Custom footbeds, take 'em out?

[Steve]

I wonder if barefoot/minimalist insoles would be even better. They are completely flat.
We'll see. It's pain I'm concerned about. The custom footbeds also raise my heel, which adds pressure to the tails. A more flat footbed would put me more forward.

 

[Uncle-A]

I wonder if barefoot/minimalist insoles would be even better. They are completely flat.
We'll see. It's pain I'm concerned about. The custom footbeds also raise my heel, which adds pressure to the tails. A more flat footbed would put me more forward.

Wouldn't a raised heel put you leaning forward and a flat one allow you to stand straighter and put more pressure on the tails?

 

[Steve]

It's like canting. If you put a wedge under the right of your foot, you would think that that would tilt you to the left and apply more pressure to the left side, but in reality what happens is that your body stays in the same position, thus that wedge fills and closes the gap on the right side, applying more pressure to the right. Bootfitters have always had a hard time explaining this.

My understanding and felling when I stand on a heel lift is that it increases pressure to the heel.

 

[Steve]

Try this: put a book on the floor and stand on it on your heel.

Do you feel more pressure under the toes now? I don't. My heel feels the pressure. It doesn't tilt me forward.

 

[Steve]

Many people use gas pedals to get forward. They put lifters on the bottom of the boot under the toe or under the toe piece of the binding.

 

[Mike King]

Might someone sort out the effect of boot canting versus footbeds for me? My understanding of canting is to put the ankle in a neutral position -- e.g. to deal with pronation/suppination. If that's the case, might get rid of the footbed then allow the foot to better rely on the arches of the feet rather than taking the arches out of the equation?

One of our instructors, a guy who was just off of the cut for the demo team in 2016, is now being trained by a WC coach. The coach took his footbeds and ground them down, taking most of the support out of the. Josh Fogg, a current demo team member, talked with me briefly last week about his belief that some of the issue that older instructors have in passing level 3 is due to loss of foot strength. Both of these, coupled with Tom Gellie's stuff, have me also wondering if I need to lose the very supportive footbeds I have in my boots.

So, might someone with more boot fitting expertise comment on the role of canting versus footbeds?

 

[Mike King]

Many people use gas pedals to get forward. They put lifters on the bottom of the boot under the toe or under the toe piece of the binding.

For me, adding a gas pedal allowed me to move back and get off of the front of the boot.

 

[Uncle-A]

Try this: put a book on the floor and stand on it on your heel.

Do you feel more pressure under the toes now? I don't. My heel feels the pressure. It doesn't tilt me forward.

That is true if the block is equal height all around, but most foots beds are more of an incline plain or wedge. That does push you forward and put pressure on the ball of your foot. It will also pull your toes back away from the front of the boot.

 

[Steve]

The reason I posted this thread in this forum is with the hopes that a bootfitter or two or three would chime in. Seems like SkiTalk has lost a lot of its' expert posters not only in the instructor forum.

 

[Noodler]

That is true if the block is equal height all around, but most foots beds are more of an incline plain or wedge. That does push you forward and put pressure on the ball of your foot. It will also pull your toes back away from the front of the boot.

This isn't the complete story regarding what happens as you continue up the "stack" for the rest of your body parts. Your upper body's response to being pitched forward down below is to settle further rearward to re-establish vertical balance. This is not good for skiing, as it actually does exactly opposite of what we need to maintain centered pressure over the ski (equal access to the tips and tails).

 

[LiquidFeet]

I'm not hearing anybody in this thread talking about spending time wearing high heels. I have.

The shoe on the left is an extreme case, but it makes the point. In shoes with high heels, almost all the pressure from body weight is sent to the ball-of-foot. I can testify to this from experience. Little weight is left under the heel, despite the position of the tibia just above the front of the calcaneus. The exaggeration of such a high heel makes the point. Pressure is driven forward with heel lift, and probably backward with toe lift. Posture above is consequently altered all the way to the head.

...Remember earth shoes in the 70s? They featured the heel lower than the toe, and their marketing made big promises about posture and comfort and energy expenditure and so forth. I wore clogs to work for a number of years that had the heels lower than the toes. I stood and walked all day in that job, rarely sitting. My foot pain from plantar fasciitis disappeared because that delta stretched the fascia and the achilles tendon. Did those shoes direct most of my body weight to the heel? Probably.

 

[cantunamunch]

The reason I posted this thread in this forum is with the hopes that a bootfitter or two or three would chime in. Seems like SkiTalk has lost a lot of its' expert posters not only in the instructor forum.

Or there's just too much of a pileup of loosely related concepts and notions in this thread for anyone remotely busy at this time of year to unpack .

Seriously, everyone posting in this thread should sign up for the online Masterfit U classes - assuming they happen. Much simpler, and a much more consistent set of starting assumptions

 

[Steve]

There is a movement in sports towards barefooted, minimalist and other flat foot positions. Runners, skiers and others. I'm going to transition to and try more and more of this.

I am not sure however that the footbeds really raise my heel anyway, it's just very interesting what they do. They direct more pressure to the arches, so in that regards it's moving some pressure forward, as without them the pressure is closer to the heels when I stand flat on the ground barefooted.

So it comes down to, do I want to have that natural pressure under my arches, or do I want to create that when I want it, but not have it as the "default" under my feet.

We'll see.

 

[graham418]

After many years of no footbeds, and painfully tight boots to keep my feet from squirming, an actual qualified boot fitter suggested that I do something completely different. Go with a slightly wider boot, and a custom footbed. With my foot cradled securely, it doesn't need to squeeze my foot to keep it from moving. I'm never going back!

 

[Steve]

Did your heel move, or was it the rest of your foot that you didn't like being able to move?

 

[Henry]

The arches of the foot need to flex...a bit...as the weight distribution on the foot changes. A semi-rigid footbed allows for this. The last rigid footbed I had felt like I had a billiard ball under my (A-C) arch. I can see how some skiers may ski better without the billiard ball feel.

Comments above have talked about a couple of different things. I need a posted semi-rigid footbed (has wedge shaped support with the high side on the inside) to correct my pronation. That's ankle alignment. Cants under the boot soles or bindings are leg alignment to position the knee over the center of the foot. Fortunately we haven't gotten into cuff alignment to match the cuff to the curvature of the lower leg.

The material that forms the shell of the footbed is available in several flex specs. The footbed maker or bootfitter selects the flex or rigidity they want.

Every foot is different. I need different posting under my right than my left foot.

 

[Steve]

OK, more experimentation, not on snow, but comparing the stock footbeds, which are practically flat with my posted orthotics. One in each foot.

Lateral movements, the orthotics make for a quicker, more positive response, but move the pressure higher up the boot, sides of the boots. No orthotics, felt more like I was accessing the edge from lower down.

Fore/Aft movements, the stock footbeds allow for more forward movement. If I lean forward the foot with the stock footbed moves more to the ball, the heel comes up the foot with the orthotic doesn't. I switched to both sides and confirmed that this happened.

It seems the custom orthotic keeps me planted. As much as I lean forward the heel stays weighted. In the fore/aft that could result in making harder to get forward. Or it could allow me to get too far forward.

Time will tell.

 

[razie]

It's a very vast subject and suffice it to say that footbed making, although in theory a science, is in reality mostly an art, thus the result is as good as the artist!

I have, I don't know 6-8, half of them custom, half modified? That's on top of the changes done to some of the boot boards and heel wedges and whatnots! The ones I keep returning to are the originals that came with the Head RS, definitely better after some extra posting done in CO!

However.

There are feet and there are feet.

Most feet need posting but some feet are sold custom footbeds that just take up volume and impair movement. In fact, my first one or two pairs of custom footbeds are like that and if I were to guess, based on that very small sample, so are most!

The problem is those customs are not always sold in relation to the boots you're buying sometimes. And their volume calculation does not always take into account leaving some room for proper foot deformations.

You upgrade your 400$ boots and of course you keep your 150$ customs and suddenly you're cramped and although you have the same support, you can't use your feet worth a damn (let's disregard for now the fact that many still think the feet do nothing and there is a footbed conspiracy)

So from that point of view, Tom's certainly right to suspect that some are better off without their customs. Definitely worth a try with the original stubbies or even simple sport soles, had good results with superfeet carbon (the thin ones).

This is all tying itself back to the boot fitting: if the boot's tight or too large in the wrong sports, it won't matter much anyways.

 

[razie]

A lot of good observations @Steve - just some thoughts.

Bare footed? Yah, but in ski boots you're stuck without much range of motion. You'll never be able to let your feet really loose to do their thing. You need to strike a balance between enough room to let the foot deform and do its thing and not too large so you can apply torque to the boots.

Also, you're normally looking for proprioception and sensory perception, so a more properly supported foot equals more sensory area and more proprioception.

Heel wedges won't get one forward. They're to either open the ankle a bit more (offer more range of motion for limited ankle ROM) or to restore your balance and compensate for weird body posture on a given ski/binding deltas etc if you listen to Tom and I think Tom's right on this one.

Gas pedal doesn't really get one forward. It just again puts some in a more balanced position and/or allows one to get more forward pressure from a more back position if you want. It's all related to body shape and balance.

The skier should be in neutral balance with a large range of motion fore/aft, that's the crux of it - that's the goal of fore/aft setup, imho.

 

[Steve]

Tom uses completely flat insoles over carbon fibre sheets. No heel cup, no arch support or shape.