Centering your body over the middle of the board

[Gtanner]

Odd question, centering your foot over the binding/board.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this...Do all boot types center your foot (toe/heel) so that your center of gravity is in the middle of the sole of the boot? I.e. you set your bindings up equal toe and heal block location from the center of the binding and then your centered?

The reason I ask is that it seems that with my UPZ’s, the heal is further toward the middle of the boot than I’ve ever seen on Burtons or Raichle’s… so on my bindings, should the toe and heal blocks be adjusted to be equidistant from the center of the binding or biased slightly toward the front of the binding in order to bring my heel more centered on the edge and therefore centering my center of gravity over the middle of the board?

This is hard to explain. Hope this makes sense.

-Gord

[Phil]

I am not sure that I totally understand what you are saying, but I can tell you that every boot should have a mark on the bottom to tell you where the center is. If you are worried about centering yourself, you would pay more attention to this mark.

[D-Sub]

Maybe I'm over-thinking this...

[pebu]

I don't care what the other guys say. I'm, how do you say... particular... So I'd center it just cause.

[D-Sub]

centering the boot on the board isnt going too far...people shift the bias of the bindings all the time. Front foot toward the toe, rear foot toward the heel.

this sounds different.

[pebu]

Right. But if you're biased way to one side just to get your boots centered on the board, but your boot is nowhere near centered on the binding, it might help to center the boot, then you can get your bias down. Might not make a whole lot of difference, but it might mean the plate is centered on the board as opposed to having 2 inches between the edge and the plate on one side and half an inch on the other.

[Gtanner]

That's my concern, if the binding is centered on the board (cateks) naturally and the boot is naturally biased, then I could be too close to the toe edge.

THanks Phil I'll look for the "center" mark.

-Gord

[bjvircks]

I know exactly what you are talking about. This may not be such a big issue with carving boards and high foot angles. However... when I was setting up my new skis to work with my UPZ boots fitted with the DIN adapter blocks my "foot center" (gratuitous use of quotes just to get on D-sub's nerves) was shifted rearward a bit more than I want. Luckily my ski binding set was a version that allowed me to tweak the front and rear independently so I could get the foot center mark just in front of the mark on the skis.

[Donek]

Getting your boot geometrically centered on the board is really unimportant. What's really matters is that your toe and heel are in the right position over the edge. Getting as close to the edge as possible without generating bootout should be your ultimate goal. The closer your toe and heel are to the edge of the board, the less effort it takes to put the board on edge.

If you examine the front foot, you'll observe that the board is wider at the toe and narrower at the heel. If you examine your boot, you're likely to find that the furthest protruding point on the boot is closer to the board at the toe than it is at the heel. Both of these things make the geometric center of the boot or the the center line of the board meaningless when trying to minimize bootout.

Bootout is going to occur when the farthest protruding portion of the boot hits the snow. The only way to center a boot effectively is to measure the angle between the board's edge and the first part of the boot to touch the snow (just put a straight edge against the steel edge and the boot). By pushing the boot toward either edge, you will be able to get these angles roughly the same. With my setup I shoot for approximately 80 degrees between the edge and the boot on both toe and heel sides. In softer snow, it may be necessary to be closer to 90 and harder snow may allow more like 70 deg. It will depend on your local conditions and experience.