duckstance!

[plywood]

well, i promised some of you to do a review on duckstance. long time ago.

so here we go! hope it`s understandable

http://plywoodorama.googlepages.com/duckstance

actually i`m working on chapter 4 - my personal impressions. so far i just collected more or less facts and tried to be as objective as possible. chapter 4 will be about my very own point of view and the impact of duckstance on my riding. so soon to be uploaded. but i think you`ll need some time to read chapter 1-3 anyway

if there are any questions - just ask.

[endre]

That's the best site for duscksance I have ever seen, ply. Great work! I'l reccomend this one to everyone who asks about this stuff, haven't really tried duck much myself, (only when I accidentally swich tele skis)

Thanks!

[plywood]

thanks, endre!
well, it actually may be the only site for duckstance too haha

i think the following two chapters will be interesting, as i planned to do chapter 5 about the limitations and problems of duckstance. i think duckstance doesn`t fit tele, the angle would really mess it up when bending the shoes...

[endre]

thanks, endre!
well, it actually may be the only site for duckstance too haha

;)probably.

Yes it pretty much sucks on tele,

[burny]

hey, i was on duckstance for about 2 years ... quite a while ago, must have been 2003 on the sanouks, they had some scale printed onto the topsheet to figure out an angle.
What i learned: it doesnt do anything, i didnt really notice, neither positive nor negative. then: there are so many many very badly mounted skis out there with a lot of people going involuntarily duck not noticing. it just doesnt matter in my opinion. maybe it does a click inside youre head, but it almost for sure doesnt affect youre physical riding abilities.

edit: you quoted seht morrison wrong: what he meant by saying "stop sucking" was the fact, some people riding the pontoon complained about the tips hitting each other and by doing so, destroying themselves. had nothing to do with duckstance as far as i know ... duckstance was just one of the possible solutions.

[plywood]

experiences may differ. i noticed a real change: for the first time my ski felt like under total control. for the first time they didn`t want to go in every imaginable direction when going straight.
in my case this is not just a feeling, i`ve got "proof": i just have to compare the tips of my old, straight mounted skis with the duck mounted once. the tips of the normally mounted are badly abused by countless hits from banging the skis together when skiing because of a lack of control. the duck mounted nearly look like new.

this is also more or less what martin heierling told me. he tried duckstance as the carving thing started, but he also said that it is very difficult to find the right stance. i agree on that, it`s nearly impossible to find the right stance for carving. but on carvingskis there is not enough space to mount duck anyway

about the sanouk: how did they do the scale there? i suppose it lead to a rotation around midsole?

i just found the quote of seth morrison somewhere on TGR. someone posted it in a thread about duckstance, so i hear the pontoon story for the first time...but interesting that some suggested duckstance. this would support what i`ve experienced

[burny]

you can "see" the scale of the sanouk on this pic, i can take a picture mayself this weekend ... it is, as you thought, around midsole and doesnt really do the trick the way you did it:



about the midsole stuff, i dont remember the whole story but some time during the '80s ski producers started to not mark the "sweetspot" where most of the power/force is submitted into the ski, the balance point is, but startet to mark the midsole. maybe because it was easier, whatever. but i'm very sure about everyone now constructing the skis to match the line marked on the ski with the midsole mark but the "real" sweetspot, the balance point still beeing where the balance point of the ski was. i hope this it is kind of understandable what i wrote ... what i want to say is, ski manufacturer know about the differing midsole mark and the ideal sweetspot. at least the engineers know about it ...

however many people have been thinking about the ideal point to mount skis and i found this method to do it quite accurately:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4694684.html

there is some kind of do it yourself method some kind of skiing club posted somewhere but i just cant remember the name and google doesnt put it up on the first 5 pages. i had it in my bookmarks somewhere, as soon as i find it ill post it!


edit: here's a nice article about mounting:
http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=13503

[plywood]

well folks, i finally had some free time to finish my review on duckstance.

i didn`t get that much "new" knowledge or inspiration in the meantime...but i`ll definately further my studies in this duckstance thingy. there is still a long way to go and a lot of unanswered questions to...well...answer!

http://plywoodorama.googlepages.com/duckstance5

the first new chapter is chapter 4, personal thoughts. just a little description of what i did so far, what i`m planing to do and a very very short notice on my first checkback to straight mounted skis.
and finally a conclusion with all the limitations of duckstance i could think of up to know.

[burny]

well, I still doubt you can acutally feel those 3°. As you know I've already tried duck quite some time ago and couldnt find any reasons to mount skis that way (besides the negative thing that you cant switch youre skis anylonger as soone as the inner edges are worn) ...
and about the roadracers: they do the same movement for hours and hours whereas in skiing you have to adjust youre legs and feet every second, to every changing of the terrain. That, in my opinion, turns the duckstance obsolete.

on the other hand you wrote about some pain you dont have any longer. thats a great thing i cant explain medically. however, the placebo effect makes up to 30% (i can tell you that as the social scientist i am). did youre hurt lessen by 30% (yes, thats a joke)

what about a "blind test"? like that you could really get valuable measurements. but you need at last 30 people to test ...

[plywood]

martin heierling told me once: if he levels out the foot for those custom milled footbeds for alpine racers, 1/10 of a mm on one side more or less can change the angle for 1°.
well, i`ve got some doubts about this...but if it`s true you may get a better feeling for those numbers. they`re small but they have an impact. and i really can feel it.

as i said, i truly believe that the position of the feet is as unique as every human being. so i really don`t think that duck is the stance to go for everyone. it can be, in some cases for some people!

you`re right, cyclists do repetitive movements that can`t be compared with skiing. but what i`m looking for here is following: i`m looking for evidence which could "proof" that duckstance can be a natural position for your feet. and even if they do repetitive movements...it shows that this could be the position they got the most power with. so why not apply this to skiing?

i mean in the end every stance is just the result of taking averages. as you said, the terrain changes every second, and so does the distribution of your weight, pressure etc. you mount the binding in a position to handle the average skiing situation in the best possible way.

yeh the placebo effect as i said, on my retest i didn`t have perfect conditions. but i felt like the straight mounted skis did perform a little better than i had in mind. so there is a placebo effect for sure, that made me remember straight skis worse than they actually are.
but the change from "straight legged" on duckstance to "knock kneed" on straight stance isn`t placebo for sure!

blind test would be a good idea. but i really doubt the accuracy of the results from such a test, because first of all you had to find 30 people with 100% healthy legs - which could be difficult as maybe 80% of our society have dislocated feet. so i suppose the result you`d get would be: some people like duckstance, some don`t like it and some feel no difference at all. the only useful conclusion of such an experiment would be what i already said: the position of the feet (and connected with this fact the preference for the stance) varies for everyone.

[davide]

... i think duckstance doesn`t fit tele, ...

Yes, it does: skied the whole winter with these:

[plywood]

oh, nice!
so tell me something about how it felt. doesn`t it twist the boots when bending them?
as i thought about duckstance and touring binding in touring mode i thought that it would force your knees outside as soon as you start bending the binding.