Fit versus Function, or Why Do Boots Still Hurt?

Hi - Had this posted over in the Boot Guys forum, received zero replies, probably because it's not answerable in straightforward terms, more 1/2 rant and 1/2 seeking informed POV about why boots are designed the way they are, and what we should do about its impact on our skiing. So here's a modified, and far far longer version:

The Philosophical Side:

Background: I face either a philosophical or political problem about my boots. Currently have 26.5 Krypton Crosses. 7 mm between heel and shell, so very snug fit. Their 3-piece design has improved my skiing markedly in terrain I frequent say 2/3 of the time: trees, softer snow, and natural features. Groomed is close to a wash, slight improvement. Carving hard is a slight loss. On all terrain, win or lose, I can feel the effect of the 3 piece and low hinge. So between my experience and the number of pros who wear these for freestyle/freeride, I believe there is a significant difference in the biomechanics of a 3 piece vs. a 2 piece that will affect skiing. I know some of you will argue otherwise, but for heuristic purposes, I'm going to postulate that 3 piece shells facilitate skiing irregular terrain and/or soft snow, while 2 piece designs facilitate carving ice and hardpack. All good so far.

Problem: My Crosses are only a marginal fit even with ID's and heroic expert fitter effort. My fitter began our relationship by pointing out that my foot was at ragged limit of what would work for a 26.5 Dalbello (learned among other things that last proportions change in a non-linear fashion, it's not just that a "98" refers to a particular length - typically 27.5 - but that the heel to forefoot relations aren't the same in a 26 as a 27, etc.) Next length up was more feasible in front, way too big in back. By going very short, my Crosses fit at the rear where they need to, but are a pain (literally) in front. My toes are actually short, in anthropometric terms, but there's no room anyway, and the metatarsal region (98 last) is silly narrow for my foot. 

Upshot: Many grinds and a few stretches later, the boots are decently comfortable if I only ski in them a day or two in a row. After a week, I'm limping even in street shoes. OTOH, they are very solid at transmitting force laterally, and the flex pattern is perfect once you get used to it. I've made the sacrifice (once again) of comfort for desired performance. Like many of you.

So my initial question is which damages our skiing more, having a boot that is less comfortable while we ski, but performs well, or having a boot that's comfy, but doesn't perform adequately? And for now, let's hold off on the inevitable "you should be able to have both, you just need to try xxx." Let's imagine there are truly only these two choices. To me, not just a "It's your call, go for what's most important to you" question. That's simple truth. But what should a decent skier in 2012 should be aiming for with a boot?

My second question reverts to xxxx: Can particular models of 2 piece shells get around some of their deficiencies (for me, maybe not to you) in irregular terrain? All 2-piece shells are basically the same (as are cabrios), but perhaps there's a particular model that has a flex pattern or lower hinge that gets at the some of the issues (for me). 

The Political Economic Rant:

My rant (since this is a discussion forum) is the larger, why have we arrived here? Why do we need to incessantly seek boots that better balance comfort and performance? Why do we advise newbies here that boots can't fit like street shoes, so suck it up if you want performance? Those "cushy" boots are for wusses and beginners. 

Seems obvious, maybe, it's the athletic ethos: No pain no gain. Discomfort = the $ of excellence. Just do it. But is any of that necessarily true? Sports medicine shot down the "no pain no gain" coaches credo - along with rubber suits for August football drills - years ago. It's no longer an automatic that a sign of a good workout is muscle soreness. NSAIDs probably cause heart disease, so maybe we shouldn't dose ourselves with them every time we go do a sport. So why do we assume we need "snug" boots that have to be dialed in every season to readjust those pressure points? How many of you still unbuckle on the lift as the price of a good run? And sigh in pleasure and relief as you pull off your boots at the end of the day?

I'd argue that our idea of what a boot should be is tied in with conservative RD that is chiefly aimed at marketing and profits rather than innovation.  Now we don't tolerate skis that are crazy good at two things but mediocre at a third, equally important, mission. We go buy new ones. And the ski makers respond by remarkable changes in ski technology over the past decade.

Boots are another story, aren't they? Yes, there's been incremental evolution. But consider what today's boots share with my original Langes, the pebbly black ones, cut like a leather boot, those rock hard liners full of strawberry jam that leaked onto your socks once they cracked:

Still use the same materials, basically. It's not like the basalt or carbon or exotic metal revolution in skis. Same plastic, far as I know (yeah, I realize there's PU and prebax, so is that as dramatic a difference as metal vs. carbon? And liners that these days are closed cell thermo-sensitive foam, which was around shortly after the strawberry jam was. My mattress pad is made of similar stuff, just less viscous, and it costs a touch less.  

Boots still use the same design, also. Yep, the top's gotten taller from my Langes, and we like power straps now. But guess what, still that hinge point that bears no relationship to human anatomy, metal or plastic buckles that pull across a strap or piece of metal until they stress fracture. These days we make a big deal over small insanely cheap machine screws that are renamed "micro-adjusters." We get all excited about small changes in the density or thickness of the plastic around areas that boots hurt in most people. We still, after all-mountain skis that literally are good to superb everywhere you can ski, have to choose between a boot design that allows us to transmit energy to the ski and a design that's easy to get on and off our foot. (No Dodge photos allowed; check back when racers are actually winning in them and average people are actually paying for them.) 

Meanwhile in skis we're having threads about cleats and boot hulls and how much rocker is correct for which kind of skiing, and whether reverse/reverse works outside powder, and look, racing skis have early rise!

In boots, we're trying to get an approximate fit and then trudging off to the fitter for grinds and blows and "dialing-in" that may be analogous to tuning a ski, but not to choosing a ski. Actually it's more analogous to a woman trying to find a pair of heels she can actually walk in for more than a block, and being excited when they only hurt after three hours of use. 

Now you may come back with, ah, but rear entry didn't work in hindsight, and Scott truly sucked, and there's the new vaccum tech, and there's always the Dodge. So boots are perfected. You have all these choices. They're about as good as they can be for most people. You just have mutant feet. 

Really? You'd prefer to keep your boots on after a day of hard skiing, maybe pad around the kitchen in them? Or are you really saying that the discomfort is manageable, minor, compared to other boots you've owned? Or are you saying that your feet are statistically normal and everyone who buys new boots before theirs wear out have statistically deviant feet? 

More specifically, it would be interesting to address these questions:

1) Why do ski boots have basically symmetrical, ovoid toe boxes that bear no relationship to human forefoot anatomy? My speculation is because ski boots are so foundationally conservative that they are modeled after street shoe aesthetics from the 1920's. 

2) Why do most ski boots have posterior shell designs that, again, have little resemblance to the foot and ankle inside them? Why do Jim and Phil need to have a (probably wonderful) process that collapses the heel around their customer's feet less than the forefoot? Yes, it's the thickness of the plastic and limitations of the vacuum system. So back to pads here and there. OK, all good, but why have thick plastic there at all? Skis in 2011 don't achieve greater stiffness by being thicker. That was 1970. Now we look for exotic materials, and innovative engineering. My speculation is that again, assumptions about ski boots are still based on leather hiking boots from a hundred years ago. Anyone here old enough to have owned lace up ski boots? If you recall, thicker leather lasted longer before it lost its stiffness.

We talk about how bad the old days were, but as with internal combustion engines or batteries, it's just the same technology, over and over. Replace leather with plastic, and we're off on another century of small profit. I speculate that this is less about the cost of innovative materials per se than corporate inertia over an item that does not lead to large profit margins anyway. If we buy what they give us, why change what that is? Corporate competition is over marketing details that will attract our attention, not design or structural innovation. 

3) Why do boot makers use lasts that do not, on average, reflect typical populational averages? Here, I'll go with anthropometric data again. Most people in 2012, yes even in Italy, do not have wide heels and narrow forefeet. Or put another way, all human feet get substantially wider in front. Some of us have different ratios of width in front to narrowness in back, but even if you have "meaty" heels or "narrow" forefeet, your feet are a rhomboid with a longer front. My speculation is that all boots are based on European boot lasts out of the last century that themselves reflected shoe fashion more than anatomy. As with women's heels, or traditional running shoes, we buy what we are conditioned to accept as appropriate, rather than what actually has functional value. (You could make an argument that heels at least affect sexual selection fitness; hard to make that argument for ski boots.)

Meanwhile since 1900, there's been this thing called "secular trend." People have gained about 4" of height, and corresponding skeletal breadth. Hands and feet are bigger. But not in a linear scale. As feet get bigger (longer), they do not scale just as wide, they get wider than predicted by the length. That's called allometric change, and it's because feet reflect the loads placed on them by body weight and muscular forces. Those forces increase mostly as a cubic function, while the load bearing attributes of the foot change as its cross sectional surface area, a squared function. So SA has to increase disproportionately to keep up with weight and force. 

Moreover, if you grow up American, you grow up in flip flops or sneakers. Ratios of forefoot width to heels have changed even more over here. Go check out photos of indigenous tribes who have never worn shoes. Or spend some time in Hawaii, where everyone pretty much wears flip flops all day every day. Such feet are very wide, and keep getting wider over time. The ends of these folks toes do not converge; they often cover more space than their metatarsals.

And I am advised by my wife and her female friends that women's feet get noticeably wider after a few pregnancies. That's an extra 20-40 lbs for 9 months, of which the average woman keeps 13 per pregnancy. So increasing width makes sense from the prospective of weight versus surface area. It also seems to hold up empirically; I've done some measurements on obese individuals, who report the same phenomenon. Likely to be age related, too, in societies where we add about 12 lbs per decade.

Yet I notice no recognition of any of this, beyond advertising for "radical" new fits that allow a bit more width around the 5th metatarsal. Apparently for the ski boot industry, it's still 1925 Bavaria. 

So my conclusion: Boots are in no way shape or form evolving like skis are, and this reflects profit motives on the part of boot makers, who realized long ago that we will continue to buy antiquated designs because we're a largely captive and well-conditioned market. Retailers, well, there's an intrinsic conflict of interest in demanding better products, no? The more hurting feet or sloppy edge response, the more new stock moves off the shelf. 

Discuss. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by cantunamunch 

We've essentially made a system where it is *easy* for skis to change because they are not required to fit feet or any non-biometric standard beyond width enough and thickness enough for binding screws.

 

Already an interesting and unexpected idea. Appreciate wading through the verbiage. I do go on, I know...

Quote:

Originally Posted by madMads 

My Garmont Endorphin boots have some anatomical features and are the most comfy and best boots I've ever had. I was used to racingboots but wanted something lighter for working as an instructor. I feared they wouldn't be stiff and responsive enough, but was, luckily, wrong.

 

 

 

Yep, anatomy can be addressed using conventional materials and basically the same designs we've always had. So why aren't more manufacturers going this direction? Are AT folks more demanding? (But note that most AT boots are also very conventionally shaped.) Is it really about the economics of molds?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanBoisvert 

So, to summarize:

 

1. You bought a boot that didn't fit
2. The fitter couldn't make it fit

 

Therefore, the entire ski boot industry sucks, is behind the times, and is intentionally making lousy products?

 

 

I just want to make sure I understand your thought process here..

Nope, pretty much wrong across the board. My boots fit a bit better than any other boot I've ever owned. That's largely due to the skills of my fitter. So let's review:

1) One argument I make is that NO boot actually fits real human feet. Feet aren't shaped like boot shells. (Or shoes, for that matter.) The only differences in outcome, I'm arguing, are the degree to which our feet are close enough to a shell's shape, using a liner to fill in all the mismatches, that we are subjectively are satisfied with the level of discomfort after a day of skiing. A good fit is more a testament to liners than shells. But some of us are satisfied enough that we say, "wow, this boot really fits." Others just deal. Still others keep looking for better boots. But all groups always enjoy taking their boots off. 

2) Another argument I make is that the design conservatism of boots makes it unlikely any fitter can create a very close correlation between foot and boot. If they're confronted with feet that are statistically common but not typical, say 1 standard deviation each way, its even less likely. Ski boots are patterned after leather boots, but the rigid plastic shell makes any pressure or impact far more problematic to a mismatch with what's inside. 

3) Another argument I make is that it doesn't have to be this way. Some of us shouldn't have to choose between fit or function. Never said that the entire industry sucks, just that the entire industry has been allowed to coast along with century old assumptions about fit. As Steve Jobs realized looking at IBM, technology isn't supposed to force us adapt to it. It's supposed to cater to our needs, and help us extend our creativity. Works for skis just like it works for computers. Just doesn't seem to work for boots.

Hope that helps. 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by tromano 

I think  you offer a false choice between comfort and performance. You cannot have one with out the other.

 

If you can't ski 3 days in a row because of boot induced foot pain then the boots are not fit correctly and are not performing adequately. Maybe its the best fit you have ever had, that doesn't mean it is correct.

Oddly, you're kinda agreeing with my plaint (why can't we have both?), but by saying each requires the other, you seem to be making a tautology. If high performing boots require painlessness, then anything uncomfortable is by definition not high performing. Hmmm. Ever raced in a plug? You can have high performance without comfort. Or you can have comfort without high performance, obviously. Then by saying that if it's correct, it'll be comfortable. Therefore if it's uncomfortable, it's incorrect. What about the possibility that a "correct" fit may not exist for certain kinds of performance?

Quote:

Originally Posted by NayBreak 

 

I don't think anybody is trying to be flippant (or at least we are mostly trying to resist), but the way you posted suggests you chose the 3 piece cabrio design and then Dalbello by association, and this boot doesn't fit your foot.  If a 98 last is 'silly narrow' for your foot, have you considered one of the newer wider performance boots?  

 

Here's what the Ski Mag testers had to say about the Salomon Mission RS12 102mm 120 flex boot:  "It fits wide in the lower, close and comfy through the throat..."

 

Or the Head Vector 120 (103mm 120 flex): "The Vector could go to the Medium category by virtue of its close wrap through the bottom of the cuff and the good-buddy-hug closure at the ankle and heel.  And yet the forefoot room is impressive.  And that's the way we like it here:  warm and roomy in the front, nice and tight at the ankle...."

 

And the Fischer Viron 125 (103mm 125 flex):  "While the 103mm forefoot is generous and well shaped"  [ok...are we listening?] "the retention through the midfoot, instep and ankle was snuggest in the category and nicely supportive of strong skiing movements..."

 

Are you willing to look at options?

Don't notice anyone being flippant, but no one seems to be reading my (silly long) post very carefully. It was founded in issues about a cabrio shell. I stated at the top that I chose a cabrio design because it fit my type of skiing, and that it had made a noticeable improvement in my technique. Not clear why this is "by association," given that I have used 2 piece boots since the 60's, studied various issues of 2 versus 3 pieces, took some recommendations from folks who ski far better than me, and found they were right. There's actually a lot of discussion about this on the web, you should go check it out. 

As far as your options, I'm sure these are nice boots. But again, they aren't 3 piece shells, for which I already laid out a rationale, and moreover, all they seem to have in common is a wide forefoot and "snuggest in the category" (eg, wider boots category) heels. What you appear to be ignoring is that every single manufacturer makes it explicitly clear that a narrow last, typically 95-98, is that associated with their highest performance boots. (This is true for both 2 and 3 piece shells.) The models you cite are not considered highest performance boots. Not saying that they're not fine boots, just that the industry, among other oddities, has decided that expert skiers need to have narrow feet. Of course, that's so the ankle and heel will stay put, which is a particular issue in 2 piece designs. 

So you imply I'm being narrow minded, (am I willing to look at options?) when ironically I'm arguing that I shouldn't have to look at options that have reduced performance parameters for my type of skiing. Obviously I'll have to look at options, because what works best on the slope for me doesn't fit. So I have to adapt to the boots. Once again, why? 

It's interesting, actually, that the major response so far has been to defend the boot industry. Never realized so many Epic members were so happy with their boots. Poor Jim and Phil won't have any customers... 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghost 

Why aren't there boot shells for us folk with narrow heels and wide toes?  It's a conspiracy, brought about by jealousy; the normal-footed folks realize that we are the best athletes and they are big clumsy oxen with hoofs, so they take out their frustration and try to even the field by not allowing us proper kit. 

 Ka ching! 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Old School SL 

Oh to have a skinny 106 mm forefoot!  I have a classic case of Pacific Gorillafoot from a childhood of bare feet on beaches. The result is a foot length of 245mm with a forefoot width of 120 mm! ...I hold out no hope of boot design changing to reflect mutant feet like mine but getting just a little closer would be nice! I must leave now--my bone spurs are playing up !

 Seriously, one point all of you are reinforcing nicely is that those of us with narrow heels and wide forefoot are not mutants, or weirdos who should shut up and suck it up. I'd guestimate we represent 1/4 to 1/3 of all feet in America and wetter points west. And if Ghost's involved, some of us actually know how to ski. So if Euro makers aren't responding to us except by making less efficient "comfort" or "all day" or "sport" shells, it seems to show we're a captive audience and they know they have us. Or at least those of us who are willing to keep skiing.

My underlying point is illustrated by the running shoe debacle: We all know, if we read the news over the past 5 years, that apparently the entire running shoe industry was kick-started by Phil Knight having a conversation with the Oregon running coach, who speculated that his runners could be more efficient if they could become heel strikers. Knight thought, aha! a thick-soled, elevated heel might actually allow heels to take this punishment, and as a bonus, store energy like a spring that could be recycled the next stride. The modern running shoe was born. Knight developed the most well- engineered shoes in the world, and they did indeed send more energy to the next stride.

Now I get the argument here, because I was a decent cross country runner back when we wore racing flats all the time, and when you went downhill, you could win races by deliberately over-striding and going into a heel strike. Only we only did it on a fraction of the course, and we realized it was a weird way to run. But after Knight's new technology, everyone "realized" that not only did they risk injury by running in the older thin soled flats, but that they might well suffer from overpronation. In which case they needed motion control designs. So soles became thicker and more rigid.Put another way, we totally altered the way we ran to accommodate the technology. Which in turn required more and more biological accommodation. I even drank the Kool Aid; I began to assume I must be an overpronator and started buying motion control midsoles, until one day a track coach I knew watched me run and said, here, let me get a camera. Hmmm. The tape showed that I was not only not pronating much (even with flat arches), I was not a heel striker. 

Only problem with all this, of course, was that there were no epidemiological studies to back up any of Knight's engineering assumptions. As we now know, recent empirical testing has shown that a) if anything, thick soles and elevated heels increase the risk of injury, they do not prevent it, because they subvert the foot's natural movements during impact, b) humans are by nature forefoot strikers and in that position seldom overpronate, regardless of their arch,  c) forefoot strikes are less problematic to knees and hips, and d) we may not even require cushioned shoes at all to run in. Hell, we may not require shoes, period. 

Now, there are bunches of people with thick soled MC's who are very defensive about their shoes, and the "naturalness" of their heel strikes. Ironically, they may have a point. An orthopedist I know thinks that if you've changed your stride over the years to accommodate traditional running shoes, you may risk worse injury by giving them up. The ultimate IBM adaptation to technology; you can't go back. 

So of course, the hottest new thing in running shoes are the "minimalist" designs that have thin, soft soles that squish on impact. Or articulated toes that can (gasp) spread at impact. And guess who's in the lead with this? Nike. 

Do you sense a pattern here? At least in the running shoe industry, the technology reflected a definable theoretical assumption, even if it had bad outcomes for real people who adapted their feet to it. And it made a number of companies buttloads of money, waaay more than ski industries can even dream about. Moreover, Nike et al. are busy responding to the falsification of their basic assumptions by smiling and saying, " What size of our new minimalist shoe do you want?" 

But boot makers are just puttering along with undefined assumptions based on old leather hiking boots. Cannot make sense of this. 
 

I knew we'd get to underwear. While we're on it, what's up with the one's that have little white buttons for the slit? Good luck with that 1:53 am Sunday as you're trying to get business finished and stagger back to last call. 

As far as the Dodge, still feel like it's the Deer Valley of boots. Carbon weave is sexy, but what's revolutionary exactly? Still a 2 piece with comparatively high pivot and second buckle. Still needs to be blown or punched for individual fit. Still uses its narrowest last for the highest performance version. Must be missing something. Oh yeah, it's carbon composite. If we'll pay an extra $100,000 for an Audi with 20% of that stuff, Dodge boots must be even better.

Put another way, materials count, and it's good someone is experimenting. But basic design counts more. And I've never had anyone explain to me why it has to be in an upper and lower piece with a metal hinge, given that the foot does not move anything like that way when it's loaded and flexing. The talus, for instance, slides forward and first down, then up, and a bit laterally, over the saddle of the navicular. This as the arch is shifting from unloaded supination to fully loaded pronation, and the load is moving along the outside of the foot and back in across the base of the metatarsals. And nowadays, we are told that enabling small foot movements within the boot is central to modern technique. So what do we see as an "engineering response?" A simple hinge, with forward pressure provided by your shin trying to split two plastic halves apart? Basically, what leather boots in 1500 a.d. did, but there the leather itself did the hinging. Now that's sophisticated!  Is it possible that this is not anything like what a competent engineer could do with a blank sheet, but rather what happens when handed a leather boot and told, "make it better at transmitting force to the edge. But keep your costs under control, and it has to look like what people are used to seeing." 

IMO the only boots that come close to the "revolutionary" tag are the Fischer Vacuums, and I think the jury's still out on that. Yes, they probably end up fitting individual feet better than any other boot, but they remain after fitting a very traditional design. And I've seen a few posts from folks suggesting that the vacuum system's capabilities are not unlimited. People still can need to be redone, heels may still need extra padding for greater squeeze during molding. But to be fair, it's a first year technology. Could address a lot of my issues if they moved beyond fit and addressed function. We'll see about that one.

Prediction: If there is a new wave of boot innovation, it will not come from Euro boot makers. It will come from smaller boarder boot makers. Who will say, "hmmm. We can take a snowboard boot, make a rigid external frame and base, and sell it to younger freeriders." (In fact, saw a pic of something like this, probably lame version for geriatric beginners.) But in a generation, Epic will be musing over how it was to actually wear these plastic fantastic contraptions and pretend they helped your skiing. Kinda like Rossi Smash's thread on Olins... 

I call this my Burton Grand Unification Theory of Skiing. Or how once again, snowboarders - and it pains me to admit this - will pull skiing, kicking and screaming, into the current century. This time boots and bindings instead of skis. Which they already took care of.