The 3 Most Important Things To Know About Ski Boots Before Skiing

today I want to go over the three most important things you should know about your skib boots before you even put them on this is something that doesn't get covered in most ski lessons but is very important to being comfortable and safer when you wear your ski boots and it's going to make the overall experience more enjoyable now in most lessons you're going to learn how to ski so you may ski for several years and never even get this information and you may even be a quite good skier and not know this so the first thing and one of the most important things when you have ski boots of your own is that every time that you use them you want to make sure when you put them in storage you Buckle all the buckles up into the position that you typically will ski with them in and why that's important is because this plastic heats up and contracts and expands based on the temperature that it's in so you imagine these are in 20° weather WEA or 10° weather and then they go inside your house which may be 70° or some people have them in warm cars which are 80 plus de now what happens is that plastic shell can change its shape and what you'll find is that if you don't store your ski boots with the buckles like this that it's going to make it much harder to one get the boot on in a secure snug fit if these have kind of expanded and that shape has changed to the environment that it's in so when you Buckle this up then it's going to stay in the exact shape that you typically will ski in so every time when you're done you want to make sure that you buckle down all your buckles to the position that you would have them when you are skiing them or when you first get them and what that's going to do is hold the plastic shell in that position so that when you go put these on it is shaped correctly to your ankle to your foot and it's going to be much easier you'll find to be able to put these levers on and cinch them down in your boot and make you more comfortable now another part to this is It's ideal to have your boots inside before you go skiing so that you don't have cold feet and that's going to make you more comfortable so tip one make sure you store your boots like this and trust me it is a game Cher to have them buckled down and it's going to make your equipment last longer and make it more comfortable and then try and keep your boots inside rather than garage and you're going to have nice warm feed while you ski now the number two thing and many people don't learn this for years and years is that you do not start buckling your boot with these bottom buckles a lot of people get into skiing and it's just easiest to flip these buckles down and then it makes it easier to flip these two buckles down you should not do that and the reason is you want to start with these buckles to get your ankle all the way in the back of the boot so if you start with these two buckles here rather than the bottom two what it's going to do is push your ankle and heel back into the back of the boot where you want it for the best fit and most control in the boot and in the ski and then you're going to cinch these down so you would start here get your ankle all the way in you go to this next lever at the top you're going to cinch that down and then you're ready to do these two buckles you can do this Buckle next and then this one last and then you're going to wrap the top with your velcro strap so a lot of people don't know this and I know when I first started skiing I was guilty of this that I would Buckle these two first and I found a d dramatic Improvement in how these ski boots fit the control I had and the comfort for wearing these all day when I got my ankle all the way into the back in that heel in the back of the boot which gives you more control more power and coordination with the skis and the boots themselves everything that you do with the ski is controlled by your foot your ankle and your toes so having the maximum amount of fit and control is really ideal to use your skis in the proper manner now here's one that is a newer thing so this is the third thing that we're going to talk about and a lot of people have not even heard of this but it is incredibly important to stay safe on the slopes and make sure that you're keeping your knees in good conditions your ankles all your joints and that is what we're going to show you here down at the bottom at the bottom of the boot you can see this says grip walk and what that is is these are replaceable pieces of rubber plastic material that make it easier to walk through a parking lot ice snow all that stuff it's a little bit softer than ski boot material and you say how does that make you safer well there's two ways and two really important things and it has to do with both the boot itself and friction and then also your binding and something that a lot of people don't know because these haven't been out and commonly used for that long in terms of how long skiing has been around the first one is having these on here this is great because it does provide extra traction when you're just walking around the resort from your car to get to the ski hill and you can actually replace these uh right here you can see you've got screws here you could replace this whole sole here and replace this whole sole here when they wear down and it's important you watch uh how worn down they're getting because this indexes how high your boot and binding fit together so you don't want to let this get super low because if you do you're going to have a little bit of a gap there and that's going to just affect how your binding rides now the second thing and most important is that if you have grip walk boots or gripwalk soles on your boot you need to have a grip walk compatible binding and that cannot be emphasized enough a lot of people will get these newer boots with grip walk on the bottom but they don't realize they need to have a grip walk compatible binding yes you can get your bindings adjusted to fit the boot with grip walk on them the older ones that are not gripwalk compatible but the binding is not designed for that in your D settings and how The Binding work is going to be completely off and can lead to injury if you have a grip walk boot you need to have a grip walk binding and you'll see on the boot it'll say grip walk right here on the bottom and The Binding will also say grip walk on it that's how important it is to understand this and know this and how these are compatible if you do not see grip walk on the binding and you do not see grip walk on the boot make sure that you have Bindings that are going to work with that ski boots but if you have grip walk on the boot and you are going to put these on your skis you need to make sure that you have grip walk on the binding and if you're renting skis but bringing your boots you also need to let the technicians know that you've got gripwalk boots and you're going to use those and you need to have grip walk compatible skis and bondings there are many stories out there of people using a grip lock boot with a binding that is not grip lock compatible and they did not pop out at the appropriate D settings and could cause a major injury or a malfunction of The Binding read the literature on the grip walk binding and the boots and you'll see that you are only supposed to use grip walk bindings with grip walk boots so thank you for watching this video on three things that you should know about your ski boots the first one was that you want to make sure that you store your ski boots in this condition which we've done right here the second is you want to make sure that you get your heel all the way back in the boot and you use these Lev first to tighten down the boot and the third one is if you are using grip walk boots you need to have grip walk bindings now here's just another thing that we've got for if you have trouble tightening down your bootstraps and I have this issue sometimes just because of the shape of The Binding or the uh boot uh in the levers I just use this tool right here which helps you get a ton of Leverage and is really comfortable to use rather than these point pointy edges on the boot Buckle itself so one of the things you may find when you try and strap these straps down first is they're going to be much tighter and using something like this uh boxum uh Ski and Snowboard Buckle lever is going to help you get more leverage to get these really tight and I have found that this is an invaluable tool to actually get these as tight as I want I just throw this then in my pocket and I've got it from whenever I'm out on the hill to make a quick adjustment if I want to get my boots tighter so thanks for watching this video on three things that you should know about your ski boots before you go skiing and three things that you may not have known about your ski boots that are incredibly important to both your safety and comfort on the hill now go shred and have a good time and thanks for watching Skylark Outdoors

Channel: Skylark Outdoors

Views: 55,236

Keywords: ski boots, what to know about ski boots, how to put on ski boots, comfortable ski boots, how to fit ski boots, grip walk ski boots, what are grip walk ski boots, what are grip walk ski bindings, how to put on grip walk ski boots, 3 things to know about ski boots, things to know about ski boots, 3 things to know about skiing, ski bindings, ski boot buckles, ski boots fit, fit ski boots, ski boot fit, ski boot, grip walk ski boot, grip walk binding

Id: hGStJRwA1Zc

Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024