@Horton , in my opinion I think you are wrong. As an example, look at the pictures of good skiers in full lean just before center line, they all have their front of the forward knee in front of the front toes? If you can't accomplish that because of restrictions in ankle flexibility the only way to get your knee forward is to have a heel lift as @TacoMan and I myself have (because of same reason as @TacoMan ). You are bound to be to far back on the ski otherwise. My belief @TacoMan is that you need to raise the back heel as much as the front to be in balance. Before I raised the heels I got hurt in the ankles when I got forced kneebend in stressed situations. I can't ski without it. I'm not a high level skier, but still, raised heel made it possible to ski for me without risk of getting injured because of forced ankle angle higher than my limit.