Trying to get pressure into the tongue and beginner progress questions

[Aleks911]

So to cut to the chase-"get forward", "pressure the tongue with your shin" and "push your knees forward" have always been useless for me because I didn't know HOW to do that.

Leaning forward just pushed my butt out and felt weird, CoM still being too much to the back. I could feel the boot tongue at best, no way to flex it like you could just standing and leaning into it.

Yesterday I finally managed to start flexing the boot tongue and pushing into it in curves by doing one, and then another thing that sound opposite to each other. First I felt like I was trying to rip the heel out of the boot of the outside leg and that sure pushed the tongue. But I lost a lot of precious control and feel I've been building up to for days before that. Tenderness on the middle of the inside of the heel skin as proof. Then as I tried to regain feel and control I kind of starting putting pressure on the mid-heel(as opposed to the ball of the foot or even worse, toes) on the outside leg to make it carve.

I guess I'm asking for general comments and advice to try and speed up the process. Only 15 ski days in or so, spread over 3 years.

I'd say this is phase 6 of learning:

Phase 1: can turn left, can barely turn right, same for hard braking, low control, scary over bumps and moguls built up in the afternoon. Pushing off of my curled up toes.
Phase 2: can turn well both sides, but now I notice that I'm turning with twisting my body and basically trying to turn my butt downhill. More control. Toes not curled unless scared which...happened a lot.
Phase 3: chest down the slope, much easier to ski and going faster but still skidding all turns.
Phase 4: Breakthrough, starting to carve right turns, still skidding left turns, or carving them less, pushing off the ball of the foot.
Phase 5: same but chest straight down the slope and legs going "around" the body, nice feeling albeit a bit scary. Blasting through bumps and small moguls as if they aren't there.
Phase 6: where I am now, until now I would just touch the boot tongue or just catch myself pressuring the rear of the boot and then panic and adjust forward. Now I am finally pressuring the tongue deliberately but lost some of the "elegance" and carving consistency. Feel powerful though.

 

[Philpug]

I will respond from a boot fitters perspective. I start with something more simple that "pushing the knees forward" but "flex the ankles." When you flex the ankle, the knees will bend.

Now, how much dorsiflection do you have in your ankles? Sit is a chair with your knees and ankles at a 90* angle, lift up your forefoot, (roughly) how much space is between the floor and metatarsals (right behind your toes)? If less than an inch, you are on the rigid side which is what it sounds like with the symptoms I am hearing. You very well are are in a boot that is too soft and too large.

How snug are the boots, are they holding your foot snugly without having to go to the last rung on the buckle ladder?

 

[Aleks911]

Right foot-around two inches, left foot-two and a half.

I buckle up the lower two to the last ladder and the upper two to the second to last. That squeezes my foot quite a bit, can be somewhat painful especially on first and second lift rides.
But when moving the front of the foot vertically as you are implying, there is definitely some empty play at first with the big toe area. Feels like half an inch or so.

If I were to try(I literally am right now) and flex the ankle in the boot in my chair I get very mild pressure. I can fit my hand up to the knuckles into the tongue and then try the same, strong pressure.

EDIT-Boots are atomic hawx 100x with the extra sole insert out. https://www.otto.de/p/atomic-hawx-2-0-100x-skischuh-C901324295/#variationId=S0G0W09MFB43

 

[razie]

You don't really want to purposefully bend the cuff, at least not with "manual effort". The correct cue is maybe "shin contact" and it will be created properly with dorsiflexion, commonly called "ankle flexion", like @Philpug mentioned, among some good questions on setup.

Although at your level it's maybe a better idea to think "balanced" and "shin contact", here's a good awareness drill and progression:

 

[LiquidFeet]

.............

 

[Scrundy]

Sounds to me fore aft problem with too big of boot.
Start here on level floor, it helps to have a partner to tell you what you are A, B or C . I suspect your B and that’s good ... if your boots are a little big you need to raise the heel and that will take up volume.

 

[SSSdave]

Am another that never found a mental focus pressuring boot tongues of value for my own skiing style so have ignored doing so apparently with no consequence. I tighten down my Lange RS110 SC boots including 2 power straps so there is little slop and ski just fine.

 

[Wilhelmson]

So to cut to the chase-"get forward", "pressure the tongue with your shin" and "push your knees forward" have always been useless for me because I didn't know HOW to do that.

Leaning forward just pushed my butt out and felt weird, CoM still being too much to the back. I could feel the boot tongue at best, no way to flex it like you could just standing and leaning into it.

Yesterday I finally managed to start flexing the boot tongue and pushing into it in curves by doing one, and then another thing that sound opposite to each other. First I felt like I was trying to rip the heel out of the boot of the outside leg and that sure pushed the tongue. But I lost a lot of precious control and feel I've been building up to for days before that. Tenderness on the middle of the inside of the heel skin as proof. Then as I tried to regain feel and control I kind of starting putting pressure on the mid-heel(as opposed to the ball of the foot or even worse, toes) on the outside leg to make it carve.

I guess I'm asking for general comments and advice to try and speed up the process. Only 15 ski days in or so, spread over 3 years.

I'd say this is phase 6 of learning:

Phase 1: can turn left, can barely turn right, same for hard braking, low control, scary over bumps and moguls built up in the afternoon. Pushing off of my curled up toes.
Phase 2: can turn well both sides, but now I notice that I'm turning with twisting my body and basically trying to turn my butt downhill. More control. Toes not curled unless scared which...happened a lot.
Phase 3: chest down the slope, much easier to ski and going faster but still skidding all turns.
Phase 4: Breakthrough, starting to carve right turns, still skidding left turns, or carving them less, pushing off the ball of the foot.
Phase 5: same but chest straight down the slope and legs going "around" the body, nice feeling albeit a bit scary. Blasting through bumps and small moguls as if they aren't there.
Phase 6: where I am now, until now I would just touch the boot tongue or just catch myself pressuring the rear of the boot and then panic and adjust forward. Now I am finally pressuring the tongue deliberately but lost some of the "elegance" and carving consistency. Feel powerful though.

Look up and try yoga chair pose.

 

[rustypouch]

Flex your ankles.
Light but solid contact, pressuring is too much.
Get lessons.

 

[cantunamunch]

Flex your ankles.
Light but solid contact, pressuring is too much.
Get lessons.

His boots are too big

 

[Ken_R]

Am another that never found a mental focus pressuring boot tongues of value for my own skiing style so have ignored doing so apparently with no consequence. I tighten down my Lange RS110 SC boots including 2 power straps so there is little slop and ski just fine.

Yep, same here.

 

[LiquidFeet]

@Aleks911, do this (image below) inside the boot with your ankle. It's called dorsiflexing your ankle, or closing your ankle. Look up tibialis anterior. That's the muscle that does this. If your boots are not too long, your toes should still lightly touch the front wall of the boots.

Then do this (below, the dark image in the middle) with your body. Hover your whole body over the fronts of your skis, or at least over the fronts of your boots/bindings. Another way of putting it, hover your whole body over where those boot tongues are. Your body weight will press your shins into the tongues all by itself if you close those ankles and hold the rest of yourself "forward" in this way. That's good.

It may feel like you're doing this:

What you don't want to do is have your lower legs rise up out of your boots
at a 90º angle to the skis like this image below. Your shins will not be able to
put any pressure on the tongues, no matter how much you bend the knees.

The skiers above and below have not closed their ankles. Their boot cuffs are not pressing the fronts
of their skis down onto the snow, no matter how much they bend "forward".
This is what you are trying to avoid.

You need to close your ankles and hover your body weight over the tongues of your boots so that those boots lever the fronts of the skis down. Here's an exaggerated image of how that
works, from a drill done in a video posted upthread. This is an exaggeration to demonstrate
how the levering works. Do not attempt to ski this way.

On snow, in actual turns, closing the ankles can be done by simply pulling the feet
backwards, sliding the skis back along their length, beneath you. This was demonstrated
in a stationary drill in that same video upthread. This image below is also an exaggeration, meant
to demonstrate how to pull the feet back. The exaggeration allows us all to see it clearly.

Pull the feet back, or close the ankles. Both work to produce forward-tilted
lower legs. Position the rest of body over the fronts of your bindings/boots/skis.
That should get you "forward."

 

[JESinstr]

It's not that I don't appreciate and understand the role of dorsiflexion, but like so many things in this great sport, we need to come to grips with the concept of cause and effect and to be fair, I understand we don't all perceive things the same way.

When I go about building edge angles, I focus simultaneously on LIFTING the outside of my new outside ski foot while creating a strong leg configuration . Doing this, I get the same feeling of tension in my lower leg that I do from dorsiflexing out of boot.

I personally never think about pressing into the tongue of the boot. I think about applying and managing pressure to the ski while maintaining balance through the arch of the foot. I accomplish this through the activation of the Flex Complex (ankles, knees hips) in a proportional combination that allows for "through the arch" balance yet builds a strong leg configuration that just so happens to create a functional relationship between the shin and the boot.

 

[LindseyB]

Flex your ankles/lift up your toes.

Do a seated hamstring curl between turns with your ankles flexed. (Pull back heels through transition.)

 

[geepers]

So to cut to the chase-"get forward", "pressure the tongue with your shin" and "push your knees forward" have always been useless for me because I didn't know HOW to do that.

Leaning forward just pushed my butt out and felt weird, CoM still being too much to the back. I could feel the boot tongue at best, no way to flex it like you could just standing and leaning into it.

Yesterday I finally managed to start flexing the boot tongue and pushing into it in curves by doing one, and then another thing that sound opposite to each other. First I felt like I was trying to rip the heel out of the boot of the outside leg and that sure pushed the tongue. But I lost a lot of precious control and feel I've been building up to for days before that. Tenderness on the middle of the inside of the heel skin as proof. Then as I tried to regain feel and control I kind of starting putting pressure on the mid-heel(as opposed to the ball of the foot or even worse, toes) on the outside leg to make it carve.

I guess I'm asking for general comments and advice to try and speed up the process. Only 15 ski days in or so, spread over 3 years.

I'd say this is phase 6 of learning:

Phase 1: can turn left, can barely turn right, same for hard braking, low control, scary over bumps and moguls built up in the afternoon. Pushing off of my curled up toes.
Phase 2: can turn well both sides, but now I notice that I'm turning with twisting my body and basically trying to turn my butt downhill. More control. Toes not curled unless scared which...happened a lot.
Phase 3: chest down the slope, much easier to ski and going faster but still skidding all turns.
Phase 4: Breakthrough, starting to carve right turns, still skidding left turns, or carving them less, pushing off the ball of the foot.
Phase 5: same but chest straight down the slope and legs going "around" the body, nice feeling albeit a bit scary. Blasting through bumps and small moguls as if they aren't there.
Phase 6: where I am now, until now I would just touch the boot tongue or just catch myself pressuring the rear of the boot and then panic and adjust forward. Now I am finally pressuring the tongue deliberately but lost some of the "elegance" and carving consistency. Feel powerful though.

Interested on why you think it's a good idea to pressure the front of the boot. What are you trying to achieve?

There's a a couple of skiers who have commented above that pressuring the front of the boot is not their focus. I'm in that same camp. Yes to contact with the front of the boot as a reference point for fore/aft balance. No to using it as some means for pressuring the tips.

Keeping in mind that you are 15 days in to your ski career working on being in good fore/aft balance as much of the time as possible would seem a good idea.

There's some discussion in the Tom Gellie vids on where this push the front of the boot comes from. Various instructors who take part in the seminar vids have said that they've been told to do this in courses. IIRC Tom's thoughts are that skiers who advise skiing this way tend to use stiffer equipment (skis, boots) and that, according to Jurij Franco, (former Elan ski designer) a major difference between an intermediate ski and an expert carving ski is the amount of fore/aft balance change required to get the ski to skid.

Intermediate skis are supposedly designed to require much less fore/aft change to induce a slide - if you make a mistake in fore/aft balance the intermediate ski will not punish you. Expert carving skis need a much bigger change - they'd rather carve than slide - and if you make a mistake on fore/aft balance the ski may fight back.

Now I don't get to ski enough different types of skis to know if this is correct or not. Sounds credible and fits with my limited experience of different ski models but .

In any event I'm hazarding a guess that you are not riding around on expert carving skis so maybe there's less need to have a wide fore/aft range. Maybe something like this?

 

[Aleks911]

Thank you everyone for your inputs, I'll definitely try these at home and next time on skis. I'm definitely yellow B on the image above. Can get to C2 on a gentle connecting road feeling weird as hell, and can never get into any of the A's.
"Raising the heel" sounds like a God send at first thought, but to be honest I don't know what that means exactly.

I checked out the yoga video, seems interesting to build some neuromuscular memory. Reminds me of learning how to squat.

My boots may very well be too big but I don't know, I am hesitant to blame the equipment, plus, the guy in the store seemed knowledgeable and the smaller model was killing me, also for whatever it's worth, Atomic lists my shoe number(46) next to this boot(335) in their size table. I'll put the other insert in to reduce it by half a mondo point.

I played with pulling the ski backwards and it does produce results, it's just a bit weird.

I guess the whole "pressuring the tongue" thing came about as everyone and anyone is telling me to be more forward in my stance and to "pressure the tongue", "push with the knees" and similar. I also guess, even if it was a bad thing, I'd like to have enough power and control to be forward or back on my own accord, not being thrown around by the g forces and just "wake up" in the backseat as I do on occasion.
The skis are atomic vantage x, 173 length, radius I think 15.2 or something, and under my newbie legs more than happy to slide.

I had some classes, two to be precise, and the whole time he gave me these vague instructions how I should look with little actual advice on how to get there. Lifting the toes was a good one that made a difference. Honestly I learned more following him as he went beautifully and just trying to mimic him-also as someone skilled overtakes me I try to copy their body dynamics and everything gets instantly better until they disappear.

 

[cantunamunch]

I played with pulling the ski backwards and it does produce results, it's just a bit weird.

It will feel weird for a long time - the neuromuscular memory you want is jumping off a swimming pool board.

My boots may very well be too big but I don't know, I am hesitant to blame the equipment, plus, the guy in the store seemed knowledgeable and the smaller model was killing me, also for whatever it's worth, Atomic lists my shoe number(46) next to this boot(335) in their size table. I'll put the other insert in to reduce it by half a mondo point.

Shoes are not designed for control at 30km/h+ - they are designed for comfort at 0-20 km/h. Picking a ski boot based on shoe size will get you comfort at slow speeds.

 

[Chris V.]

As you see from the responses so far, some good skiers don't even consider putting a lot of forward pressure on the boot tongues to be particularly important. For those who like it, I would think it would be more of a power move. That is to say, not what a novice skier should focus on. However, it's generally accepted that keeping the shins in constant light contact and communication with the tongues is a worthy goal. This is a matter of good posture, balance, and readiness to have movements of the feet efficiently exert forces through the boots and bindings into the skis.

Optimally achieving this requires both properly set up equipment and sound movement patterns. Novices often struggle with less than great gear, but at the same time it typically takes them some time to adopt a posture that will allow them to take best advantage of the gear they have. Most skiers starting out stand too stiff and tall, and tend to let their center of mass drift back and stay there. Ski boots are designed to work properly when the skier remains in a modestly flexed posture--closed ankles, bent knees, and a bit of a tilt forward at the hips. The cuffs aren't straight up and down--they have more or less of a forward lean.

It sounds like your dorsiflexion range of motion is perfectly adequate.

So Aleks911, here are the first things I would recommend you do. Try razie's exercise, that's a good one. Compare yourself to LiquidFeet's images, and adjust accordingly. Study Scrundy's diagram. Then get in your ski boots, and either indoors or on flat snow, in boots only, get into a narrow stance. Try moving your weight subtly forward and back until you feel yourself in a very centered place, with weight distributed along the whole foot. Then start slowly doing squats, down and up, progressively deeper and deeper, until you reach your full range of motion. Your object should be to maintain that distribution of weight along the whole foot the whole time that you are flexing down and extending up. Your weight will naturally shift back a bit onto your heels as you flex very deeply. However, you should be able to remain in good balance, and you should continue to feel contact of the whole foot on the footbed, the whole time. Also, you should continue to feel light pressure of your shins against the tongues, the whole time. You should not feel any part of your leg pressing hard against the top of the cuff in any direction.

If you're successful at this, click into your bindings, and on a flat patch of snow, do the same thing on skis. Your ability to remain in balance while on your skis is what's really important, because the setup of the bindings also has an effect on your overall forward lean and your ability to remain in fore-aft balance.

If all is still good, find a gentle slope, start a traverse, and do the same thing--and I mean flex deeply, much deeper than you've probably been trying while skiing until now.

If you make diligent efforts at all of this, and find that you just can't stay in good balance, then you almost definitely have a boot setup issue. At that point, go see an expert. You'll be glad you did. Don't second-guess. Don't try to self-diagnose, because it can be complex. For example, what comes out as a fore-aft balance difficulty could conceivably be caused by the lateral angles of the cuffs being set incorrectly. I'm not saying that's it, it's just one of many non-intuitive possibilities.

On the other hand, if everything feels great, congratulations, and keep practicing the same thing. Pay close attention to the feedback that you get through your feet and through your sense of proprioception. You'll find it a great help in learning how to control your skis with just small movements of the feet.

 

[Henry]

I've skied with some young women who had such great flexibility that they could flex their knees, pressure the boot tongue, and keep their shoulders so far back that their ski tips fluttered when they skied--a sign of insufficient tip pressure. Flexing the knees and pressuring the tongues isn't exactly what we want.

The skis have an unmarked sweet spot. It's somewhere above or just forward of the toe bindings. If the body's center of mass is over the skis' sweet spots then the skis perform to their best. That is our real goal. Tongue pressure doesn't improve the skis' performance. Get the body's center of mass aligned over the part of the skis to maximize their performance. Or...get the skis' sweet spot under the body's CoM. That's what the pull-back is all about. The legs' hamstring muscles are stronger and move more quickly than trying to get the body forward. We don't have strong muscles to get forward.

I use my shin pressure against the tongues as my gauge of how I'm aligned over the skis. At the beginning of a turn I want the ski tips to engage the snow, so I have a lot of tongue pressure--my gauge to show that my skis are well back under my CoM. As the turn progresses I want less of this, so I let the skis drift forward a bit and notice gradually reduced tongue pressure--my gauge to show that my skis are not as far back under the Com.

Aleks, you can experiment with all this. Pick an easy run with little traffic. Try different positions of the skis under your body to see how the skis perform for you. This is attained from hinging forward at the ankle, not bending forward at the waist. The steeper the slope and the tighter the intended turn, the more tip pressure you'll need. For more tip pressure pull your skis farther back under your body. Once you develop the movements it works great.

 

[geepers]

^ Can't help but feel this is trying to teach a new golfer to work the ball both ways when they have only played 15 rounds and still having trouble making reliable contact with the face of the club.