# Does toe edge mean toes?



## mhaas (Nov 25, 2007)

The "toe" in toe edge only refers to the side of the board. Yes you want to be on the balls of your feet when riding that edge. You want to be in a comfortable, balanced position and for most people that means the balls of their feet.


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## edlo (Jan 24, 2011)

Ball edge just sounds wrong. I need to work on my balls edge turns. I stop better with my balls than my heels. Toes and toe side works much better. Although toe drag and toe overhang is your toes.


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## deeppowder (Nov 27, 2012)

ball side sounds way better to me! haha :yahoo:


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## edlo (Jan 24, 2011)

deeppowder said:


> ball side sounds way better to me! haha :yahoo:


Ride on you balls and carve hard.


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## deeppowder (Nov 27, 2012)

put all the weight on your balls:dizzy:


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## ig88 (Jan 3, 2012)

So I am not alone on my balls.

I never did ballet so my balls are the way to go.


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## makken (Feb 12, 2013)

i definitely feel like i'm on my toes, especially during a traverse that requires me to stay on my toe edge.


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## edlo (Jan 24, 2011)

makken said:


> i definitely feel like i'm on my toes, especially during a traverse that requires me to stay on my toe edge.


Try bending your knees more, but I feel it only toes on a long slow steep traverse too.


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## makken (Feb 12, 2013)

edlo said:


> Try bending your knees more, but I feel it only toes on a long slow steep traverse too.


i think the fact that my boots are falling apart and i can't get them tight enough might have something to do with it too. it hasn't caused me any problems yet though.


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## ig88 (Jan 3, 2012)

I am increasingly going to suspect that our *toes* are not the key area to exert pressure on when we are on our *toe edges*, even though we always could technically.

Look at the following youtube video that teaches on how to set up bindings by sierrasnowboard. Look at 1:30 through to 3:30. Doug recommends to adjust the toe ramp to about an inch behind the tip of the boot. He did not say how much that was, but you could roughly eyeball the distance between the toe ramp and the tip of the boot. Even though he was talking about Burton bindings, I think the same general principles apply across other brands.

Burton EST Bindings - How to Setup & Adjust - YouTube

Seriously I think I could pressure on my toes while I am on my toe edge, but I think the pressure contact points are actually more in the region of the balls of the feet in reality. Hence pressuring our toes while on toe edge may tire our toe flexors (digital muscles of our feet in anatomy) needlessly. I might be wrong after all.


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## deeppowder (Nov 27, 2012)

good point snow wolf, I suppose when riding more aggressively you do get onto the toes. Good pics to prove the point! Do you think the blue toenails could be from the boots being a little too small and jamming against the end? or do you think that would happen regardless of boot size?


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## ig88 (Jan 3, 2012)

Snowolf said:


> I find that it is both and the degree to which you transition from the balls of the feet onto the actual toes depends upon how aggressively you ride and the edge angle you maintain. Certainly, mellow cruising on green and blue terrain utilizing low edge angle skidded turns does not require the rider to use more than moderate pressure with balls of the feet. Riding aggressive black, double black and off piste technical steeps or any dynamic skidded turns as well as true carving will require the rider to employ higher edge angles and rolling from the balls of the feet onto the actual toes. I usually always have the blue toenail on both big toes as a result of my aggressive riding style. As you can see, the balls of my feet are not anywhere near touching the snow:


Good. Cause I am wondering if I should avoid pressuring my toes altogether. Most of the time I am not riding hard hence there's a good case that I should not be on the toes most of the time.

As I mentioned in the first post, I got a blue nail too. And actually not once. If it happens on the first day of a trip to a resort, it could severely limit how further hard I could ride or practice in the next few days. It basically ruins the trip. It's not just the physical color under the nail. It's very tender and the bleeding or bruise could spread beyond the area of the nail as well. It's certainly an ugly looking trauma.

As soon as I had the blue nail, I wondered if pressuring on the toes technically was a big mistake. If anyone uses their toes on their toe edges on a frequent basis, getting a blue nail is almost unavoidable. But even if professional coaches like you also get blue toes from riding hard, at least I should not be too hard criticizing myself either.

Thanks for the valuable pictures. I have no problem taking your word for it that you were using your toes in those carves. But seriously unlike deeppowder, I could not tell which part of the front of the feet you were using within the boots from those pictures. Again, I believe you that you were using your toes in those instances.


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## edlo (Jan 24, 2011)

deeppowder said:


> good point snow wolf, I suppose when riding more aggressively you do get onto the toes. Good pics to prove the point! Do you think the blue toenails could be from the boots being a little too small and jamming against the end? or do you think that would happen regardless of boot size?


There is a thread on boot fitting and why do my feet hurt. They could be too small or too big. My big toes use to get jammed forward into the front of my ski boots if I leaned back or didn't flex my ankles. Do your toes hurt when you just wear your boot, do they hurt when you are riding a certain way? If you are sliding down heel edge perpendicular to the slope, either your body weight will be jamming your toes forward or your weight will be supported by your ankle strap and shin, which is much less painful. 

When I tighten my boots , I make sure that my heel is pushed backward by pushing my shin into the tongue of my boots when I tighten my inner and outer boot. With my boots F20 I have to tighten the lower boot first, lock the laces then tighten the upper boot.

Also make sure your toenail is trimmed.


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## ig88 (Jan 3, 2012)

edlo said:


> There is a thread on boot fitting and why do my feet hurt. They could be too small or too big. My big toes use to get jammed forward into the front of my ski boots if I leaned back or didn't flex my ankles. Do your toes hurt when you just wear your boot, do they hurt when you are riding a certain way? ......


My boots fit me well. I can run and jump in them comfortably. I am sure the boots in my case is not the issue of getting a blue toe. 



Snowolf said:


> I was actually thinking about this thread when riding and teaching tonight. For anything less than some very aggressive carving or doing much toeside traversing on steep terrain, I use about 50-50 toes and balls of feet. I only really shift fully on the toes in those deep carves. The blue nail is something that happens slowly over a season with me. Every year I get this and it starts showing up around this time of year as a small area then gets bigger. I think my boot size is contributing factor as well as they are pretty tight.
> 
> Unless you are doing something extreme, I think you may in fact be using the toes when you should be using the balls of the feet. Maybe in your toeside turns, you are standing on the tip toes insead of driving the shins forward into the tongue of your boots. Try pushing the keens out in front of you more and flexing down. You should feel like you are "resting" your shins on the tops of the boots and taking some of the weight off. Maybe this idea will help you tweak your technique so you are not stressing the toes so much.


Thanks for contemplating on the thread while you were out there the other night. I really appreciate that. At least that makes me feel I did not bring up an irrelevant topic. I have read your post carefully and I think I understand your suggestion. Your suggestion does make sense.

By you saying 50-50, I get the picture that we could roughly exert more or less equal pressure on both toes and also balls of the feet, if we are not carving steep angles. Yes even as I told myself to pressure on the balls, I was aware that the pulps of my toes were not suspended above the insole of the boots. The toes were working too.

I think unless sport scientists put pressure sensors with transducers under the toes and also the balls of the feet to obtain some substantial data while we snowboard, or else we could only make estimates how much we are pressuring various parts of the feet at any given instances.

But Snowolf, thanks for your further thoughts and useful suggestion on the issue. Had you said 56-44 or 63-37, I would have gone nuts in over-analyzing how you came up with those apparently precise numbers haha.


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## deeppowder (Nov 27, 2012)

send the question into sports science or whatever that show is called, maybe they can do a segment on it!


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