I was having a debate over the weekend with a wide ski lover, and I ended up looking to see if research has been done in this area. Found these two things interesting so I thought I'd share:
Research published in the Journal of Sports Science & Medicine (2015) by Martin Zorko (Ljubljana University Medical Centre) et al:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4541126/
Article on professor John Seifert's (Montana State) overview into current research into wide skis: https://realskiers.com/revelations/why- ... our-knees/
The TL;DR summary from the article:
- Physics doesn’t lie. All the supporting numbers from various research projects may not be a complete match, but they come very close.
- Knee injuries are positional in nature. The tall stance induced by wide skis takes the muscles supporting the knee out of their ideal length-tension angle.
- The strain required to overcome Ground Reaction Force (GRF) on hard snow causes skiers instinctively to drift instead of edge, thereby losing a measure of control.
- To mitigate the risk associated with their use, wide skis need to be in powder around a foot deep. Even if you find fresh snow this deep, how long does it last? Once powder turns into crud, GRF raises its intensity.
- The best protection against injury is good ski technique. [PMTS has entered the chat!]
- If you don’t already possess strong technical skills, a wider ski will hinder your skills development. [Yes, you should get that sub 70mm SuperShape to learn on...]
This is all affirmation of what I see being discussed here. So really my only question is how do I get a job as a professor specializing in Skiing as a research area?!