Painful feet while on ski-lift!

The bottom 2 buckles are there only to help you get the boot on and keep the boot water proof and the buckets around your shin are should holed you leg in place. These should be not tight but no room for your leg to move around in them. inside the boot you foot should be snug in the ski persition and you should be just off the end of the boot and when you stand up your feet should touch then end.

Pablo,

When I first put them on I have them pretty slack, so that I can walk to the lifts.

Before I ski I do mine up as tight as I can, without forcing them. And if my shin hurts, I slacken the relevant clip off.

The other thing I do - and I don't know if it's right or not - is I do the whole boot up loosely starting from the bottom, and then I go back and do it again, because I have found that somehow tightening the top of the boot makes the bottom clips go slack.

And, as I said before, I tighten them up again after the first run, as one of my instructors once taught me to do.

And I slacken them right off for lunch, and walking to the toilet etc.

Ally

This can all get very over complicated.
Basically, Pabs is right - the buckle should not be tight and you should be able to flick the clip with your thumb and it wont open but it will lift. Any tighter and you have a problem, and might find you have no blood circulation - could explain the whole problem re this thread.
We hada discussion last season about leaving the 2nd clip down as loose as possible to help with flex, and someone (ise I think) came on and said that was all nonsense and tightening the boots had nothing to do with flex. However, having tried this tip from Ellistine, I can say that I skied better and felt somehow more flexible with the 2nd buckle (below the shin and above the ankle) loose and not even clip tight.
Maybe its just me, but I suggest you give it a try.

olly123456789 wrote:The bottom 2 buckles are there only to help you get the boot on and keep the boot water proof and the buckets around your shin are should holed you leg in place. These should be not tight but no room for your leg to move around in them. inside the boot you foot should be snug in the ski persition and you should be just off the end of the boot and when you stand up your feet should touch then end.

I seriously don't understand what you are trying to say, maybe too early in the day.

Once my boots are done up for skiing I slacked the bottom 2 (sometimes 3 buckles) off for the lift ride (especially if it is cold). An instructor got me in to doing it once and I have never really gone back.

I hired a pair of boots once, where I couldn't even do up the top buckle unless I forced it. So I skied like that. The instructor wasn't very happy about it, but I skied no worse than usual. These days, I'd have taken them back and changed them, but I was a novice then.

I guess we all have different shaped feet, and different boots, and we all do the best we can to get our feet to fit comfortably in our boots and still be able to ski okay.

I'm fairly sure Bandit said recently that they'd all skied with their clips undone, in a lesson, as an exercise, and managed fine.

Ally

I have skied before in a drill with the boot fully undone-it really helps find your balance!!

Olly is right, you dont need the bottom two buckles at all really-its the top 2 that are more important

AllyG wrote:

When I first put them on I have them pretty slack, so that I can walk to the lifts.

And I slacken them right off for lunch, and walking to the toilet etc.

Ally

If you do much walking with the buckles undone, your feet will start packing in the liners, in ways that they don't when you ski. When you had the liners heated, it was in a skiing position, not a walking around position for a reason.

Trencher

You are right AllyG, I went to one of the Head Performance Clinics last month at Hemel, and we all skied with our boots completely undone for about an hour. It's a bit unnerving at first, but I agree with rossyhead on the balance stuff.

To fasten a skiboot, start with the top 2 clips and the powerstrap. Flex forward with the shins (this pulls your heel into the back of the heel pocket) and then fasten the bottom 2 clips, which should be just snug.

As taught by CEM 8)