Survey: Heel blisters and stride technique

[sb]

The only boot that caused me blisters, both heels, are the Scarpa T4 tele boots. I have a “Scarpa” foot.

Fixed the problem by not ever wearing them again.

Intuition liners, molded, in all my boots.

Use the shuffle/drag method as much as possible.

Skiing and touring for over 40 years. Alpine, AT and tele.

Also use Leukotape for PF when hiking but not when skiing/touring.

[Fred Pabst]

Everyone's stride is a little different, but I always thought that someone that picks the ski off the snow is doing it wrong. I remember watching Reudi at the Durrand Glacier Hut. He had this crazy full on lower body rotation thing going on. He would turn his hips in a way that let his stride get as long as possible. Go ahead and try to keep up with him!!

As for blister prevention, I've been using ladies knee high socks, yes pantyhose, under ski socks. Read that some where's a hundred years ago and it works great.

I also like to limit use of the walk mode switch unless on a long flat approach say. Once up high in the goods, upper buckles are medium snugged and cuff locked. This keeps the heel seated. YMMV.

Duct tape will work, but can ruin a good pair of socks.

[ski_the_fraulein]

I struggle with blisters. Always on the inside of the heel on the upper half closer to Achilles.

I tour 20-30% of my days each season. Like others, I take the first few walks expecting them. I put on mole skin or bunion pads to help minimize and encourage some callus of the skin in the area.

I have the Fischer Ranger Free hybrid which could be part of it. I have their stock liner which was molded/fit for me, but I usually have the cuff quite loose when walking up. I might change that and try to keep the cuff tighter to see if that helps.

As for gate - I think I used to be more of a toe pusher (former hockey player) but more recently changed to a “stand on one leg, slide other leg with no weight, stand up on new forward leg, slide unweighted leg, repeat…. Thoughts on how that compares to the strides above? Same? Could I be doing it wrong? To be honest both produced blisters - hence my thought on tightening the cuff… or jettisoning the boots altogether. Previous Mastrales weren’t as bad but they don’t give me the downhill, race boot support I prefer…


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[MagnificentUnicorn]

Shuffling short strides, use your hip flexors. No blisters.

Toe pushing, really ball of foot, is reserved for Nordic gear with flexible soled boots.


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[gregL]

Foot dragger here, seldom have blister issues, though there have been a couple boots in the last 25 years that were problems (notably a Garmont MegaRide back in the day). Also shorter strides and using your lifters properly is good practice. At the first sign of a "hot spot" it saves the day to stop and apply a Compeed blister plaster . . .

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...e?ie=UTF8&th=1

[Marshal Olson]

Thanks for the replies from those that did.

FYI, as I said, I have never had hot spots and I can fix them whenever clients have them. I’m not looking for tips.

Purely looking for correlation between hotspots and people who push off their toes, therefore putting a bunch of force through their heels and either getting heel lift and blisters, or increased Pressure and hot spots.

gotcha - sorry to miss-understand.

i guess my question/response is why limit yourself to a single stride?

long road grade approach? Xc kick and glide.

steep slippery refrozen? Heel shuffle

blown out kick turn? Toe weight on uphill ski for balance and heel shuffle the downhill ski to prevent slipping.

very interesting topic, sorry to derail

[I've seen black diamonds!]

I don't get blisters. I don't lift my skis up unless I need to. My boots are snug.

I did get blisters when I had some kleenex-box shaped Scarpas 20 years ago (Lasers?). Fixed that by adding material around the heel in the liners. The instep buckle did a pretty good job holding my heel down, but my heel would make more contact on side, which would eventually cause problems.

[ASmileyFace]

I don't get blisters. I don't lift my skis up unless I need to. My boots are snug..

Second this. Only got one blister ever in a blown out pair of old scarpa freedoms at the tail end of a 20 mile day. That had more to do with the pool of sweat I was walking in more than anything else.

[GoldenBC]

gotcha - sorry to miss-understand.

i guess my question/response is why limit yourself to a single stride?

long road grade approach? Xc kick and glide.

steep slippery refrozen? Heel shuffle

blown out kick turn? Toe weight on uphill ski for balance and heel shuffle the downhill ski to prevent slipping.

very interesting topic, sorry to derail

All good! I agree with using different techniques for specific, short sections, however that’s not how blisters happen. I’m talking about the repetitive, standard stride that you would use on your average piece of skin track.

I barely xc so I’m not sure exactly what the xc stride is but I definitely push off on my toes when I classic xc.

Both techniques that I mention would keep your ski on the ground. I think everyone knows you don’t lift your ski.

The reason I think there is a connection between blisters and stride is that when you push off with the ball of your foot, you are literally pulling your heel up against (or out of) the heel pocket. If your heel pocket is loose, you will get movement and rubbing. If your heel pocket is tight, you will get pressure and tension (or micro movements). Socks are obviously a place where you can reduce friction.

It seems some ski boots are designed to allow a lot of heel movement , potentially for pushing off with the ball of the foot for a faster stride. I’d say Dynafit does this with their large heel pocket. They seem to want to hold the heel down by using a buckle to pull down/back on the top of the foot, rather than a cupping heel pocket. I know a few traverse oriented ski tourers that hate any sort of heel pocket/Achilles pinch mechanism to hold the foot down. They would rather have space there and extra padding at the front of the ankle.

Since we are all flexing sock choices, I ski in the Intuition fitting socks every day. Same pair for four years. Always touring.

[gregL]

It seems some ski boots are designed to allow a lot of heel movement , potentially for pushing off with the ball of the foot for a faster stride. I’d say Dynafit does this with their large heel pocket. They seem to want to hold the heel down by using a buckle to pull down/back on the top of the foot, rather than a cupping heel pocket. I know a few traverse oriented ski tourers that hate any sort of heel pocket/Achilles pinch mechanism to hold the foot down. They would rather have space there and extra padding at the front of the ankle.

I'd guess the reason most touring shells have a fairly roomy heel pocket is not for touring efficiency but rather the desire to fit all types of heels into one last. Same as the reasoning behind most of the new designs being "medium wide" and people with really narrow feet having no real good option in touring boots - they only intend to make one last, so they make one they think will fit the vast majority of feet. The reason they don't have sculpted heel contours in touring liners is weight; putting a healthy amount of foam around the Achilles like an alpine boot will certainly help heel retention, but will add 100-150 grams.

[Ville]

Very tight fit shells and intuition/palau tour wraps. Bootdoc electric heatsocks or their thin racing socks, I think both are compression socks. No blisters.

On the flats I do kick&glide like XC, in avarage up hill I keep skis on the ground and do drag the back ski up. Don't use heel lifters that much, I have very good ankle and hip mobility. With out heellifters I'll get extra 10-20cm on every step and save some energy. I do tour atleast 60 days per winter and have done it for last 10 years since I moved to place without lifts close by. During summer I walk in wading gear a lot for fly fishing. So assume my feets hate me and have developed very thick skin in all the places that have possibility to get blisters. I think that's also something that have a big affect. If one stays in office most of the time, body won't adapt so well to all the shit one makes it to do out of office [emoji16]



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[I've seen black diamonds!]

The cushion you get from those fancy blister pads are nice for when skin is really beat up, but If you catch hot spots early I think I piece of duct tape applied directly to the (dry) skin is better. Duct tape is easier to apply, adheres extremely well, and pretty much eliminates all friction. Plus you can cut it to size/shape. I don't see any real purpose for mole skin unless that is all you have.

[Marshal Olson]

Agree, in my experience, moleskin is best for making donuts to relieve pressure on tender bone spurs.

[Cocximus]

I get blisters on my heels and go through at least one pair of dissent socks every year. If I focus and consciously "sink in my heels" there's less rubbing but I feel it slows me down. I wonder if it's a matter of practice or there's a difference in speed and efficiency between the two strides.

Dang. While it felt annoying at first, I focused on technique rather than go. No more blisters, and my liners and socks are in way better shape. Thanks.

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[XXX-er]

The cushion you get from those fancy blister pads are nice for when skin is really beat up, but If you catch hot spots early I think I piece of duct tape applied directly to the (dry) skin is better. Duct tape is easier to apply, adheres extremely well, and pretty much eliminates all friction. Plus you can cut it to size/shape. I don't see any real purpose for mole skin unless that is all you have.

this ^^ 1 layer only of ductape carefully/ smoothly applied on dry feet pre-trip so there are no creases and round off the edges, leave it on all weekend, also wear your socks to bed with the ductape under otherwise the glue will bleed onto your bed sheets

you don't really need any of that other stuff unless you failed to apply the hippy chrome BEFORE you left the house

The problem is you need to ditch anything that sez palau and buy the intuition liners, they stopped blisters IME

[EWG]

I always use athletic tape. The good sports stuff. Better adhesive than duct tape. Will very slowly come lose but after a few days you can reapply. Would recommend. And thin enough that it doesn’t change the fit of your shoes.

[Skeeze]

I’ve had a 100% success rate avoiding blisters with a combination of Leukotape cover roll stretch directly against skin on the heel bone spur and then standard Leukotape (basically athletic tape) on top of the thin cover roll stretch stuff. You have to be a little careful putting on your socks so as to not have the edges of the tape roll up, but once you get it right, it’ll stay for a few days and come off easily when you’re done with it.

The tape seems pricey but I’ve been using the same roll for years, and now the heel bone spurs are basically gone (switching away from the Hawx XTD also helped…)

[swissiphic]

While touring, do you drag your foot or push off with your toes?

Thinking about it, I'm probably draggin' my foot more often than pushing off with the toes...however, over the course of my 35+ years of ski touring, I've thrown in a lot of approach/deproach hiking, bootpacking up steep coolers, some technical scrambling, summer snow/firn snow hiking/french techniquing, etc.... where all the other techniques involved pushing off with the toes and torquing the foot at more odd angles. Definitely more than just shortened gait shuffling/sliding that I do while ski touring proper.


Have you ever had blisters or hot spots? How often? What liners do you use?

In the past few decades I'd say I've rarely to never had any real blister issues with my ski touring boots. I never tape my heels, just go hundo bareback in thin liner socks. I have kinda protruding heel bones with just a hint of spur, and definitely got/get blisters from hiking in certain hiking boots when moving for longer durations. Ski touring shells that I would have gone through over that time span were Dynafit tourlite 4s, Dynafit all terrain, Garmont cosmos, Garmont megaride, Garmont axon, Garmont delirium, Scarpa maestrale o.g., Dynafit mercury, Dynafit Vulcan, Dynafit hoji free 110, Dynafit hoji, Tecnica zero g tour pro. I recall in the earliest Dynafits with absolutely atrocious stock liners, i had issues with heel bone smashing into heel pocket plastic that caused excruciating bursitis pain on my left heel; but even then there were no blisters. After switching to Intuition liners in the era of my Dynafit all terrain boots and forward, I never experienced that again. I guess going with the thickest foam available for every model I purchased, helped provide both the correct shape of heel pocket and adequate cushioning to prevent bursitis re injury. I've been running the Intuition high volume luxury liners since they appeared on the option block. Before then, I can't remember the model names but i went through a few pairs for sure.

I wore the shit outta my Intuitions and got hundreds of thousands of vertical feet outta each pair. One trick to increase longetivity was cut out all the liner material in the heel pocket area after wear holes and fraying would begin from wearing out....the holes in the fabric would cause some bunching and this ridge would create hot spots, but, realizing what's happening and addressing the issue immediately prevented future blistering. The liners were good for years after the mod.

'Nuther thing is, I've used waffer thin liner socks for eons...dunno if this helps in the 'not getting blisters' department, but they seem to work for me, and, damn are they durable...i'm getting decades of use out of em and though they've lost some elasticity, they haven't worn through anywhere...and I was probably averaging 60 to 80 ski touring days a year since the late 90's.

Just occured to me... my ski touring stride is pretty short compared to others, which works for me cause I typically prefer a steep skin track with short, rest stepping strides (if snow conditions/terrain, etc..allow for it) With the thick, stiff Intuition high volume luxury liners, I biomechanically can't flex the boot rearward enough to capitalize on it's full rear ROM potential...thinking about it, this may cause less flexing and maybe downward pressure micro bunching of the liner foam towards the top of the heel....wonder if this contributes to less blister potential or not?