I’ve been told recently that I am “a-framing” in my skiing. At first I thought that it’s still early season and I happen to be unnecessarily outside ski dominant. I blame it on old learned habits where I am pressure biased, counter rotated, and predominately skiing one leg at a time. Or you could simply call it insufficient inside leg activity. But I’ve been working on improving my technique for quite some time and thought that I’d changed, unless I’m lazy, hung over, or actually trying to do those things.

Then I remembered that I’ve got brand new boots that I’m still tinkering with to make fit and align correctly. They’ve been feeling a little tight. I think I’m going to have to ask the boot fitter to pop out the place where my” sixth toe” is squishing the ball of my foot from the sides. If you think about the balance points under your foot as a sort of three point tripod (center in the middle of your heel, and two points under the ball of your foot at either side) the outside leg of that tripod is having a pressure that is affecting my skiing causing me to a-frame. The pressure is causing me a subtle sort of pain from my foot being squished and consequently not allowing me to feel the pressure between the snow and my ski adequately.

I’ll be able to visit the boot fitter again at the Copper Mountain Surefoot store on Monday afternoon.