1.   Foot pains typical of undercanted skiers (knees knocking in)

a) The ski boot gets increasingly tighter and tighter in the forefoot and toe area as the day wears on. This is due to the widening of your forefoot under the pressures of skiing. This is called pronation and concerns 8 out of ten skiers. Pronating skiers are undercanted and need to knock their knees inwards.

b) The ankle joint rubbing against the side of the ski boot when edging. There are several possible scenarios to this problem.

(i) A New ski boot liner contains and holds your lower leg better because the padding materiel is not yet worn out and compressed. Your foot and lower leg are partially held in a position limiting the adverse effect of pronation. This positive but temporary situation prevents the anklebone from touching the side of the boot. As the padding in the boot's liner is wears out, there is more movement available to the foot and leg permitting your foot and ankle to move back towards their "usual" pronated position. As a consequence the anklebone moves progressively closer to the shell until it get too close and hurts you.

(ii) Statistics tell us that 67% of skiers are in ski boots 2 sizes too big and our experience confirms this; surprisingly oversized ski boots engender major ankle problems because the ankle sits too low in relation to the "ankle pocket area" designed in the ski boot's shell. Ankles can hurt on either side of course; the most frequent scenario however is where the ankle is collapsing towards the boot's inner sidewall. Only unusually large ankles require the stretching of the ski boot's shell

A full skier alignment in the appropriately sized boots, on footbeds combined with under binding cants offer the ideal and complete solution to the problem.
 

2.   Foot pains typical of overcanted skiers (legs bowing out)

3.   Over tightening the ski boots

When you over tighten your ski boots you are expecting the boot to hold you up and take care of your balance. Being secure on your feet is your responsibility. Skiing hard on the first run of the day with the boots done up too tight will create cramping of your feet. You have to warm up to allow your body to wake up to its balance responsibilities and to allow the blood to flow gradually in your feet; so take it easy on the boot buckles. Your first couple of runs of the day should be on easy slopes to avoid brutal movements of your feet and with boots hardly done up.

4.   Brutal skiing movements

Skiing bumps and powder will tend to have you fighting your ski boots with your feet bashing against the boot's shell every time you feel jolted by the terrain. Your feet, responding to the reflexive tension of the body, tighten up, gripping and clenching to intolerable levels of parasitic contractions. Improving your skiing will considerably lower the levels of parasitic tension and restore longer relaxed intervals.

5.   Reflexive stiffening of your body

Not being a snowboarder I experienced the effects of reflexive tension of the body during a 3 hour snowboarding lesson. I was wearing soft snowboard boots in which I had placed my familiar custom footbed taken from my ski boots. The environment of the soft snowboard boot is far less restricting then in rigid high performance ski boots yet in snowboard boots I had foot cramps in just minutes whereas this never happened wearing ski boots day in day out. I was being a victim of the reflexive tensing of the body and my feet took the toll in the futile attempt to stop the ground from moving under me. Walking back up the hill carrying my board allowed my feet to relax and recover. Tension returned once on the board.

6.   Gradual pain or numbness building up during the day

This is more problematic then the situation previously described because it cannot be resolved by learning how to relax. There is either an overload of pressure on top or under the foot induced by the boot.

Individuals with high insteps are prime candidates for this problem and the champion sufferers of all times have high instep, big calves and have a substantial body weight.

If this is your case you are most likely to oversize your ski boots just to accommodate your high instep and wider feet. A bigger boot however will have you wallowing on the mountain and will jam blood supply in your lower leg because of it's higher rear spoiler pinching your calf muscle.

In addition to a custom footbed crafted using the principles of alignment and balance the cure comes in selecting a high volume boot and having it stretched over the instep, along with shaving the rear spoiler and adjusting the buckle closure point on the ski boot's cuff.

You will only find a very limited number of specialists who can do this. 

7.   Pregnancy

Your feet were comfortable in your ski boots before your pregnancy and now they are hurting, your feet are now feeling compressed in your boots. Pregnancy increased the load on your feet and your feet may have widened (due to increased pronation) during the pregnancy. The solution is to have your footbed and your foot alignment assessed and corrected, along with a stretch of the ski boot on the Ultracam machine to provide the extra width if needed.

8.   You have gained 25 pounds / 12 kilos / 2 stone or more

Same effect as pregnancy but worse, you may need to get a higher volume ski boot to accommodate your now swollen feet.

9.   You have had an injury

Foot injury, ankle sprain, knee injury, leg or pelvis fracture - these can have a big effect on how you feel in your boots and you may consider having to start from scratch again. With knee and pelvis injuries it is imperative that you have your alignment adjusted and checked regularly, this will considerably reduce the amount of strain on your knees and in the hips.

10.   Mystery foot pains

There is a category of "mysterious foot pains" occurring in otherwise properly adjusted footbeds and ski boots. These normally unnoticed foot pains in day-to-day life are revealed in the ski boot's snug environment. The science of Reflexology provides possible answers through the interesting correlation existing between specific pressure areas on our feet and the organs in our body. Pain felt on a specific area of the foot could, and this is an example, reveal that our gall bladder is under strain. If the Gall bladder produces the effect of foot pain, no amount of boot fitting and insole tweaking will help, address your Gall bladder issue first. I know this is a hard message to absorb but it is so true. Look globally at you entire body and you have answers to many of your problems.

11.   Additional note: custom foamed ski boots

Even if your ski boots are comfortable, seem to fit properly or are custom foamed, alignment still needs to be corrected. Boot fit and skier alignment are two different things even if they influence one another. In fact, custom foaming a skier into boots can lead to greater errors in alignment because of the very nature of the foaming process. Pulling on the bars with your arms in order to increase the pressure under your feet results in applying strain down the spine. This spinal strain may displace the hipbone and force the leg bone (femur) to miss-align itself in relation to the lower leg (tibia), and so on, leaving us with just as much need to correct skier alignment as with any other boots. The more homeopathic alternative is a zip fit.