Ski Boot Fit Basics
 

1. Stand on a secure flat surface with the buckles of your boot to the middle of their adjustment range.
   • Your toes should press up against the front of your boot.
2. Flex the boot by bending your knees and ankles.
   • Your toes should just slightly touch the front of the boot with your foot in a relaxed position.
   • Your heel should have solid contact with the bottom of your boot.
   • You should be able to fit 2 to 3 fingers in between your calf and the back of the boot.
3. While flexing boot now roll your knees from side to side.
   • Your entire foot should have solid contact with the entire interior of the boot.

Ski Boot Fit Expertise offered in our store
 

Skiers of every level benefit from the enhanced performance of proper stance alignment.
Without alignment the skier will never be able to ski in the effortless manner within their potential.

Ski Center has a long history of using new techniques in stance alignment.

• First shop in the mid-Atlantic to introduce skiers to custom molded footbeds.
• Introduced skiers to the Peterson Canting Board. Although controversial at the time, its concepts have withstood the test of time.
• Currently using the DFP Texscan system to analyze pressure distribution inside the boot.
• Pioneered the Campbell Dynamic Balancer to help determine binding position on the ski.e introduced to the east coast, the Briastance system, which dials the skier into the proper binding ramp and cant angles in their specific boots.

Each year we examine the latest alignment tools to assess and correct skier stance and balance and currently offer:

• medial/lateral alignment
• footbed selection
• cuff alignment
• canting
• fore/aft balancing
• ski selection
• boot selection

Medial/lateral alignment puts the skier in the most efficient position over the skis. Most skiers are either bow-legged or knock-kneed

• If bow-legged, skiers tend to have poor ski angulation, hip rotation, knee wobble, tired quadriceps, and difficulty making a turn across the fall line
• If knock-kneed, the skier tends to stem their turns, and to ski with too much knee angulation, but still have poor edge grip, with no quickness from edge to edge

With proper alignment, hip and knee angulation are used in a better proportion resulting in a relaxed stance, better grip on hard snow, and improved agility and balance.

Good Footbeds

• have a deep supportive heel cup to control the spreading of the fat pad under the heel and help limit lower leg rotation 
• put the skier’s foot in what is called a “subtalar neutral” position and limits the amount of pronation (inward rolling) and supination (outward rolling) of the ankle to a few degrees
• are made by experienced technicians using materials from SuperFeet, Master Fit, Conformable, and other companies
• are matched to the correct boot
• may be mated with heel lifts if the technician determines they are needed after examination of your dorsiflexion

What is cuff alignment?

• it is NOT canting
• it allows the boot cuff to follow the line of leg in the boot, eliminating shin pressure
• it requires footbeds be installed in the boot shells without the liners. The skier stands in the boot shells while the technician aligns each cuff to follow the shape of each leg.

Proper canting involves centering the knee over the center of the boot:

• standing on a flat board, the skier's feet are placed at hip width.
• using a specialized caliper, the technician finds the center of the knee mass — which is not necessarily the center of the patella.
• the center of the knee mass is then aligned over the center of the boot.

Canting allows for the most efficient transfer of pressure over either the inner or outer edges. If the knee falls too far inside (knock-kneed) or too far outside (bow-legged), modifications will be necessary to achieve a more optimal stance with Briastance alignment caps, under binding canting or ski boot planing.

Finding the optimal fore/aft balance affects your skiing more than medial/lateral alignment. At The Ski Center we perform the following:

• adjust lean angle and boot board ramp angle
• select the proper binding “delta” angle using Briastance
• use Campbell Dynamic balancer to determine optimal binding location on the ski.