Inside foot pull back

[Erik Timmerman]

I wanted to put in my title that font where there is a line through the letters. Pull is slashed through and replaced with push.

There has been so much talk about inside foot pull back in ski instruction. Heck, a guy could probably make a living off of it if he wanted to. I think that when we see excessive tip lead, we are looking at something that needs fixing, but I don't think that pulling back the inside foot is actually the answer. I think you can pull that foot back without really changing much or making that person ski better. I've also heard people suggest pushing the outside foot forward. I'm not suggesting that either as I think that you are still just hiding a symptom and as with pulling the foot back, maybe adding another layer of problems that need to be unravelled.

I think that when I am skiing well, my inside foot and ankle feel supple and relaxed and that the ankle joint is closed by the ski tip reacting against the snow. The inside foot is pushed back and the tips are nearly parallel to each other. I think that this all comes from accurately balancing our bodies against the forces of the turn. I wish I had better words for it, but I am a teacher that teaches on the snow and help the student find this by helping them feel the sensations they need to feel to achieve it.

I'm not here to tell you guys how to ski or how to think, but just trolling for any thoughts that might align with this. Or thoughts that refute it if that's where you want to go with it.

 

[Coach13]

We saw a lot of discussion on pulling the inside foot back on EpicSki, but as a learning skier it never felt comfortable to me. I always felt like I was forcing something that wasn’t natural. I had better luck after an instructor told me to think of it more of stacking my inside hip over my inside foot, if that makes any sense.

 

[BGreen]

I think pulling the inside foot back is important just to keep some pressure on the boot. Really I try to focus on the inside hip moving up and forward and keeping a little back pressure on the inside foot helps direct pressure to the right places. I think it also is something people get way too excited about.

 

[Fuller]

I still have way too much tip lead but last year it got a lot better when I finally got the concept of a more passive "fall" to the inside by tipping, lifting and pulling back the inside ski and just letting the outside ski scribe an arc. I also managed to narrow my base of support which sharpened and quickened my responses. Such a subtle move with an infinite variety available for whatever the mountain presents. The difference between trying too hard and just letting it happen depends on dialing in that inside movement.

 

[Nancy Hummel]

I have caught myself being lazy and allowing the inside ski to slide too far forward. Paying attention to it has stopped that issue. It is not as much a "pull back" as keeping it where it belongs.

 

[AmyPJ]

What about shortening that leg?

 

[cantunamunch]

What about shortening that leg?

Shortening that leg is one part of it - but shortening doesn't close the ankle (see @epic 's post), and doesn't, in itself, keep the inside ski tip tracking (it needs to track both vertically and radially, in the snow coordinate system) so that there is a definite track for the tail of the inside ski to follow.

Of course, if your tibialis anterior is strong enough to flex the boot you could close the ankle in free air.

 

[Rod9301]

I think pulling the inside for back is really important. You use the hamstrings to do it, and it takes a fair amount of force.

The big benefit is that when you begin the next turn, you are balanced on it
Instead, if the inside ski is forward, you will be in the back seat when that ski becomes the new outside ski.

This is really obvious in very short turns on steep terrain, including jump turns.

 

[Fuller]

I think pulling the inside for back is really important. You use the hamstrings to do it, and it takes a fair amount of force.

The big benefit is that when you begin the next turn, you are balanced on it
Instead, if the inside ski is forward, you will be in the back seat when that ski becomes the new outside ski.

This is really obvious in very short turns on steep terrain, including jump turns.

I hadn't thought of it that way but you're right, the pull back not only initiates the current turn it sets up the one after. Good to know.

 

[KevinF]

Full disclosure: @epic and I discussed this the other day.

My “problem” with inside foot pullback was that it felt like a forced, unnatural move. And —for me at least — the ankle is a weak joint and the jossiling around of 3D terrain (bumps, crud) made it difficult to keep the inside foot close to where I wanted it.

Using the hips felt much more natural— the inside foot wound up where it should as an effect, not as something I directly strove to do.

I really look forward to playing around with this more this season.

 

[Ron]

Thoughts on hip retraction ( pulling the hip up) vs active foot retraction? I do more of this which shortens the inside leg and does retract

 

[François Pugh]

I think everyone should experiment with inside foot pull-back and vary the force applied in the pullback. I think they should do it with all their skis, at varying speeds.. Feel the relationship between the muscular tension, the bending moment (stress and strain) in the front of the ski, what it does to your balance and stacking, and the effect on your turn.

 

[razie]

Call it whatever you want, the point is - without going into much details - that the inside boot likes to shoot ahead of the hips, as you get bigger angles and you will need to keep it back. When something happens naturally and you want a different result, we're talking about the effort or the actual movement and in this case, it is in the direction of keeping the thing back... or pulling it back. Granted, English is my second language, so I will not go into how this is best worded...

@cantunamunch and @Rod9301 explained well some of the reasons to keep it back - it depends of course how much performance you want out of your skiing...

I think you're implying that your tips stay even without you focusing on dorsiflexing that inside ankle at all, that the ski pushes it back somehow, naturally? I have not encountered that anywhere in ski technical material. In fact , a lot of ski technique books explain why the inside boot likes to shuffle forward by itself, as a geometrical reaction to vertical separation, starting with Ron Kipp's book (he's actually so focused on that idea that he spends a lot of pages on it, from what I remember).

In terms of balancing, I'm not personally trying to put weight on my inside ski, on the contrary (see the thread with weighting the outside ski) so I would not be able to talk about balancing on the inside ski. As I balance on the outside ski, my inside ski is free to do what Ron says, if I do nothing about it...

Anyways, I think this is one of the ski instruction bits that one has to be careful with. It is important, but, without proper instructions, some end up pulling the inside hip back with the leg, causing more harm than good.

 

[Skisailor]

I have caught myself being lazy and allowing the inside ski to slide too far forward. Paying attention to it has stopped that issue. It is not as much a "pull back" as keeping it where it belongs.

Totally agree with Nancy. I make a big distinction between the active movement of “pulling the inside foot back” vs. simply holding it back to keep it where it belongs.

If there is a need to pull one foot back or push one forward, I think something has gone wrong earlier in the turn and the pull back move simply addresses a symptom rather than fixing the actual cause - as the OP states above.

That said, I also treat tip lead a little differently depending on the turn radius. I’m less concerned about it in very short radius, fall line oriented turns, where my focus is on turning my legs and keeping my hips facing down the fall line. Allowing more tip lead to develop in that situation makes it anatomically much easier to keep the hips facing downhill and avoid introducing a quickness-killing hip rotation.

 

[Marker]

Pulling and tipping the inside foot did wonders for my skiing, but it may have been no more than keeping where it belonged and preventing it from shooting forward.

 

[Kneale Brownson]

If I flex the new inside ankle as part of flattening that ski to release into the new turn, I don't need to pull it back

 

[LiquidFeet]

Pulling and tipping the inside foot did wonders for my skiing, but it may have been no more than keeping where it belonged and preventing it from shooting forward.

Pulling and Tipping. I affirm this message.
I think the differences already displayed in this thread may be semantic.
By that I mean strong skiers are doing the same thing, but their conception of what they are doing is being described differently.

 

[razie]

By that I mean strong skiers are doing the same thing, but their conception of what they are doing is being described differently.

Not really... maybe different words, but the same concepts. See JFB's segment on "foot placement" - it's really good, you may need to buy it, it's worth it.

 

[Doby Man]

I have caught myself being lazy and allowing the inside ski to slide too far forward. Paying attention to it has stopped that issue. It is not as much a "pull back" as keeping it where it belongs.

Nancy, why does it "belong" there? What does "belong" mean in the technical sense?

I think pulling the inside for back is really important. You use the hamstrings to do it, and it takes a fair amount of force.
The big benefit is that when you begin the next turn, you are balanced on it.

Rod, why should it take a "fair amount of force" to be "balanced" over your skis? Sounds like a lot of work to me.

I think you're implying that your tips stay even without you focusing on dorsiflexing that inside ankle at all, that the ski pushes it back somehow, naturally? I have not encountered that anywhere in ski technical material. In fact , a lot of ski technique books explain why the inside boot likes to shuffle forward by itself, as a geometrical reaction to vertical separation, starting with Ron Kipp's book (he's actually so focused on that idea that he spends a lot of pages on it, from what I remember).

A "geometrical reaction to vertical separation"? That may sound legit to those who do not really know what vertical separation is but that would mean that tip lead would not exist without vertical separation which is clearly not true.

 

[bbinder]

Pulling and Tipping. I affirm this message.
I think the differences already displayed in this thread may be semantic.
By that I mean strong skiers are doing the same thing, but their conception of what they are doing is being described differently.

Yes. Semantics. I think that there is a number of ways to describe the process of getting a similar result.