Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

hi newbie here
I always tried to have a stance with my heel under my ass but on doing a lesson recently I was advised to have a verticle femur with my rear knee directly under my hip and therefore my rear foot further back
he was an excellent instructor so I presume he is right but it contradicts telemarking tips advice
has anyone got an opinion?
thanks in adance

Hello treemore,

treemore wrote:I was advised to have a verticle femur with my rear knee directly under my hip and therefore my rear foot further back

Did he mean like this?


I prefer your style to his one.

I've never been a huge fan of these two tips... It makes you think of 'aligning' your legs rather than focusing on feeling the pressure on ball of foot...

"Correct stance" could be discussed for years. It depends a lot on your own morphology too... (And that's also where 'style' comes into to play...)

Try to post some pics or vids...

Just don't 'spread' your rear leg too much in the back. Think about weighting both feet equally and applying pressure downwards on your BOF. At some point your legs will find their place naturally if you do so...

LoveJohnny wrote: Just don't 'spread' your rear leg too much in the back. Think about weighting both feet equally and applying pressure downwards on your BOF. At some point your legs will find their place naturally if you do so...

Sounds like pretty good advice...

I would think skiing in floppy boots would give you the best idea of how you should stand based on your body shape and center of mass, it's really whatever gives you the best stability, no?

In that respect, what is the idea foot spacing laterally? Old school skiers used to ski like their boots were glued together (alpine that is), now to carve you need at least a shoulder wide stance. What is ideal for telemark?

For me I really struggle with this. Stay wide and I feel stable but my skis don't want to turn great or I get a lot of wedge happening. Stay narrow and I feel like I'm going to fall or cross my tips, but it's much smoother. I've been trying to maintain my stance at about where I kick and glide, which is a few inches narrower than the shoulder width.

I tend to agree with LJ in the sense that any tip can cause you to excessively focus on something, and that particular tip is hard to translate from a mental image into practice. However, it's right. If you keep your rear foot under your ass, your ass will be sticking out. But, if the femur of your rear leg is vertical, it's because you're crunching your butt cheeks together and working your abs to stay centered and on top of your skis. The tip of trying to pinch a quarter between your butt cheeks helps keep the rear femur vertical.

Hi Treemore, it's hard to say if the instructor was right w/o seeing you ski. I've seen beginers that look like they have most of their weight on the rear ski and are having a hard time commiting to the lead ski. It looked to me like they were coming from an alpine backround.

If I were teaching someone today I would try to get them to look like CIMAs avatar. It's easier to get centered over your skis with a tight stance.

So that's what he told you, what did his form actually look like when he was skiing? Many of us, and this can include instructors, think we look a certain way, but reality is different.

I think in reality, you'll be best off between those two extremes. Too far butt over heel can start to put you in the backseat, but a vertical femur will be approaching knee to ski and may start to spread you out where you'll start to lose back foot feel/control. Find a happy medium between the two. I usually recommend people try a more butt to heel approach when they're having trouble controlling a rear ski, which I typically see as a problem in alpine cross-overs, as they think they can just ski the downhill foot and the trailing ski will just follow along nicely. It forces them to think about and get some weight over that rear ski to figure out what they need to do to actively ski it. Another key factor in this though, is to keep driving your hips forward and keep those shoulders back and squared up. It'll be much easier to weight both skis when you're in a good upper body position.

All good tips.

I should clarify that I don't think you're going to have a perfectly vertical rear leg, but I do think crunching those cheeks and working your abs will help one stay centered on the skis and doing that results in a more downward thrust from your shin/knee vs. sitting down on the rear leg and sticking your butt out (as if you're doing squats). Hips forward is another way to think about that too.

Frankly its all relative to what you want. Different gear different snow condition and different speed all will give a different stance. The long skinny arms out is fun and the tight poppers are a definite skill show. Monotele is a nice feeling and looking technique, at least imho.
for me free heelin is about a multitude of foot and leg positions, none are "correct".
If Ive only got one or two days to be in the mountains I'mm looking to keep my runs pretty mellow and maintian the slope hours rather than beat my ass down a bunch of really tough hills.
If you want to strive to be able to run gates, ski steep trees and chutes you need to have a lot of arrows in your quiver

legalize it!

Oldschooln8 wrote:Frankly its all relative to what you want. Different gear different snow condition and different speed all will give a different stance.

It seems you have a point there.