Helpful Hints - How To Try On New Ski Boots

hi skiers I'm Jeff from ski essentials comm we're here today to talk about ski boots and specifically how to try on ski boots that might sound silly it might sound straightforward to you just try on a pair of boots but there is a right and a wrong way of trying out a pair of ski boots not everyone lives in a ski town or even a place where there is a ski shop so you don't always have access to a boot shop or a custom boot fitter so buying boots online has become more popular and with that comes kind of the self-assessment process of whether the boots fit or not and we get a lot of customers looking to exchange their boots thinking that they're on the small side which is a really really common reaction to a pair of brand new ski boots so I thought well we thought we would take the time to kind of go through the steps of putting on a new pair of ski boots or try on new pair of ski boots so if you are ordering from us and you're doing this in your living room you kinda have something to go off and and something to at least bounce your thoughts off of and say hey this was tight here is this normal hopefully this gives you a guide of whether yes or no that's that's normal so to start I have a brand-new pair of Nordica pro machine 130s here happens to be in my size brand new boot never been tried on before so we thought it was a perfect example already I can point out when I unbuckle this boot I give the buckles a little quarter turn each just so it doesn't rebuttal itself which can be kind of annoying so I get both boots out you can push the Box aside completely unbuckle both boots cable a quarter turn to those buckles so they're not rebuffing themselves and then ski boots come with paper in the toe so reach in there when the boots unbuckled grab the paper and pull it out throw it in your box hopefully we don't need that paper anymore really not doing anything other than keeping moisture out of the food letting it liner keep its shape a little bit so now I've got our boots unbuckle and ready to go you think we would just throw them on right now but before we do some things to set yourself up for success a thin pair of socks is really key I'm wearing the darn tough ultralight socks here this is one of my favorites a merino wool blend so you get kind of the warmth benefits of merino wool and a really nice stretchy comfortable sock as a general rule the thinner your sock is the warmer your feet are gonna be again counterintuitive but a lot of things with ski boots are somewhat counterintuitive so a thinner sock is actually gonna keep you warmer it's allowing your blood to flow unrestricted thick socks can bunch up or cause pressure points cut off circulation to your toes and then you're fighting a losing battle so a nice thin sock you don't want any wrinkles in it if you really want a proper fitting sock you know you don't want the heel of the sock to be way up on your ankle or anything like that really just no extra material and your boots at all and that comes along or along the same lines you don't want your long underwear in your boot either so I take my long underwear and I kind of bunch it up above my calf when I'm putting my boots on and lastly I would recommend doing this in a warm environment if you're ordering boots online they're probably going to come in a UPS truck and usually in the winter it's not very warm so you know don't rip up in the box and try them on right away let them warm up do it in a warm environment don't do it out in a cold garage or something like that and now we're ready to slip the boots on so we've got them all on buckles can actually see that one trying to buckle itself back up so give those buckles a little quarter turn so it doesn't do that I like to slide the boots on while I'm standing up and pull up and towards my shin with that tongue I see a lot of people in the lodge when they put on their boots they'll do something like pull that tongue way forward that actually made it harder for me to put the boot on so you want to pull up and if anything towards your shin and that'll slide you nicely right into the booth you want to make sure that the tongue kind of goes back in its position the tongue is always on the inside of your liner and then we've got our boots on so probably the biggest mistake with people buying ski boots as they get to this point and they go oh my gosh these are way too tight which if you told me I had to ski with my feet feeling like this I would say no way that's not gonna work I need a bigger size but we're pretty far away from even the point where we get to assess fit right now so if you're in this position like I am right now and your toes are jammed up in the front you're feeling super claustrophobic that's fine just kind of take a deep breath and don't panic and get through it our goal now is to get as far back and down into the heel pocket of the boot essentially that's where you want to be boots have these really nice heel pockets and we want to get our heel right inside that pocket so the first thing that I like to do is sit back down like I am right now and really kind of stop your foot or the article I said tap but you need a little bit of force behind it and you should feel yourself shifting back into that heel pocket depending on the boot depending on your foot shape that kind of stuff how big it is compared to your foot you might feel like you shift like a whole centimeter back into the heel pocket you might feel like you barely shift or you barely can even feel it that's okay do it anyways even if it's a couple of millimeters that's actually making a big difference in the end in terms of the overall fit of the boot so I tapped myself into the heel pocket pretty pretty much all the way back into the heel pocket from what I can tell just doing that the next step that I like to do that I would recommend is starting to buckle your boots and starting with the third buckle so if we were to count buckles I count a one two three four and then your power strap I always like to start with the third buckle because it's time it's the same theory as tapping ourselves in the heel pocket that third buckle is the best for pulling us back and down into the heel pocket so I like to do that third buckle up and at this point especially with a brand new pair of boots I like to actually stand back up and give the boots and good flex you can really low it really drop your knee forward when you don't have the rest of the boot buckled and that's essentially acting as kind of a pivot point or leverage to push your heel even further back into the heel pocket so a couple of flexes dropping your knee forward should be good you might not feel yourself move doing that that's okay you might have already gotten yourself all the way back doing the tap and now I finished buckling the top of the boot so I don't go to too tight just yet again we're not really getting to the final fit yet here we're still just trying these boots on but get it pretty snug so that's pretty snug on my on my lower leg there I really don't have have much room I'm a general rule of thumb you don't want much more than a finger to fit in between your calf in the back of your boot right now I can probably get two but again I'm probably gonna tighten this a little bit further before I'm done and notice my long underwear it's not in the boot this is kind of the point where if you want you can kind of push it back down on top of your boot that's pretty much where my longer underwear it spends spends the whole day just kind of resting on top of my boots like that so now we stand back up give the boots some more flexing these are 130 flex boots and I'm a not a heavy guy so they're kind of tricky for me to flex and I actually I do this with pretty much any boot I'll do one foot at a time because I'm really using my full full weight to get into the heel pocket of the boot and I can actually feel that I've relieved quite a bit of pressure off my toes so when we first put when I first put my foot in this boot before buckling it I was way up in the front of the boot and now I feel like it actually got some room around toe if I stand straight up I can still feel a little bit but when I flex forward I'm pulling back nicely which is really good and we'll get to that and kind of our final fit assessment so now you can kind of finish buckling the boot this is a poor important step and probably in my opinion one of the most important things to remain comfortable in a ski boot so remember the number of buckles one two three four this second buckle should remain pretty loose so about that amount of tightness is what I'm looking for and you can feel it if it's feeling too tight across the top of your foot you want to kind of relieve some pressure there essentially all the veins in your foot run right across the top of your foot right in that position so if you're really ratcheting this buckle down like if I went to - oh gosh or if I even went to three I don't even wanna do that leave it on a one you're really kind of if you can't buckle it with one finger it's probably too tight so if your boots fit you really shouldn't need to be ratcheting this buckle down and if you are chances are you're just gonna kind of circulation so that's no fun so pretty loose on that buckle front buck they can go a little bit tighter we'll get to micro adjustments earlier but I might go adjust that right now for myself so that goes pretty good you know and tight enough there it's not cutting off circulation a little bit tighter in toe and these are much tighter on top and I think I could go a little tighter on these two so the other side again nice and easy on that second buckle nothing major there and now we can start time assessing how they fit so stand back up get yourself in an athletic stance in years and years and years of boot fitting in brick-and-mortar stores I've seen so many people I put the boot on their on their foot and then they immediately just want to start walking around the store maybe like shopping for jackets or something I don't know what they're doing but don't do that if you're home by yourself and you're trying on these boots I totally understand if your instincts are to go walk around your kitchen or you know do dishes or whatever but really the best thing you can do is to stay planted stay with your shins pressed in the front of your boot maybe do some side to side movements as if you are skiing but you don't want to do anything crazy and essentially what happens with with walking every time I take a step and heel strike it's pushing pressure on my calf which then forces my foot for forward in the boot which is really counteracting all that work we did to get into the heel pocket of the boot so if you go walk around your house or your apartment with your brand new boots on chances are you're gonna go for a little walk and you're gonna get back and your toes are gonna be hurting you're gonna be cramping you're just not gonna be in the right spot in the boot so really just kind of hanging out of them in a while flex them side to side mine are feeling pretty good I'm not moving when I'm standing straight up I'm touching the front of the boot with my toes but just barely and when I flex my toes pull back nicely now your toes might not hit the very end of your boot that's okay if you feel yourself shifting back and forth in the boot that's another story you don't want too much room lengthwise you pretty much want just enough room to get your toes off that front of the boot again some some more comfort oriented recreational skiers will will not be right there on the front of the boot but it's totally okay if you are so the next step next step in my opinion is to sit back down this is when you're kind of starting to make your final adjustments so right now my my left foot feels pretty good I don't think I want to make my left boot any tighter so I'm gonna keep that one as it is you know I can get ready for skiing throwing my pants down over it these are the off piste shell pants that we just took a look at on YouTube recently so that one's good to go kind of want this one a little bit tighter and this is kind of where those micro adjustments come into place this is maybe like a little bit too loose I'm gonna give that a turn to tighten it up just a little bit and that's back to where I want it I like to have a little resistance on that buckle again not too too much but that's that's what I'm looking for personally and this boot feels a little loose up top to crank the power strap down a little bit so now my boots are on and honestly at this point if you're feeling comfortable in your boots or or comfortable enough in your boots in my opinion now is time to go skiing you're pretty much ready to go skiing a lot of people when they when they get to this step they want to go have adjustments made to a boot buy a boot fitter you know custom adjustments done by a boot fitter I would strongly recommend if you're comfortable enough in your boot like I am not full fully comfortable in these boots but I am comfortable enough I would recommend skiing them first skiing in a boot is is putting it to the test way more than than sitting or standing in a boot and some issues may arise that you didn't expect through the skiing certain areas that you might want to have adjusted down the road so my advice is to go skiing even these boots have a moldable liner a lot of boots on multiple shells now - and again you could go straight to a boot shop and mold that liner right away but I would again recommend just just ium at least a day and kind of really get a sense of how they fit you might find that you don't need to kind of heat mold that liner if it's not an intuition liner if it's kind of a traditional ski boot liner the heat of your foot while skiing is actually doing quite a bit of molding on its own there's an argument to be made there that it's molding to the shape of your foot while you're skiing not the shape of your foot while you're standing in the store if you're really pretty pretty tight in there and you don't think that you know maybe you're convinced that this boot is going to work which to be honest is kind of how this left boot feels right now to me I'm convinced that this would work but I might actually shell mold these are liner mold these before I ski them because I'm getting a little bit of pressure on my navicular which i think is going to be rectified by by molding that that liner so that's kind of my guide to or our guide to how to try on your ski boots main things to keep in mind thin sock that's huge keep your long underwear out of your boot that's also huge warm environment again huge don't panic that's kind of one of my big big rules and don't jump to conclusions either that kind of goes along with don't panic you really want to focus on getting yourself into that heel pocket and then yeah and then go skiing if there are pressure points like really painful pressure points maybe the boots not for you maybe it's a little too narrow and like anything if you have questions but the fit if you're not quite a hundred percent sure definitely give us a call and we're happy to talk with you over the phone or send us an email or leave us a comment and we're happy to kind of provide our insight on what we think about a particular situation and then you know boots are ever-changing so most of our staff skis somewhere in the range of a hundred days a year so how these boots feel right now is not representative of how these boots are going to feel at the end of the season so boots do continually need adjustment you'll find that you might make kind of some of those micro adjustments down the road to tighten it up in one spot boots also have macro adjustments so you could physically move physically move this buckle to there or there if you need to kind of change the whole range of the buckle so definitely some adjustments that you can make on your own and then you know if you're on a ski trip somewhere or if you're here in Stowe in particular we have a brick-and-mortar custom boot shop called inner boot works those guys do fantastic work and a lot of ski shops around the country around the world or a lot of ski towns will have a pretty reputable boot fitter don't hesitate to bring them in if you feel like you could make things a little bit better for yourself fitters are great guys so there's always that option of going and having your boot stretched in a certain spot or or grind it in a certain spot but yeah hopefully this video gives you some guidelines of - how to try on your boots initially and yeah if you have any questions let us know we can even kind of talk to you about your foot shape and make some recommendation recommendations about what boot we think would work for you and yeah hopefully you can find some boots from us online and watch this video and try them on and and they'll be great for you so our staff last video that we did I think I mentioned that Killington was was opening soon and and we'd probably be on snow on snow soon some of our staff is down at Killington today taking some runs kind of celebrating the start of the season so we are officially back on snow here at ste essential.com we will be releasing some ski comparison videos soon and yeah we're all getting pretty excited about winter we're gonna be in full full ski swing here very soon so we will see you on the slopes and again let us know if you have any questions about some good thing you

Channel: Skiessentials.com

Views: 78,230

Rating: 4.8901958 out of 5

Keywords: Ski Boots, Trying on Ski Boots, Ski Boot Fitting, Putting on Ski Boots, Ski Boot Guide, Ski Boot Fit Guide, Chairlift Chat, SkiEssentials.com

Id: 4pwIfqBfv38

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018