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  • Tongue Flex

    I am totally lost when I hear specific tongue flex ratings. Can someone school me on tongue flex? What is the range of flex values? What are the typical values for different styles/purposes ?

  • #2
    Traditionally, forward lean stiffness has been used to allow the skier to bend knees forward to pressure the tongues of the boot, which transfers through to the front of the ski. This helps with turn initiation, especially on steeper slopes, and assists in tightening the turn radius, but can lead to beginners crossing their tips, with the usual disastrous consequences.
    So what about skiboards? Quite different. We dont need to pressure our tips as we have adequate sidecut, and often turn off just the tails. We also have tight turn radii so dont need to tighten further.
    No, we have a different problem.... pitch. Skiboards being so short exhibit much more pitch movement than skis. Stiff boots transfer this movement to the riders legs, soft boots absorb much of it.
    Forward stiffness seems to have settled on a ten based measurement, where 70 is stiffer than 50. Range seems to be from about 30 through to 160, though there is no upper limit, but in real terms, flex 70 is an average medium flex, and 100 is pretty damn stiff.
    For Full Tilt, they use a single digit I think, with 4 being soft, 6 medium, and so on.
    Previously I have been happy skiboarding with a 70 flex boot, but this summer have been using boots with a proper stiffness adjuster, and have found a slightly softer flex, around 50 I would guess to be smoother, less tiring, and with no loss of control. Certainly a softer forward flex is a huge help landing jumps as it allows me to flex my legs to absorb the landing without throwing me back on to the tails (these are small jumps you understand )
    I have so far not tried this, but it seems that running a four clip boot with the lower clip on the leg a little less tight might allow more forward flex, so might be a good way to experiment.
    Of course, if your boots are fixed at the back so the rear of the shell has no pivot, you are pretty much stuck with what you have.
    Crossbow (go to dream board)
    Most everything else over time.
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    • #3
      Thanks for that insite. I'm looking at a new set of boots, one model that I wanted has a 70 flex (but it's out of stock), they have the same thing in a 60 flex and I was apprehensive about going for that. But, from your description it sounds like a good thing.

      It's interesting how things work out sometimes.

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