Seppo Keränen – Ski Instructor & Instructor Trainer (Ruka, FINLAND)

As soon as you start gliding down and making turns, the Againer starts showing its strengths – turns feel light and you feel like flying.

As I have had my share of knee problems during my more than 30 years as a skier, ski instructor and instructor trainer, I was delighted to have the opportunity of testing the Againer device.

The device allows easy and fast fixing on the boot shafts and on the outside of your skiing trousers, or, if you wish not to stand out from the crowd, they can be hidden on the inside. For this your ski trousers need to have zippers on the sides or they have to be large enough to fit the device inside. The design is slim, which allows for inconspicuous use on the slopes and while standing in the lift line.

The Againer allows some lateral movement of the knee while limiting and progressively slowing down the flexing or down movement, thus relieving the skier of excessive forces acting upon the knee joint while skiing.

When skiing, the Againer works astonishingly well in almost all kinds of turns. Againer device may feel a bit strange when you are walking around. But as soon as you start gliding down and making turns, the Againer starts showing its strengths – turns feel light and you feel like flying. The device literally diminishes the pressure that is normally acting on the knee when the edges are pressed against the snow in turns. Snowplow turns, parallel turns, carving turns, long and short – no problem at all, and then you also have the Againer pushing you up and forward after each turn to make it really easy to start a new turn. They device works well also in faster speeds, which makes Againer suitable also for the expert skiers recovering from knee injuries. It works particularly well with the traditional up-and-down (or cross-over) technique, but with just a little practice you will soon enough be making also cross-under turns. The only turn type that you find a bit more difficult to make when wearing Againers is the stem turn where you stem out and match the skis by lifting them off the snow as the tails tend to be dragging on the snow. But also here, if you are satisfied with maintaining snow contact while stemming out and matching the skis, you will face no problems whatsoever.

All in all, my impression is that the Againer really does what the developers claimed it does: the Againer takes extra pressure off the knee joints and provides adjustable limitation of vertical movement, while also allowing enough lateral movement for the skier to control the turns. With the available adjustments to the range and spring preload of the vertical movement, I think this invention can be very successfully used by skiers at all skill levels.

Ruka, 19.12.2015

Seppo Keränen
Ski Instructor & Instructor Trainer,
Skischool Ruka, Finland