Jeet wrote:Another question.
Looking at my alignment when I am in bare feet, I have a fairly neutral stance (can't spot any major issues with knock-knees or bowlegged). It's only when I get into my skii boots I appeared knock-kneed.
Jeet
Firstly, how do you know if your alignment in bare feet is neutral? What is a neutral stance? Do both your feet supernate/ pronate by the same amount? Do you have equal amounts of out/ in turn? Are your hips level? Are your hip square? Are both your legs the same length? Are both your legs identically straight? Do you have identical muscle mass on both legs? Do you have adequate and equal ankle flex and range of movement? Do both your femur have equal and adequate range of rotation in your hip sockets? Are your sports/ gym routine making one particular muscle group more dominant? etc etc etc...
As the years go by, your alignment changes due to injury, over use etc etc. Our bodies are amazing at adapting. Even a 1cm leg length difference or a slightly collapsed arch on one foot will comfortably get absorbed by our bodies. Its only when we have an injury or start to suffer with seemingly un-related symptoms - migraine, lower back/ neck pain etc etc that these mis-alignments come back to haunt us...However, the above list and more will be instantly spotted by a movement specialist. My wife is a movement and posture specialist and can spot these deficiencies at 50ft. (and many more with me..
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You NEED to get your self fitted with proper footbeds. You wont believe how important it is. Don't go to a ski shop - they are just shoe fitters. Go to a podiatrist that fits 'orthotic' insoles. They may use the same equipment/ footbeds for your boots, but they will ensure that you become neutral. (I can recommend a great guy near me - he was also an ex-gb skier that raced against Tomba...)
Everything comes from the feet and you will be amazed at how much a little tweaking to get neutral will improve almost all aspects of day to day life..If you owned a car that always pulled to the left, and it was the only car you ever drove. You would think that was normal until you drove a car that drives straight...
The proprietor was not very complimentary about Harald when I visited about 10 years ago, and said that he had recently re aligned a young lady who had recently been aligned at a Harb camp
Had exactly the same response....He is a huge epic forum user/ poster...