself bit by bit until you suddenly feel your ankle to be able to flex again. But that ankle flex part, the upper cuff height— I've just seen a lot of boots come out with like saying that there's more power there. There's no power if you can't just get an athletic position in the first place. I think being able to get in a flex position, super important. So yeah, there's, there's one thing I've also learned more recently, um, about as well.

I want to take a break from the show and let you know about the Legacy Club membership and community. The Legacy Club is a club I designed to help skiers of all ability levels prevent and recover from injury. So whether you want to avoid injury and ski for a lifetime or need recommendations to get back to the slopes as fast as possible, come join myself and the other like-minded skiers who are already taking their skiing to the next level. When you sign up, you'll be able to demo everything free for the first 2 weeks. To sign up, click the link provided in the show notes. And again, don't miss this opportunity to check it out free for the first 2 weeks and make the best turns of your life. All right, thanks for your patience. Now let's get back to the show. Yeah, that's a super interesting point of the height. I didn't think about that. And also for myself, like I think taking a knife to my boots, especially if they're brand new or newer, is very, very scary. So I would probably take it to the boot fitter who's a lot more skilled at that to be like, hey, I think this is something I would like to do. But that's a very interesting point.

Yeah.

One thing that you were mentioning earlier, it's like, if I push on the shoulders, what you want to get— if I'm pushing you backwards, you're going to want to push forward. And I know that can be the same concept at the foot and with the angles from the heel to the toe. So for example, for someone that has limited ankle mobility, we would give them heel lifts so that way they can squat all the way down and have that range of motion. But by doing that, you may shift their pressure forward. So do you see a relationship between, I guess, the heel height and maybe they call that what, ramp angle or delta, or there's so many different things that that can be referred to. But do you see a relationship between that and like, let's say you're now your weight is shifted so far forward that you can get forward in the boot, but physiologically you're like, oh shoot, I'm kind of falling forward. I feel like I need to push back against it. And now you're skiing in the back because that angle is too much. Do you ever see that?

Yes. And there's another like rabbit hole I went down for a while as well. And I think that's— and I should say that that's been a really great thing, the fact I'm curious and I don't care about cutting my boots up on my liners. It's helped me to go down and discover and go too far and then come back. But, but trying to walk the road to learn about instead of just take, take it from other people has been a good thing. So back to your question about basically ramp angle, or the height of the heel versus the height of the forefoot, Yes, definitely makes a difference. So in general, so when I experimented with this, because a friend, he, he skis with heel lifts in, extremely high level, like better skier than me, great skier. And when he has— he makes a transition, he can be super low. So just like when you wear them in the gym, you can bend right down. It really takes a lot of load off your knees. You feel like it's ways to move up and down. So the, the transition, like the bending ability, can be increased through having that heel lift. And so actually, in general, what I found is I sat down and back more. Like, it was actually kind of tiring because, again, the, the ground pushing against you, if it is higher in the heel, it's like the ground's pushing up on you more. Unless you're a really good skier and go, oh great, that's— I'll be encouraged to lean more forward from that. If you're not, if you're like your friend who's just like, oh, they went skiing a couple times when they're a kid and you take them out again, they're gonna go, whoa, and lean back against that. Just like walking down a slope, you don't, you don't go walk down a slope and go, oh cool, the slope's tipping me forward, I'll just sprint full ball like those cheese wheel chasers. Have you seen those videos? You know, like, whoa. It's not reflexively natural to do that. You go back. And so same the, the other way. I mean, you don't ever find a boot that is the opposite way, like closer to flat. Yes. So basically your body responds by pushing more against that point, or naturally wanting to, unless you become very skilled and you know what you're trying to feel like. I know I need pressure at the tip of the ski, top of the turn. I know I need to move it back. At this point. If you're not there, then these things have more of an influence, I get, is what is— I guess is what I'm saying. Because another interesting point was when I went and rented boots again in Dubai, deliberately didn't take my own boots, the, the cuff was really upright, the sole, the ramp was really flat as well. And when I put them on, I thought, oh cool, great, this is going to help. I'm going to probably like this. I've never had such a flat ramp angle. Nope, my body had learned that it likes a little bit of ramp angle there. It does help. But I only knew that because I had taken— paid attention and expanded with these things. But yeah, the boots before the ones I've got, I would grind the heel down maybe a mil and a half, and I like the feel of that because— and this would be the same, this would be something to try. So say you're someone that really struggles to get the tip of the ski engaged, like you're like, all these people talk about like the front the ski hooking up. If you have a very ramp angle boot, heel high boot, you won't learn to feel that. I can tell you, if you drop the heel and make it more level, or even gas pedal— like, you don't even have to grind the boot board down. You can take your footbed out and almost like tape on like half another footbed. Might squash your foot for the morning, but you tape that on the front to kind of level it out. Straight away your body goes, oh, I can lean forward against this, I'm not going to fall on my face. Whole, whole body moves forward, you've got more ball of foot pressure, suddenly the ski starts to grab and pull into the, into the turn more. So, and have you expanded with that yet?

I haven't, no. You've got in your boot, uh, well, I recently learned that I could pull the boot board out. Like, that's something that I thought was just glued to the boot, and I looked at it and it's like, oh yeah, there's clearly like a 5mm ramp height between the heel to the toe. So yeah, I mean, I've never experimented with it, but now that I know, it's like, well, maybe I should just take some tape and tape it to the boot board and see, like, does that make a difference? And then if it is, that's like a progression where I start maybe with 5 layers of duct tape. As I start to learn, just take off one until it's there. And then maybe from there, like you're saying, as I learn what that tip engagement is, then maybe I can start to increase the ramp angle as I learn that position.

Yes, exactly. Like, you'll feel a whole bunch of things. The transition height will feel different, like where you want to balance and be able to bend. So go out and experiment with those things. And yeah, don't make a permanent change. Like, it's so easy with those, um, yeah, with, with your footbed or under the baseboard, like you said. Just go to the shop and ask them for which foot— you know, the insoles that they throw away, because most people get sold a custom insole. Get those. I did the other day with this, with Rosie from, from, um, Carv. And, uh, yeah, we just took them and she's like, oh wow, cool, this is, this is definitely different, way different. And I've— and so skiing is all about learning new feelings. Like, if I remember my friend Paul Lorenz, one day we're on the lift, he's like, I just wish I could inject a feeling into you because there's this feeling I have that you don't have yet. I wish I could just do that. That would be the simplest thing, but we all have— we have to explain it and get you to try things, and that's good too. But learning feelings is the important thing. And so playing around your boots to influence that is like such a great way to discover something.

I love that. Yeah, I honestly, I feel like I integrate that into therapy as well. It's kind of the concept of, hey, if you're not moving a certain way, let's give you an external cue to maybe help you move in the way we want you to. And then gradually we can decrease that cue until you learn it without the cue. And then we can actually do the opposite to make it more challenging, but you're still trying to do it against the forces that are more challenging. So we can take that from like the outside to influence movement, just like we can do to the foot as well. That's really cool. Yeah.

Did— so, you know, a fascinating experiment I heard was done by this guy, John Shedden, who he, he was involved in the British or UK. I always get this wrong even though my wife is from England. The correct name for the Great Britain, UK. Anyway, he used to be head of Great Britain Snow Sports, something like that. Apologies, John. He did these tests where he anesthetized people's lower legs with gel. So anesthetizing gel. And he took people like me, and you who'd done a bunch of skiing, anesthetized our lower legs, and then took people who are beginners, anesthetized their legs and feet, and tested what difference it made before and after, with or without. Who do you think it affected more? Who do you think was made into a worse skier, or felt was a lot worse? The beginner or the, or the expert?

I would say probably the expert, just because they're used to like being in a certain position.

Yes. You've just taken away all their feedback. And so, his sort of hypothesis from this was that there's so much information flooding in as a beginner, the new sounds, the new sensations, people, like they're afraid, like, whoa, do this something. It's like being in a noisy room and everyone's trying to talk to you at the same time and you don't know what to listen to. Whereas an expert can just be like, block all this out. Just feel the edge, just feel the front part of my foot. And so you take all that away and suddenly they're like, where am I? And it's— yeah, and they've got no, no feedback loop going. So I found that fascinating. And then just like, wow, that's the clearest way to say what you're trying to do is help people like block out this, filter this. So, oh, I just felt what rolling the ski on edge is like. Oh, I just felt like what pressuring the front and the back of the ski is like. And they can start putting that in and ignoring the other rubbish that's kind of coming in and throwing them off.

That's so hard. I feel like, like any fine movement thing, we're really trying to refine the, the little bitty things. Like if you think about golf, you can get so many cues at once and sometimes it's just like that one little cue that helps you hit the ball perfectly. And I think that's the same for skiing.

Yeah, yeah, you're looking for all these little things and then, then it just becomes auto. Uh, the other thing I was going to say, another cool interesting study, and it speaks to, I guess, maybe my experience of at first feeling these things drastically affect— like the ramp angle change, drastic effect. Cuff alignment, canning, drastic effect. When they, they took, uh, like a World Cup athlete skier a sort of fairly good racer level, like say like one of the better guys at the local resort in, in California, you know, Tahoe. And then, and they compared these two skiers and they had pressure data on, on the skis so they could tell where the fore and aft pressure was going for the different parts of the turn. The only difference with each run, they did maybe 3 or 4 different runs. This was done by a guy named Lou Rosenfeld, this, this research. On binding position. So they would move the binding forward of manufacturer's recommended, middle, back, and then they collected all the data. When you look at the expert, the person who's World Cup level, like top of the top, barely changes how they manipulate the ski. The, the graphs look the same, like certain part of the turn they pressure here, blah blah blah. They can get pressure to the ski fine. Down, even at a, like, a level probably better than, than me, they are affected way more. You change those things and whoa, you know, they're struggling. They can't quite get the ski to respond in the same way. So I guess that points to the fact the, the less skilled you are, less experienced, these other things affect you more than when you're much better. So it kind of— I don't know, like, to me that says, well, if you're at the, like, the learn— more learning end of skiing versus, like, the expert end, sometimes that's where, like, alignment of your boots, tune of your skis, all that sort of stuff needs to be even more important because you don't have as big a tolerance to, to adapt to.

So yeah, I mean, you're an instructor, so do you see that in some of the people that either you're teaching or maybe that come through your camp where you make a small adjustment and, like, they've never had that before and it just takes their skiing exponentially to the next level?

Yeah, all the time. Yeah, on the camps we do, there's a boot fitting part where people bring their boots, like, right, everyone rip your liners out, rip your footbeds out, let's have a look at it. And more than half of them got some weird stuff going on in there, like someone's built this extra cool footbed, there's extra support, and, and then they've like tipped the, you know, put extra foam under here and tipped it out and then got a heel lift and And often we just rip all that stuff off and start again. And, and usually the problem is the shell— either cuff is off or the shell, they don't have it, um, punched right. So, and I want to cover this because you mentioned something in the beginning about performance versus comfort, okay? So it's like either you're going performance or either you're going comfort. Well, my goal has always been I want both. So I have a 150 flex race boot, was— couldn't put it on for more than a minute when I bought it, brutal. But I started with this tight-fitting performance package, stretched outwards, ground, adjusted the flex, made it a little bit softer, but not the lateral change. I wanted the, the fore and aft to be softer, but I wanted to keep the stiff plastic for the lateral. So anyway, customize it so every little part of my, um, foot, like the navicular, ball of foot, the big toe, all these, the, the malleoli, they all had pockets. So it's like a perfect 3D print, not just of the sole of the foot, because I think that's kind of one part that's kind of maybe good about a custom footbed. It's like a 3D print at the bottom. There's all the sides. You're pressing on the side of your feet when you edge the, the other way. You're flexing forward in your ankle instead of changing if you can get that ski boot to allow those bony bits to fit, you don't get a compensation. So imagine you're blocked at the ankle, like, like rolling on the edge, your left foot on the edge. Imagine your, your inner ankle bone hits the plastic, and it doesn't even have to be painful. It'll be painful if you ski for 150 days, have 2 months off, and then you ski another 120 days. But a lot of people are skiing 30 days a year, maybe, if they're like really into it. It's gonna be painful. But if you take the liner out and you get them to make that movement in the shell and the malleolus hits, and it's the main thing hitting— so when you roll to the edge, where does all the pressure go if there's no foam? To the malleolus, the bony part. Your body's going to go, no, we won't do that. So what does it do instead? It doesn't roll the ankle, it moves the knee across and just leverages against the cuff. And now the sole of your foot is not trying actively evert. It's just staying passive and you're just cranking the, the leg in. You don't have this fine-tuned edge pressure which an expert ski will have. And so then you maybe have these weird problems like sore knees or like, you know, the pinky toes sore because now your foot's going in a different position. And then so they go, oh no, you need a footbed to fix that and position yourself in a better position. So I really think you can have performance and comfort. It takes time. You've got to invest in a good boot fitter or learn to do it yourself and just be a little bit pedantic, like the princess and the pea. You, you won't realize, Greg, like, this is one thing I'd love you to try this season, is do that test. I call it like the tip shell tipping test. Put your legs in your, in your ski boots without the, the liners, put the footbeds in, and play around with edging movements. And say, if I had to just ski in this shell the whole morning, I'm not allowed a liner, where would I want this thing punched and ground so it would be more comfortable? And if you take that on, you suddenly go, whoa, you can push things further because the pressure gets spread out evenly and your nervous system doesn't back off. Because, you know, it's very intelligent. If it senses this is not good, not comfortable, it'll just figure out a way around it to to not deal with that.

Yeah, that's very interesting because I think a lot of people are fearful. It's like, oh, I don't want to punch too much because then there'll be too much room and then I won't be able to move. But to your point, you're not necessarily punching for room, you're punching so it's comfortable and your nervous system can appropriately do what it wants to do.

Exactly. I'm punching it so it fits perfectly when I apply pressure to the side of my foot or the, or the pinky toe side. It fits like a 3D-printed mold. Bam. The— it's— yeah, and you don't need it to be mega, mega tight to do that. I think having a good fit around your lower leg is important because you don't want your knee to move and the boot to not move. But, but I would call it like edge pressure. Edge pressure is really affected by the way your foot can articulate, like, evert or invert inside the boot. And you can make that movement without there being a whole big change at the lower leg. And that just changes where the pressure of your body comes down through the side of your foot, back to my point about, like, where your knee's positioned. So if you can play with that, you now can suddenly have, like, 50 degrees of edge angle but not be totally everted in your foot, like, partway through a turn, kind of drifting. and then you can just add the eversion tension, and the ski just bites without there being really a change in edge angle. It's just where the pressure goes— whack. And that's what you're seeing when you see these great skiers, like they suddenly just took off, or they were like sliding and then edge, and then quick, quick, quick, quick. They've got that ability with their feet, or they've learned to do that with their feet.

Yeah, that's really, really cool. Now, now, Tom, I know you described like over years this is something that you had put time into developing on your own, and And I'm assuming not a lot of the listeners have the equipment or the time. So I guess from like a recommendation, if like you didn't have that, like how do you, if, if you didn't have the equipment, how would you go to your bootfitter? Let's say they are your really good friend and say like, hey, these are some things I want to experiment with or things that I want you to try. I think it's very challenging cuz a lot of bootfitters are not to say like stuck in their own ways, but think like, this is how we should do it, and maybe a little bit hesitant to go in and do that again. How would you approach that?

A good question, because I have to approach that, uh, quite often with, uh, the people I meet and the students. Uh, I would just say really first at home, like now's a great time of year before ski season to get to know your ski boots and these ins and outs, because I think you if you can come in and really express your side of things, not vaguely, but like clearly, like, it's like, I did this test of rolling my foot, and, or, if I look at my foot without the liner inside the shell, it looks like this part is very close to the edge. I'm just curious, would you be able to punch that to, to make that better? Or, you know, I feel like my boot's maybe a bit too big, I've gone too big to try and fit it. 'Um, do you suggest— like, what can we try? Some other boots? And can you help me know, like, what things you can change?' Like, like you said, you can widen the forefoot. I think my point is, be at home, get to know what you really want to go in and talk about first, so you can articulate when they go back and go, 'Oh no, but what about this?' And you go, 'Well, yes, I, I, I understand where you come from there, but I, I said this test and checked that, and when I look at video of myself I see this problem, like my left leg chatters, or I get this really weird A-frame look only on the left and not the right. And that's why I want you to maybe check out this punch. Um, so that would be the, the best bit of advice. But there are some DIY tools that you can get, like Southern Man Ski Tools, Patriot Ski— Patriot Footbeds. He makes this DIY punch tool, and it's not that hard. You just have to, you know, learn how hot the plastic can get. Maybe even, you know, look up on— there's, there's videos online that teach you how to, how to do this stuff. And you might want to get a pair of secondhand boots from the thrift store to practice on and just take your time. But you can do it yourself if you're a handy person. If not, know what you're really trying to articulate to them.

Yeah, totally. I feel like last time, Tom, we had talked about your boot fit guide. Is— are, are these like suggestions in there? Some of these home tests are all those included in your BootFit guide for things to test on your own?

Yeah, they are.

Yeah, wonderful, wonderful.

Yeah, so that's it. Yeah, there's a free BootFit guide, so I've tried to put some things in there and not be— it's probably not as, uh, opinionated as I'm talking to you now on the podcast. It's a little bit more like— so you can hopefully then go into the, the BootFitter and, and have a great conversation, um, and get a result.

I think that's the main thing, whether it's like we're talking here or I'm talking to any BootFitter. If you're a listener of the podcast, it's just Hey, Tom and I are just trying to educate you, not telling you what is the right way or the wrong way, but just give you the knowledge of maybe these are the things we should consider. That way when you do go into a bootfitter, you can have an educated conversation of what you think is the best for you. And even like outside of like bootfitting, like whether it's healthcare and trying to advocate for yourself, just giving you the ability to advocate for yourself. So Tom, this is a wonderful conversation again.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I think like I, I don't know at all. I definitely don't know at all. Um, but I've— I would say what I've learned is from being on a little bit on the sort of one end of the, of the spectrum of problems with my feet that's forced me— like, I— my feet were getting so sore because I was doing back-to-back winters, I was considering like, like I needed to maybe get surgery for the, like, the back of my, um, heel. So like there was— this was not good. So I had to go and figure out how to look after my feet, how to better fit my boot. And so I worked in ski boot shops and did a bunch of sort of work my own. But then I, I would say the other point I guess I wanted to bring up is not just around the boots and that's the stuff. I, I went and studied Structural Integration, which is like a form of, um, hands-on therapy where you really get to see people change like their alignment through working on their body. And so the, the biggest thing I learned from that is the body can adapt and change. Like, no, you can't change someone from being bowlegged to not being bowlegged. If the bones are that way, they get that way. But I saw people change from really bad posture to really beautiful, straight, upright posture and fluid movement, and it was through just helping them feel their body and then learning like these feelings, like, oh, I can put pressure on the ball of my foot. And, you know, this injury 40 years ago where I stood on like a piece of glass that, you know, cut it and infected it. So I just learned to just never put first metatarsal pressure on, and then I went through the rest of my life not doing that, playing sport, blah blah blah. And I suddenly learned that again, like, all these other problems that with the hip and their back just like vanish. So just seeing that you can change and, and like how much— yeah, it's like about awareness really. Like, has— that's, that's a lot of the time where I'm seeing boot fit things from. So like, oh, you can't put ball of foot, you can't get ball of foot pressure, let's check inside your boot if it's shaped to like your individual shape to allow you to do that. Or is the plastic blocking you?

Wow. Yeah, that's so, that's so wise. And I feel like, uh, as I've worked with a lot of skiers, like you kind of alluded to it at the beginning, like everyone has that strong side, weak side turn, and a lot of those things could be related to just, uh, I refer to it as like dominance versus non-dominant side. And it's kind of like, well, we can train ourselves to move equally on our right and left. It just takes time and effort and awareness, I think, of learning where we move well and where we don't.

Totally.

Yeah, yeah. Well, Tom, before we get out of here, do you have any closing remarks or any suggestions for the listeners?

Do I have any closing advice? Uh, I think be curious. Um, yeah, get your boots out, and, and if you can experiment with some little DIY, like, changes, like non-permanent things. Brent, this master boot fitter friend of mine, is a big advocate of that, like getting, uh, spoilers— so the things that go in the back of your boot that kind of push you forward— you can use those, especially if they're not big chunky ones. You can put that on the outer part of your cuff, the front of your cuff if you think your cuff is too far forward, on the inside, on the back, like to change these angles and see what happens. Obviously, like, take it easy and ski on an easier slope, but please go out and experiment. Like, try a different footbed. Like, take out out the one you've got and just put in the stock standard one. What do you feel is different? Um, if you've got too much space in there, get another stock insole and put it inside to fill up the volume. Like, we haven't talked about that, but that's another thing, a super big problem. People might have the right size length and everything else is right, the cuff alignment, everything, and they got heel lift. Everyone thinks you fix heel lift with grabbing the back and like a tighter fitting around the Achilles. That's a poor place to hold the heel down. And the best analogy, Greg, if your shoes were undone, your shoelaces were super loose, and you went to run 100 meters, the shoes will just come off, your heels lifting. Okay, you do those shoes up, the back of those don't have like a zip fit, like Achilles grabbing type thing going on, right? Like they've just got good shoelaces holding your foot down. So often volume around your forefoot is a problem for heel lift. So you fix that, and then by having, you know, more volume taken up under there, and heel lift reduces massively.

Yeah, I like that suggestion a lot. It's like, you don't need to go get new boots if you have too much volume. Just like try putting another footbed in and then see if you take up that volume, if it can fix the issue. So great, great suggestions as always, Tom.

Yeah, yeah, no problems, no problems. Yeah, I could keep— you've got me on a topic I'm get into. So yeah, thanks, Greg.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, there's so much we could talk about, and I just love doing this because I think you're so wise to where, like, yes, Tom, you are an expert, and you are still someone that is eager to learn and just share with what you're learning. So I really, really appreciate that aspect from you.

Yes, yes. And I hope this is a message to all the bootfitters: don't hate me for this stuff. Try and see where I'm coming from. And I really hope that this brings more business to you and that you can, you know, maybe broaden what solutions you come up with, with these people that come to you. Yeah, looking for, looking for help. Because yeah, and that's the last thing I'd say, definitely like pay your boot fitter. Like don't expect your boots to just be the cost of when you purchase them, because to punch a boot, to grind it, to do all those things, like you have to be really careful because you don't want to have to buy the customer a new pair of boots. So it takes time. And so I guess if you are respectful of the boot fitter's time, and you know, whether that's in beer or it's in some money or whatever, like, be grateful for that. And then I think you'll— everyone will get a great, uh, result. So yeah, Greg, thanks so much for, for the time and the opportunity to chat on your podcast.

Absolutely, Tom. Yeah, I will definitely need to figure out a time where we can connect and get some skiing in, because it's been, I think, 2 years since I last had you on the podcast and we haven't connected yet, but it's in the works and we'll make it happen.

Definitely.

All right, wonderful. Have a great rest of your day and see you around.

Thanks, Greg.

Thank you for listening to the Legacy Podcast. If you're liking the show, can you do me a huge favor and leave a 5-star rating and review? I'm hoping to help the show gain traction within the ski community, and I can't do it without your help. If you leave a rating and review right now, that would help the show a ton. I appreciate your support and we'll catch you on the next episode.