Where the puzzle becomes more complex, is that most of these motions at the ankle, knee and hip are actually very important for snowboarding itself, and aren’t always damaging to the joint when part of a balanced kinetic chain. Exaggerated valgus increases the chances of tearing or rupturing the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL), cartilage tears, medial collateral ligament tears (MCL), as well as opens the door for Patellofemoral tracking problems, which can lead to kneecap dislocations, arthritis, and chronic pain (4,5). Furthermore, its exceptionally unhealthy for the knee itself. They therefore rely on smaller muscles, and fatigue faster (3,11). For example, when the knee is in extreme valgus, the hip joint is negatively impacted and the athlete is not able to optimally activate the primary muscles of locomotion: The gluteal extensors (8). The problem with this is that it is extremely inefficient and uses up a tremendous amount of cellular energy.
It turns out that by creating an “extreme valgus” at the knee (exaggerated knock knee) a soft-boot splitboarder is able to increase inside medial edge pressure. The opposite (bow-legged) is called “varus knee alignment”. In biomechanics, this position is called “valgus knee alignment”. Imagine a “knock kneed” position, except that only the downhill leg is doing this. If the ankle joint is weak in inversion, and you need to create a downward medial force (inside ski edge pressure) the natural tendency is therefore to begin to rely on the knee joint. Therefore, your uphill ankle while side-hill traversing can easily combat the forces that want to “evert” the ankle off the slope because of its skeletal and neuromuscular advantages in that direction of motion.īased on these mechanical characteristics of the ankle joint, the question then becomes how are soft-boot splitboarders able to create edge pressure on their downhill ski at all? As most of us know, the human body is amazing at adaptation. To elaborate briefly here, the muscles that are responsible for ankle “inversion” (classic rolled ankle motion) tend to be at a mechanical advantage in comparison to the muscles that “evert” the ankle (2,3). However, when it comes to avoiding extreme ankle eversion, there are also significant neuromuscular contributions. These differences in range of motion are almost entirely due to the skeletal and ligament structures of the ankle joint. On the contrary, ankle “inversion” (tendency to roll one’s ankle inward) is actually quite easily done because of the drastically larger range of motion in that direction (3). Put another way, you can’t “roll” your ankle outward past just a few degrees of motion (3). The uphill ski is almost never a problem because during splitboard touring, the ankle joint is exceptionally powerful in what biomechanics researchers call “eccentric eversion”. Tour like a hard booter.įor more information on the biomechanics of the Flex-Lock and details on the edge force transfer test continue reading below.īecause of the intrinsic mechanics of the ankle joint, our downhill “split ski” is always on a disadvantaged mission to literally “roll” off the slope. It’s your turn to dance up the hill and still have the freedom to ride with the flip of a lever- Ride like a soft booter. By adding the Flex-Lock to your Karakoram Splitboard Bindings you will experience the edge gripping power that AT skiers have enjoyed for years. The Flex-Lock gives a splitboarder a 101% increase in edging performance compared to a binding without lateral support, which is on par with an AT boot at 104% increase. The baseline is a splitboard binding without any lateral support and each configuration is measured as an improvement over this baseline the greater the percentage increase the better the edging performance.Īs shown in the chart above, the ski strap and power strap give a small 15% increase in edging performance over a binding without lateral support. We thought you would too. So we set up an experiment to measure the relative edging performance of these boot/binding combinations. Qualitative experience is good, but we wanted to know more we wanted hard evidence to show how much better the Flex-Lock is compared to an elastomer ski strap or velcro power strap around the top of your boot and highback and we wanted to know how it stacked up against the gold standard for touring performance, the AT boot. Tour Like a Hard Booter. We know this is a strong statement, and based on our 3 seasons of experience using versions of the Flex-Lock we know it’s true. Earlier this summer we sent out an instagram video releasing our patent-pending Flex-Lock, available November 2015, with a very strong statement: Ride Like a Soft Booter.
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