SS - When you started skiing were there any special considerations given to women skiers and their equipment?

iT - None. No one recognized that women needed gender-specific equipment. SS - When did you begin to theorize that it wasn’t women but their equipment that needed improving?

IT - I originally started in the early sixties. I’m from the U.P. and I started out as an alpine skier. I was on the 1964 Junior National Ski Team in the Central Division. I always tucked my knees one behind the other, which is incorrect body positioning. The only instruction my coaches could give me was to, "pretend that there’s a ball between your knees" or "get your knees apart". Although I was in excellent shape and I was a good athlete, skiing was difficult because of this physical stopping block. At the time there wasn’t any video equipment, so you couldn’t really see yourself. The knock-kneed problem for women is not a mental thing, it’s not a physical training issue, it’s not how muscular you are, it’s the width of your hips and the angle of the femur. The Q-Angle. Basically, the wider the hips and the more the knees go in, the more the woman skier is going to be exhibiting knocked knees. *make reference to the diagram of the Q-Angle here.

SS - And was it your unsuccessful attempts to try and correct this problem that led you to look more towards the biomechanics of women?

iT - Yes. Irealized the problem isn’t a failing of the person. It’s because the person has a different type of body. This isn’t intertwined with just alpine because I telemark, I track ski, I skate, and I snowboard. One thing to understand is that just because I change gears it doesn’t mean the problem is corrected. For instance, when I go alpine skiing I need to have my boots adjusted, and when I go cross country skiing I also have to make adjustments because my body doesn’t change just because I happened to put on a different pair of skis.

After I graduated from Northern Michigan University in 1968,1 went ski bumming in Switzerland for four years. While I was over there I continued to race alpine. I was very successful except for that one nagging problem of tucking one knee behind the other. And to make matters worse, I got to hear that it was a mistake in French and German too.

Then I decided to take up cross country skiing. I was pretty good at it because I had been a skier for so long and was in good shape - I was still in my mid-twenties - and I thought it was really fun. But my knees still came together on the track.

I came back to the US and lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and that’s where I read a very important book that turned out to be a turning point in my career called How the Racers Ski by Warren Witherall. His book explained "canting" and what the book said was, "if you’re knock-kneed or bow-legged, you’re not running a flat ski, and you will always have problems."

SS - So what does canting do to improve ones skiing?

IT - They are plastic shims that run the length of the ski boot. It’s similar to a table in a restaurant where one of the legs is tippy. You put a matchbook underneath the table to help make the table even. That’s the same thing the shims do underneath your bindings. They level out and flatten your skis.

SS - But when he wrote this book he wasn’t gearing it towards women, it was in general if you are having these problems, try canting?

IT - Exactly. This is not a gender specific issue. Everybody thinks it is, but it is not. Out on the track you see a lot of bow-legged guys, there are bow-legged women too, but you’ll see more who are knock-kneed. What happens to me on a cross-country track, is my knees go together, the feet split apart, and my feet roll to the inside, and they hit the inside of the track. So all those women out there who are slightly knock-kneed trying to exercise, trying to run a flat ski, and trying to go somewhere are basically slowing themselves down.

SS - They’re simply experiencing unnecessary resistance from being on the inside edge of their ski?

IT - Yes, friction. They’re not able to go forward efficiently. It really drives me nuts every time I go out there and see these women shuffling along with the same problems as mine uncorrected.

SS - Were there people in Jackson Hole that you went to in order to do some experimenting with your equipment?

IT - Yes. There was an alpine shop there that had a device that could help, but there still isn’t one for cross country. I don’t know what they’re doing with this issue, but there is a company that has shims called Winning Wedges that’s made for cross country skis. In alpine, skis are wider and you have a bigger, wider platform under your feet with big cement boots on. In cross country you’re in a pair of ballet slippers on a much narrower ski, so the problems are even more magnified on the track. I found out about the alpine issues in 1972 at Jackson, and just kept it at that after I moved to Sun Valley, Idaho.

SS - What happened then?

IT - Until then I thought I only needed cants. Years went by and I learned the value of footbeds, or orthotics. 80 percent of all women’s feet pronate, that is, roll to the inside. If your foot rolls inside, the knee is even more exaggerated to the inside. If a woman recognizes that she is having this problem, she knows that her knock-knees are more noticeable on a downhill in a tuck and that her feet always want to roll inside and not let her step out onto her whole foot. It’s like she’s only using the inside half of her foot to propel herself forwards.

SS - So how do footbeds help women skiers?

iT - Footbeds support the foot and keep it from pronating. They greatly improve your balance and help to center your knees more over your skis. I believe that ALL skiers need footbeds, regardless of their body type. All good ski shops carry footbeds.

SS- What else besides a tendency to be knock-kneed and pronate can hamper a woman’s skiing?

IT - Binding location and heel lift. if a woman feels like her boots are too big in the heel pocket and has too much slop, I would recommend putting in at least a 1/4 inch heel lift. This will also help her get up on the balls of her feet better. In a double poling situation a lot of women can’t get off of their heels because their weight is too far back. Basically women have more weight below the belt than above it, and this puts them back on their heels and they’re not able to get up and forward into the next stride.

SS - Is there something we could watch on a video tape of ourselves or have a friend look for while skiing to know if we would benefit from heel lifts or is it more of a feeling?

iT - All of the above. You see a lot of women bent over at the waist. The feeling is that you can’t get up on the balls of your feet. At any rate they should just try it. Roll up a paper towel and get about a quarter of an inch of lift to take up space in the heel pocket. I don’t know if cross country shops have heel lifts, but all alpine shops have them. It’s a typical fitting piece. They’re often called the "bootfitters bandaid". I would suggest going out and getting a pair - they’re not expensive - they’ll be less than ten dollars. Whatever the cost, they’re worth it. In a nutshell, canting and footheds take care of side to side lateral movement, and the heel lifts take care of the fore and aft alignment.

SS- So the heel lifts will help move a woman’s lower center of gravity up and forward? IT - Yes. The other thing that I did that is also controversial is to move the bindings on a woman’s skis forward.

SS - Is this also to help with our lower center of gravity?

IT - Right. You see, a woman’s center of gravity, is on average, one inch lower and further back than a man’s. Consequently, her weight goes down more through her heels, more than on the balls of her feet. A man’s weight goes more through the balls of his feet, so when he steps out onto his ski his weight is further forward than hers.

SS - So what problems do women have if their weight is too far back on their skis? IT - Well, you end up trying to push your skis down the tracks instead of stepping on them

and having the camber give you a little bit of a "snap" back. If you can’t ever step down on your ski and get some spring off of it, your bindings could very well be mounted too far back. You’re pushing the skis down the track in front of you and not getting anything in return - no energy from the skis. if you’re built like one of the guys, you have more weight up in your shoulders and less in the rear. Women on the oither hand, have less on top and more on the bottom. if you’re too far back on a pair of skis and you’re driving from the heel instead of the ball, it is inefficient, you can’t keep your speed up, you tire, and eventually bog down. You’ll see a lot of women bouncing down the track with a lot of "bump, bump, bump," instead of having a quiet body with their legs working underneath them. They’re limping along because they’re trying to "get up on the ski", trying to stay up on top of it, and they’re not able to.

SS - Their skis are fighting them?

IT - Yes! So what I would suggest is that the women out there reading this, if they have an old pair of cross country skis, should redrill (the bindings) forward. There are no moveable bindings in cross country.

SS - What about your good skis that already have bindings on them? Is there nothing you can do short of getting a new pair of skis and bindings?

IT - No, you can pick up and move your current bindings forward. I would suggest that she go skiing for a good half an hour on her own skis and really focus in on how her balance feels fore and aft. Bring her skis into a shop and have them move the bindings forward one inch. Go back to the very same track and ski again for a half an hour. There’s a defmite change. It’s easier. All these changes are designed to make skiing easier and more efficient. If you’re out there beating yourself up, trying to get some exercise, some fresh air, and you’re fighting it the whole way, you don’t do it as often because it’s not much fun.

SS - This sounds exactly what I’ve noticed myself out there. The guys I ski with make it seem so easy, and it seems like it is so much work for me. I always wonder if I’m not waxed properly because I don’t seem to be getting the same glide.

IT - I used to have to put kicker wax too far forward to keep from slipping. That’s fine for the downhills, but much slower going across the flats. So waxing closer to the tip wasn’t the answer to the problem. The correct solution is to get the person’s weight centered on a different place on the ski. Women are not small men. Every sport in the world knows that women’s hips are wider, that the center of gravity is lower and further back, and that our feet are shaped differently. In cross country skiing this translates to being incorrectly positioned too far back on the skis, and boots that are sloppy. You can’t cross country ski if your skis and your heels are slipping.

SS - Has acknowledging that we are different led to women’s specific gear especially with boots?

IT - In alpine, absolutely. Cross country is still pretty far behind.

SS - Once we have our skis, we make our boots fit better with heel lifts and footbeds, is it simply a matter of positioning our bindings further up or is there such a thing as a "men’s" and a "women" ski?

IT - Well, right now, positioning is the only option. You can also look for a softer flexing ski. I’m not saying women are wimps, we just don’t have the same muscular build that the guys do, and that makes all the difference in how you can get a ski to flex. I would say one of the really fun things for a person to do is to go out and demo different skis. So I would recommend that if a woman is thinking about doing this sport seriously, or even just to really have a good time, that it’s not expensive to demo, and the best equipment that they can afford they should buy. In cross country where you rely on your own power, the advantage that you can get from your equipment is staggering. I think it is way more difficult to cross country ski than it is to alpine. Even if you’re fat and out of shape you can still be an awesome alpine skier, but you’d have real trouble doing cross country. And someone thinking "I’m fat and out of shape," is exactly the person that needs to be looking for better equipment.

SS - That’s true because if they try something and have poor equipment, they don’t think they can do the activity very well and therefore don’t continue in it. That leads me to my next question which is how can women ensure that they are being fitted properly when they go and shop for skis this year?

IT - What the skier might want to do is ask the shop if they know about footbeds and heel lifts and how valuable they are for women skiers. if they don’t respond in the affirmative and don’t think this is what they should be doing, the skier should go to another shop because the technicians need to have an understanding of feet no matter what kind of shop it is. Like I keep saying,’this is critical for cross country and telemarking. It’s incredible.

(husband, Tom Haas all correct )

SS - How much can a woman expect to move her bindings?

IT - On my diagonal 190’s the bindings are an inch ahead, not a centimeter. You can’t tell the difference in a centimeter. if you’re going to experiment with this concept, you go onto the flats, keep your pace slow. Go to the same ski area for all experiments, fmd a trail that you like, the smoother the better so you can take away as many variables as possible. if

(list alpine clinics)they are telemarkers, I would move the bindings even farther forward than on track skis. Mine are about 2 inches forward on my 190 telemark skis. That’s because you don’t have the benefit of having a heel that’s locked down. You’re basically trying to get up on the balls of your feet, and for meit was toughter than heck to get on the balls of my feet. I see many, many telemarkers at alpine resorts leaping their skis around instead of guiding them into the turns. That’s an indication that they’re not able to get up on the front end of their skis and they have to literally hop their skis around to get them to work. That’s again a binding location issue. You should be able to step on a ski and have a guiding movement where you can do it from your foot, and not have to hop the ski around.

(can put phone )•

SS- You have said in previous articles that not everyone agrees with your theories and remedies. What do others find to disagree with?

IT - The resistance is from men. It’s kind of like if YOU don’t have the problem, it doesn’t matter as much. Or worse yet, that you’re not "trying hard enough". You can see a handicapped person and know that they’re handicapped, but people don’t realize that the category of women skiers is also handicapped - They’re being held back by their equipment.

SS - Speaking of being held back, are there further suggestions you would give to help a woman who is a competitive versus a recreational skier?

IT - Well, the more competitive they are, the better equipment they already have. They probably already have footheds, they might not have tried heel lifts, and they probably have never experimented with binding location on the ski. Better skiers should really pay attention because in cross country it’s all in smaller increments of time. If you’re off on a stroke on your left-hand side every time, that’s really going to add to the bottom line over the time of a Birkie. You’re going to tack on minutes of time. if it’s just a matter of getting yourself a good pair of footbeds and hoisting up the back end a little bit with a heel lift, it’s worth it.

SS-I know that you give a lot of clinics for downhill skiing. Do you give any that are more cross country focused, or is there some cross over at your clinics?

IT - When we ask the women at our clinics "how many of you cross country skis as well", over half in the midwest say they do. Although I don’t have the time to deal with cross country they become aware that everything I do for their alpine equipment, needs to be done to their cross country gear. With more than half of my alpine women also being cross-over skiers, I would have to say that I think tapping into the women’s cross country market in the Midwest is one of those golden opportunities of a lifetime for a good ski shop!