Are wide skis and carving bad for the knees?

Almost a year ago, I was already writing on that subject. Since that time, John Seifert, both a skier and an associate professor of health and human development at Montana State University, is researching what effects wide skis could have on knees and ankles.

He's been using leg sensors and has monitored muscle and joint strain on skiers. Seifert said when skiing hard-pack on a ski wider than 80 mm underfoot, the force needed to turn the skis puts an undo amount of stress on knee and ankle joints. He claims that the threshold is around 85 mm and that the extra width acts as an extended lever arm.

According to the researcher this higher torque is causing sore knees and ankles. This said, Seifert has no data to correlate injuries from skiing with such wide skis, but he will bring up that subject in the open next month, at the annual International Society for Ski Safety meeting in Cortina, Italy. By then we might see his data.

This said, this observation seems logical as long as these skis are used on hard-packed snow. While the effect of carving is not included in Seifert's statement, I suspect that carving on fat skis can also do a bad job on ankles and knees, but again this is based on personal observations on myself and intuitive deduction.

What is certain is that, to feel safer, I'll watch the width of my new skis and stay at or below 90 mm under the foot.