So lately I've encountered a strange problem. Way back when I demoed a pair of powerstrider olympic jumping stilts for a blog. They were fine, I got great height from them and loved their design. Despite two problems that I encountered that I never did on poweriser advanced.
Firstly my heel slide from side to side.
Secondly the cuff on my left leg never stayed in place. The inner bar would pivot outwards.
It was frustrating. The issue never really happened when walking. But once I got to jumping, I'd end up landing feeling off center, or my leg would be c*ckeyed.
So after my review time was over. I sent the pair back. I went back to using my poweriser advanced with no cuff issues, or any other problems. Now fast forward several more months and my poweriser advanced were showing age. The frames were about a year and a half old, and I had gone through springs pretty quickly. I'm consider myself a frequent user. When the seasons right I'll be out there 3-5 times a week with my sessions being 2-3 hours. So my lower joints were shot, all my bolts needed replaced. Rather then keep limping the stilts along I bought a new pair of poweriser advanced.
After a couple weeks on these. I ran into that weird left calf cuff problem. Where the inner bar pivoted. A few emails back and forth from poweriser and I got a new set of clamps. But this never solved the problem.
Then I bent the outer bar on my left stilt. It happened in a heavy jump. I came down, and the inner bar pivoted outwards quickly. My leg twisted and the outer bar wouldn't move in the clamp. It just bent instead.
So poweriser sent me a new bar to replace that one.
Getting fed up with that problem. I found a pair of olympics for a bargain and decided to try my luck on those. I got them with knee bars. So I put my poweriser cuffs on them.
I ended up hitting those two old problems. In the heel, and in the ever frustrating left stilts inner bar pivoting. So I swapped my poweriser bindings on the olympics. Problem kinda solved. I can ratchet my foot down tight enough to prevent slipping. But my feet go numb to quick. I'm debating on some new shoes. But I wear us 16s and those sizes aren't cheap.
For the cuff problem. It wasn't as severe as before but it was for sure sliding outwards. It'd fix the stilts before going out. I'd strap them on and bock from my apartment to the park which is about 6 blocks. Usually when I got there, I could feel that it was moving slowly, and by the time my friends meet up with me to jump around. I'd end up sitting down to fix it.
Finally I put one layer of tape on the bar to hope it'd stop it all together. It did, the bar never pivoted again. I even marked the tape with a pen, to a spot on the frame so I could be sure it never moved. Just tonight I bocked back out to the park, and got stopped by a family with their kids. They wanted to see me demo the stilts. So I did 3 big jumps, a split kick, and a tuck for them. My heels slid out of place so I had to stop.
It felt like my stilts were out of wack again. But I could look down and see the mark was perfectly lined up. So I sat down and realized I bent the outer bar out of place this time. At this point my friends showed up on their stilts ready for the meet. So I'm back to the dreaded knee bars.
Is it possible I some how developed a problem in my left leg? I mean I never noticed an issue for nearly 2 years using two previous stilts before. I'm almost on my 3rd year of powerbocking.
Or is it possible the issue with my last cuffs was in the inner bar all along that was never replaced? I dunno, it never looked out of alignment before I bent it tonight.