Basics of "tactical" boot selection and wear.

[Music] all right I've seen a lot of really answers to questions about Footwear and need general internet community so I thought I'd go ahead and I do a quick video and explain to you a little bit of my philosophy behind boot and boot usage so what is my experience with boots I've gone through selection in dog team blah blah blah wearing ridiculous amounts of weight and traveling ridiculous amounts of miles although up to a hundred pounds all the way up to 14 blah blah miles per day and so I felt the suck I seen what works what doesn't work and not to say that I had the most experience of everybody but I think you can learn thing or two for me and if you have some good experience please feel free to contribute if you don't have anything to contribute and you give your opinion then I go ahead and drop and I'll recover you at the end of the video so when it comes to our boots we're going to talk about three things first off we're going to talk about segment types of socks to wear and then finally leather vers synthetic material so let's talk about fitment first so I'm going to hold up one of my boots that I've chosen use for quite a long time and that's going to be the Salomon quest for D so synthetic boot really great boot love it it tends to fit my foot really well so first off with fitment each boot company is going to use a different foot that they're going to use as a template when they make that boot so for some people that boots going to fit very well because whatever foot they based that boot fit off of is closest to your foot so it's for that reason that certain brands fit certain people better than others for me the Solomons that me really well the a solos not quite as well I typically have to get a wide because whoever who's ever foot they used was a little narrow for my foot so again make sure you one find a boot that fits you well and then to find one that has the correct features for you but before we get into that talk about a little bit more about fitment so first off your toes you should have wiggle room with your toes and the reason for that is that if your toes can't wiggle right there there stricted to some extent or another that's going to create hotspots and other things one thing that that will lead to is in a cold environment your feet are going to have constricted blood flow that's going to lead to a greater chance of you getting a cold injury so it's important that you can move your toes otherwise you can have some problems also regarding lacing for some people they need to pull the laces tight to make the butt boot feel fit well for others you need to have a looser at certain portions or tighter at certain portions to make the boot fit correctly for me I have my boot pretty loose at the very top of my feet I have it much tighter at around my ankles that makes that boot really good on my foot now when I say tight I don't mean like constricting tight because again if you constrict it too tightly you're going to restrict blood flow and you have a lot of problems from that so make sure you keep it loose enough so it fits you well when it comes to the heel of your foot foot it shouldn't slip out so if you have a chance to try these on in a store when you're walking around here if your heel is moving around a lot that's not going to be good for you if you're somewhere where you can't try on a boot before purchasing it then find somewhere with a really good return policy maybe Amazon something like that that way you can try that boot and then move on from there now if you're wearing a winter boot you're going to want to get a size larger for example we have the can attract Mountain hunter boutain like that it's an insulated boot so because of the fact that I'm wearing this primarily in the winter I'm going to get it slightly larger cause I'm going to be wearing a thicker sock to go along with it so when it comes to socks make sure you buy a good pair of socks you should have several different types of the different types of seasons that you have as far as material use I prefer wool specifically merino wool and I would highly recommend that to you cotton kills will insulates no matter the wetness and that type of thing so I have smart wool socks that I'm assured and also darn tough socks I was issued these smart wolves are much thicker compared to the darn tough which are much thinner so during the winter I wear the smart wolves during the summer I wear the darn tough now that's for me because my feet really don't sweat that much for those of you who have feet that sweat more you might have to get a thinner sock so you're going to get a different size boot based on the size of that sock so that comes down to as wells when you're trying my boot on make sure you have a sock on that you're going to be wearing with that boot also don't wear short socks with boots otherwise you're going to get a lot of chafing on the side of your ankles jeggings never good so uh make sure that you're taking care of your feet there finally when it comes to socks as well but powder if you if your feet sweat a lot put foot powder in your soft sand in your shoes and I will help a lot of that moisture to get absorbed in that way your boots aren't groan about your bacteria and your feet aren't getting all nasty trench foot or anything like that so different things to think about so we've talked about fitment and we've talked a little bit about socks before we launch into boots a lot of talk about break-in period some people said that break it the break-in period on boots is a meme I thought people were joking until I've seen some people seriously damage to their feet so break-in period is not a joke you need to break in your boots and people say modern boots that need to be broken in they do because no matter what stitching is going to flex the tools are to compress your feet are going to build up more skin on certain areas you know based on where that boot is rubbing your foot therefore break-in period is essential I would recommend wearing these boots around in your house then for a couple days then begin to wear them outside doing yard work for a couple days and then start to wear them for the entire day and that will be about a week or so after that you can start doing some hard work in them recomm and it should take you about a week or two I've seen people have really rigorous break-in periods where they're taken into the shower and that type of thing I personally don't use anything as Extreme as that make sure that you are wearing those boots at least a week beforehand in light use that way those boots can get broken in for your foot alright so let's talk about leather vers synthetic so when do I wear leather boots when do I wear synthetic boots why would I get one versus the other so synthetic boots in my opinion are probably the best when it comes to hot weather or dry weather and a lot of these synthetic boots where they're using synthetic materials can withstand cold temperatures pretty well a lot of them have vortex built into them however what I found is that after prolonged period UV rays ie in the Sun or exposure to heat or exposure to water the gore-tex tends to be not as effective so what ends up happening is that these boots don't tend to fare as well in wet weather compared to leather boots which can be more easily treated against weather you can treat gore-tex and from these synthetic materials with different types of waxes to make them repel but I found that they don't last as long and they don't take up that treatment as well as leather does so when it comes to hot weather I almost always use solvent quest for these these are my go-to boots a lot of people and some very austere environments have used these boots for a long time because they simply work now Solomons I'm not saying that Solomon's are the best boots because there's a lot of really good boots out there you have all those you have a solo I wouldn't recommend Merrill's however people are gonna get pissed but I haven't seen Merrill's last more than a year and so some people will say well you know what I use them on deployment and I'm a pretty high speed guy and it lasted to my entire deployment no doubt I'm sure they've lasted long periods of time before but overall I've seen them not last that long compared to other brands so again Oh boss a solo Solomon great brands definitely stick with those if you have the choice the chance as far as where to purchase these boots I'd recommend REI they usually have a pretty good return policy and also okay prices and you can also try them on so different things there so I almost always use the Salomon quest 40 because it has a high ankle I prefer the high ankle when I'm doing some hard work and the reason for that is if I hit a pothole or I slip on a rock the high ankle will help protect me from rolling my ankle if I have 50 pounds on my back verse a lower support which might let my ankle roll and so I use that have full disclosure I did have a friend who ripped up the eyelet on his Solon quest for DS there's under some pretty crazy conditions but it did happen I personally never had these boots rip any of the eyelets ripped out of this boot but just realized any boot can fail just make sure you're taking care of it I have jumped at these boots I've done a lot of different types of things with these boots it may serve me very well so these are my typical go-to boots another pair of boots that I typically use are the Salomon X ol trous a lot of people use the 3d a whatever they all come they're called pros those are also excellent and they have a similar design to this what's nice about them is it's almost like a running shoe very lightweight has long running shoe type materials on it and so they last they do pretty well in those types of environments whether it be urban kind of shorter mission so I typically use these when I don't have anything over 30 pounds on my back and when the missions in the last maybe a day or two and primarily be in an urban setting and these work very well so another option for you and again I'm using Solomon's because they fit my feet well playing about the good brands out there guys so when it comes to leather boots I'm going to be wearing leather boots when the weather becomes more inclement typically when it's getting below 50 degrees I'm starting to get a lot of rain a lot of slush snow that type of thing I move over to my leather boots so I'm going to go to a really excellent pair which are the a solos it's all it's a full grain leather all the way around excellently made boot it's quite expensive though so that's always a concern that being said these boots are gonna last you for a long time if you take care of them I didn't particularly use these boots that much until fairly recently for about the last two years or so I've been in a primarily hot dry environment however very recently as anymore cold weather environment because of that I switched over to using these and much more often so with these leather boots you can treat them because what's going to happen is the leather is going to begin to wear as Aware's it's going to lose its ability to protect you against water so what you do is use some type of wax I use snow seal personally and you take a hairdryer or you can use an oven as well I prefer the hairdryer but on high heat up the portion of leather you want to apply the wax you put a glob of Wax on there it's going to see it's going to eventually permeate into the leather get in there whether it's going to soak it up will dry again keep applying that wax until it no longer soaks it up do that to the entire boot and I typically do it after every trip that I go on when I'm heading out to the fields for whatever reason because that wax will rub off that type of thing so it needs to be constantly treated if you treat these boots about after every you know week of really hard use these will last you a very long time it's a very good pair of boots and they will stand the test of time now that being said is the temperature begins to drop towards the 20s 15 degrees Fahrenheit then I'm going to move to an insulated leather boot so the insulated leather boot that I use are the can of tracks I think they're the mountain hunters like I mentioned before so with these they're a little taller to ensure that snow is not going to give in to your ankles combine that with gaiters which is essentially a gore-tex layer that goes from your ankles all the way up to your knees and you can prevent any of that moisture from getting in there getting your socks wet and then you get hypothermia and die you don't want that so if these they also have a very high rubber toe cap so one problem to account Drex is they tend to have a separation of the toe cap there's any type of heat on it for example you're extremely cold you build a fire you get near the fire with your shoes that toe caps going to begin to separate so make sure you take care of them make sure you treat these lifts wax as well and make sure you superglue keep that toe cap on and that goes for all the shoes that you're going to be dealing with but these will serve you fairly well down to about zero degrees Fahrenheit below that you're going to get into specialized Arctic gear and we're not going to go ahead and get into that in this video but realize when you're getting two very cool temperatures you need some very specific equipment okay it's my rant time now so I've been seeing a lot of people who have been recommending that they get jungle boots because it's the best food ever used because the military used it for you know some odd tons of years and then a modified version later on therefore it's the best food ever made and I think that's bullcrap I think it's a terrible idea I was issued and I had to use jungle boots for a good portion of my training and because that I actually had no sensation in my left to right toes due to the build of the shoe in the fact that impinges upon both those nerves and that's the some extent permanent not I haven't been able to feel my toes for about three years now so I'm sure there's no doubt that the jungle boot has served the United States of America very well and I'm very proud of its service to our country but there are much better boots out there nowadays that can be had for about the same price so if you're really considering jungle boots I recommend that you stay away from them there are much better boots out there I'm sure I'm going to piss off a lot of people when I say that all right so we talked about the types of boots I'm typically going to recommend if you have an option to wear a civilian type boot awesome go with those if for whatever reason you're going through the pipeline because you can't try and become a meat-eater or something like that and you are forced to wear military-style boots and I'm very sorry if you have to do that then I have a couple recommendations for you every service is going to have some restrictions on what they can wear based on afi's or whatever the hell the Army and Marine Corps uses to differentiate what types of boots they're able to wear but if you have a chance rocky SUVs excellent and also the lower Zephyrs are really good I've seen those get a lot of people through different selection courses and different iNDOT courses not saying those are the only boots that have gotten people through I've seen people go through the this the selection courses with these nike FSB boots whatever the hell they're called and I'm not a huge fan of these at all but people have gotten through with these boots but if you want to maximize kind of your potential how to recommend something like the rocky SUV and the reason is it's got has a little bit more ankle support I also have some pretty good Souls good insoles and a good lacing system and that's going to lead you to being better prepared to rock because you have a lot of weight on your back typically so guys I'm not going to really launch into boots too much more than this I could talk about this for hours and hours realize that there are tons of boots out there tons of good pairs good companies do your research I don't have time to wear every type of boot that you guys would recommend or that I've seen you know to the point where I feel comfortable mentioning and recommending it to you so I know my list is short do your research stay away from those military-style boots if you have the option and go to civilian type boots because they're much better manufactured alright guys so file plotting parting words good socks change your socks but every day the sock pick sweaty changing them more often make sure you're drinking water and hydrating and for whatever guys put out that photo of me and called me a gear Hitler I mean I guess that's because you know I'm very particular about gear and black and white about it kind of soup nazi or something like that it's pretty funny go ahead and drop yourselves and I'll recover you next video alright say cool

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Id: zWvi3yzimZ4

Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2017