Like a politician's hand shake, firm, supportive, all over you, even a little bit "smothery", but you get used to it (boots only get looser) and it takes you where you want to go!
"There is no more immediate
way to change your skiing than to change your stance geometry"- Snow Country Magazine.
Contact Claude for an appointment. Mention that you saw the website and get a
free 10 minute preliminary analysis.
To help insure a successful boot fit a lot needs to be done before the skier’s foot is ever put into the boot. After a brief interview is conducted to determine the desired performance characteristics of the boot, the first and most simple measurements, length and width are taken.
Next the physical evaluation begins: an assessment of the skier's skeletal structure from head to toe to identify any obvious alignment or balance issues. Then an evaluation of the ligaments and tendons of the lower legs and feet connecting this complicated network of bones and nerve endings. (We’ll want to know how the feet will respond to correction.)
We manipulate the foot into a relaxed, non weight bearing position referred to as sub-talar-neutral and capture a perfect print of the foot.
Now it’s time for the orthotic. A heated, moldable, flat blank is laid into the cast impression with the skiers’ feet and knees perfectly aligned. This gives us a perfect cast of the foot to place into the ski boot.
We use a moldable "EVA" (ethyl vinyl acetate) and grind it to insure a solid connection between the bottom of the foot and the ski boot.
With only the boot's shell (the liner removed) and in an exact stance width, alignment of the boot shell to the skier’s anatomy is performed. The exact center of knee mass is found and marked. (See the stem. Ignore the petals.)
Boots and orthotics fully assembled, skier in the boots and closed down in a ready-to-ski setting, we use a Campbell balancer to identify where the center of knee mass is relative to the center of the surface of the ski.
This skiers’ right knee is just where we want it, 1.5 degrees inside center. The left is a half-degree too far inside. We place a white canting strip under the left ski boot to measure the effect of this alignment correction. This gives the skier immediate alignment feedback.
This is a before and after alignment comparison of the skier's left knee. This subtle correction will have a significant impact on this skier's skiing experience.