What happens when you sit back

Sitting back means your weight has drifted behind your feet. The snow pushes up through the ski, and your body has to answer that push from behind your knees. Everything below follows from that.

Slide the stance control from the back seat to centred and watch the tail. At the finish of the turn, with you 55% back, the lab puts about 14% of the load on the tail. Centred, it drops to about 7%. That sounds small, but the tail is the part of the ski you want quiet. When it is loaded, the tip goes light, and a light tip wanders instead of gripping. You feel a ski that holds you in the old turn and will not start the next one.

Your legs pay too. With your hips behind your boots, the force runs well behind your knee, so your quads have to hold the whole bend. In the lab, your quads average about 50% of what they can do through the turn when you are 55% back, and about 38% when you are centred. The muscles on the front of your shin, the ones that lift your toes to stop you tipping back, run at about 52% back and about 5% centred. That is the burn by lunch, and the tired shins that come with it.

Two things to hold onto. First, this is an intuition builder, not lab data. The percentages are relative to a typical skier, and your body will differ. Second, nobody sits back on purpose. A boot that is too upright, a boot that is too loose, a steep pitch or tired legs can all put you there. The picture tells you what the back seat costs. It cannot tell you why you are in it.

The same symptom can have several causes. If your quads burn, a useful first question is whether you are back. If you are, check your boots as well as your technique, and ask a boot fitter if you cannot get your shins to the tongue.

Next time out, try to feel your shins on the front of the boot for the whole turn, not just the start. If the burn moves out of your thighs, you have found your answer.