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Snowboarding toe-side issue - limited ankle dorsiflexion

3K views 14 replies 11 participants last post by  Etienne 
I'm going to take a little bit of a different track here.

I had a bad break on my ankle. They did a trimal surgery where they put in one rod with five screws on the outside one screw behind the ankle and the third screw on the inside of the ankle.

This was last summer. I got back on the slopes in the second half of the season.My range of motion was pretty limited.I actually have a pretty soft boot. I liked that, I felt it was continuously stretching those tendons and it did my foot some good.

I felt a little less nimble and moguls and trees. Probably had an extra fall every now and again but otherwise I felt fine

This was my back foot though so perhaps switch to riding regular? I think you can definitely learn to ride at a very high level with very little ankle flexation it just takes a little extra time.

Hard boots are an interesting idea not so much because the boot doesn't flex, they actually flex quite a lot forwards and backwards. However Alpine boards are very narrow and riders tend to ride these boards with a lot of yaw type leaning which just requires strong calf muscles not much flexation. Essentially their ankles stay pretty straight and they do a lot of turning by tipping. You can of course do this on other boards but it's slower, the wider the board the more time it takes to tip.

ps I stress my foot a little everyday and there is a very very gradual increase in range.
 
Also I forgot to mention have you taken lessons? Human nature is to assume connections but a lot of people start plateauing at around your level for a while. It might be only slightly related.

Also unrelated to my foot injury when riding crudy terrain at speed I tended to set my back edge in weight back and kind of lift my front foot so that the front edge is barely touching snow and just kind of carve a straightish line. Not sure what this technique is called. This works well especially if you have a larger radius board.
 
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