This is such a good thread. I have been accumulating posts to react to, here we go.
Regarding the ankle roll, tipping or bottom of foot-initiated edging...
But it's apparent to me that it's the simplest and quickest way to pressure the edge you want pressured. If you don't pressure the soles of your feet, the only way to pressure the edge is to pressure the boot top, which requires large movements that take time to initiate and a bit of speed to balance.
Yep, nice drill to drive this home is how many edge changes in X meters/yards at the same speed? So much faster with the bottom up method.
The absolute very first drill I do every single day on the slopes is walking-speed turns initiated by pressuring the soles of my feet, first from side to side and then adding in a very slight rolling of the inside ski onto the front inside (of the turn) tip by lightening the heel. Stay upright, sink shins into the boot tongue. It results in very tight slow speed turns. Then I progress into more speed and more angulation, bringing knees and hips into play. It seems to work well for me, but if any pros have suggestions about what problems it might cause I'm all ears.
This is going to become a theme in this response; you are doing a micro-tele turn there when you 'lighten the heel'. Nice drill, too bad your bindings won't let you go to the obvious conclusion
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You are correct in being concerned about your warmup drill's impact, and I am an expert. Before you know it you will be calling all manner of human 'dude', probably smell a bit, but be good company and be an awesome skier.
Movements of the ankle are part of the motions for knee angulation. Rolling the ankle inside of a ski boot in isolation will do absolutely nothing. Ankle movements bring the knee in which levers on the boot which then levers on the ski which tips the ski. If anyone has any doubts, stand on your ski on the floor without ski boots, and see if you are able to tip the ski by rolling your ankles or actually any other movement for that matter.
I did this experiment, Crispi World Cups with race liners, and I felt I could bend the shell--but the cuff hinges are crap on them. Anyone with some plug boots try it? I have held some that I didn't think could be bent fore/aft much less side to side.
The high, stiff cuffs of ski boots do serve a function. Ordinarily, the forces generated in a ski turn should continue to be borne through the feet. However, skiing can generate forces that are stronger than ordinarily encountered in walking or running. Thus I would say that contact between the shins and cuffs can productively bear some fraction of the peak lateral and forward forces a skier experiences. It just shouldn't become a substitute for more natural processes. (Maybe most importantly, those stiff cuffs help us catch ourselves and recenter when we encounter rough spots or something unexpected happens.)
I free ski always in walk mode, mind you it is tele but I think maybe I have a different mechanism for the support under lower loads. Come race course time things get locked down but good and what you describe is exactly the reason--the forces are too much for my ankle to deal with and I need the juddering of a rutted course transferred to my shins and more power in holding the edge.
You don’t want slop in a boot. Modify whatever is needed to get there.
Au contraire mon ami, the cool kids do exactly that I am told. Lisa Ballard said that the racers heat foot molding can include an ace bandage around the ankle for room to increase fine edge control as we are discussing. They ski without the ace bandage. In a high G turn the edge is not being controlled by large muscles but instead by the ankle for fine adjustments. So this matters for more than just turn initiation apparently.
n order to "angulate at the knee" the foot must be tipped. To do that voluntarily is generally better than forcing it by muscles higher up in the chain.
This just super makes sense from what my perceived experience is. One can try to drive that system from the top, with all sorts of leverage problems vs. driving from the bottom which puts direct muscle input where the forces are happening.
Probably the biggest WOW! I get from my upper intermediates and advanced clients is when I simply tell them to focus on lifting the edges of the skis (while remaining fore/aft center balanced). This directive inevitably sends the focus to the foot as the tipping initiator. As for my beginner students, this isn't an issue as this is how I teach them right from the get-go
I am embarrassed at how long it took me to learn tipping/ankle rolling and good on you for teaching it as core. It fixes so many problems for me, allow me to proclaim what it brought to my skiing.
The initiation of a properly tipped/ankle rolled turn has the least slip of other style turns in my turn vocabulary which is a superpower in difficult conditions. Those include:
- Ice, like race course ice, is much more manageable with no slip turn initiation. It all falls apart above 13 degrees of edging I have read but it is nice to smoothly transition up to 13 degrees beyond which all the chattering/juddering happens when the turn is solidly set.
- Crappy unskiable snow mostly amounts to snow that doesn't tolerate any sort of slip. Breakable crust, chicken heads and what not are all dangers if the ski needs to slip in the turn. If there is any slip then the sidewall is encountering snow/ice that the shovel didn't which makes all that so treacherous--the sidewall is getting considerable force from breaking crust or lopping chicken heads off. The footy turn, there I just gave it another name, keeps the shovel dealing with the crap up front like it is supposed to and keeps the side wall following cleared material.
- The last difficult condition is getting older. Skidded turns take more energy, in telemark it is a huge difference--maybe in alpine it is less. I find myself defensive when skidding which is exhausting on groomers while a proper 'footy turn', I kinda like the sound of that, lines the skeleton up right with no defensive tensioning of muscles.
Again, thanks for such a wonderful topic, I have 5 pages of posts to get through yet so I apologize if later content invalidates the above.
LOL... about the Hammerhead/Telebry release combo. They were VERY curious about my setup as at the time, they hadn't field tested it. I was the first they had spoken to in person, that had real world experience w/ that setup. We were in new territory on that one! Good conversations through my altitude and beer fog! 
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