@Skitechniek, thank you for that response. You crush boots without "leaning" (read: weight on the ball-of-foot). Until now I've not separated the two; using ankle-flexion to maintain cuff-contact while maintaining solid heel pressure, and getting that cuff contact by moving balance to the ball-of-foot.
When people say not to "hang out on the cuffs," they must be associating maintaining continuous cuff pressure with being on the balls-of-feet, and maybe this comes from their personal experience. If this indeed has been their experience, then perhaps the forward lean of their cuffs exceeds their dorsiflexion ROM. You have more experience in this than me... what do you think?
When you ran gates with boots fully unbuckled, then ran them with the cuffs buckled up, I assume your time improved and you were reminded of the functionality of that cuff. I'm guessing ... you could feel the role the cuffs were playing in that improvement and gained something worthwhile from feeling the difference between cuff and no cuff. Have I got that right?
Comments anybody? I have always been curious why trainers say don't hang out on the cuffs. I do, but my heels are FIRMLY weighted. I like it that way.
That is a hard question with a way too long answer, but I am going to try and keep it short and concise as possible. Some things I say are my own experience/opinion, since there is no research on the topic, other arguments I make are well researched.
When I ran gates with my boots unbuckled vs. my boots buckled the times hardly differed. Only on hard course sets and turns with big loads the boot makes a difference. It is a false premise that boots increase ski performance, this has been researched. Not in the way I state it, but factors that influence ski radius have been researched and boots are not one of the parameters that influence turning radius. You should see boots more as human performance improver, not a ski performance improver. To understand what I am saying you should read into some articles about the relation between ski boots and load on the joints.
This is a quote from "Flexural behavior of ski boots under realistic loads – The concept of an improved test method":
Coincidentally experienced skiers tend to keep a constant lower leg posture using boots with varying stiffness [16, 17].
Since a softer boot gives less resistance against external bending moments, the muscles in hip, knee and ankle need to generate
more muscular power, eventually leading to faster fatigue.
This is what I mean by a human improver. Stiff boots tend to absorb a bit of the load, hence boots can make it that you are able to withstand a little bit more GRF/g-forces etc... Your joints and muscles have to work less hard to achieve the same result. Other than that, the boots don't do much for you. EDIT: Boots also help with mistakes, if you get thrown off balance the boot provides a platform to get yourself centered again. Without it you will just fall over or need super human strength to keep yourself on your feet.
Why you don't want to lean into the boot is an argument I make based of personal experience. However, the fact that you want to be centered has been researched in for example Birdcage 1991 and also in some Canadian paper with L4 skiers. The reason you want to stay centered along the whole foot is because in that position you achieve optimal strength and balance. If you have to perform squats on your toes vs. on you whole foot you will probably be stronger while performing a squat on your whole foot. Balance wise, if I try to push you over while you are on your toes, I will easily be able to get you off balance. If you stand on your whole foot, you have a bigger BoS and will be able to withstand to force I apply better. Furthermore if the tail or tip of the ski becomes too light while skiing ice, there is a fairly big chance the ski won't hold edge and washes out. Definitely talking from experience here LOL. Not pretty.
In short, you train with unbuckled boots to improve strenght and balance. You'll have to withstand the pressure without help of the boot and you cannot afford to not be on the whole foot and get thrown off balance, because you will be completely fucked. Excuse my French.
Another fun paper that has been done is this one:
https://serval.unil.ch/resource/serval:BIB_ACAC8C39080C.P001/REF
Different topic than what we're discussing, but why I bring it up is because part of the experiment was performed by FIS/EC racers on this thing:
This was their binding, no safety binding and they were wearing a 20 kg backpack. They can ski on this cause they are centered.
I have read some topics on this forum and I know it's heresy to say it here, but the only way to properly move your CoM forward along the length of the outside ski is to push your inside ski forward, or outside ski backwards (it requires very good ankle mobility though). There is no other way to move your CoM forward along the length of the ski and keep your weight on the whole foot. You are either perfectly centered on two ski's with equal tips, or your CoM is forward on one ski and back on the other. Which is completely fine, as long as you balance on the ski where your CoM is forward. In racing, moving your weight forward by standing on the front of your feet is a technical error.
If you analyse this clip e.g. you can clearly see Hirscher's ski tips are far from equal when there is lots of offset in the turns. Moving your CoM forward along the length of the ski influences turning radius. If I am correct about the general consensus of this forum many of you would probably view this as a technical error, I do not.
