Still Aching feet

Plantar fasciitis is generally worse when you first walk on it - particularly after you restart activity after a rest and eases (at least to an extent as you get going). So what you've described isn't typical for that.

Ski boots surround the foot in a pretty rigid structure & if they don't suit your feet (and feet come in a variety of shapes) they may well put pressure & loads on parts of the feet that are not accustomed to it which is a recipe for pain.

Remember our feet are not intended to wear shoes let alone ski boots. However bare feet in ski bindings isn't an option so the key thing is a skilled boot fitter who will select the right boot for your feet and modify it to fit you better. I fear some boot fitters work on the theory that that is required require is to fit moulded footbeds with arch supports. Ultimately these can have the effect of putting loads onto parts of the feet that were not designed or accustomed to taking those loads.

The right boots properly fitted shouldn't hurt.

andymol2 wrote:Plantar fasciitis is generally worse when you first walk on it - particularly after you restart activity after a rest and eases (at least to an extent as you get going). So what you've described isn't typical for that.

That may be correct. When I had it I could not walk down the stairs in the morning I was in agony. However, I also used to experience pain during day whilst not resting. I also experienced pain whilst skiing. I am almost certain they are linked, as soon as the pain went away post steroid injection the pain in ski boots went too.

Consequently I would argue that it may be linked...

I had this problem and solved it. It was so painful I couldn't ski for more than an hour.

Pain in the arch is usually due to the fact that you are applying too much pressure on the inner ball your foot, in other words, pushing the front tips of your feet downwards. To be on the front of your skis you should ideally be resting on the front tongue of your boots, feeling the pressure between your boots and your shins.

This will take some pain away but in order to be totally comfortable you should get some customized insoles and you may need to even do some modifications yourself.

Many ski rental shops will be able to customize your insoles. If your problem is what I described above, you should get insoles with quite a lot of pressure on your arch. As I said, the pain comes from too much pressure on the front of the foot which is pulling on the ligaments in the arch. If you increase the pressure in the middle of the foot you should be fine.

If this helps but you still feel a slight amount of pain, take your insoles out and scrape away some plastic on the bottom of the insoles under the inner ball of the foot to increase even more the pressure in the middle.

This is what I did 8 years ago and haven't had a problem since.

Hope this helps,
Peter

www.how-to-ski.org

Hi Chrissy, I had loads of problems when I first began skiing, terrible pain and burning feet after less than a hour, firstly with hire boots on second trip I decided the solution was own boots but it did not improve if anything was worse as a newbie I was unaware of how boots should be sized fitted and think I was given a very bad service (thanks for nothing S and R), this ended up worse than the hire boots, I had some adjustments made in resort at Selva which helped a little but was advised that I had the wrong boots for my feet (they are a bit strange(my feet not the boots)). After a lot of research I visited solutions for feet - http://www.solutions4feet.com/contact.php they took over 2 hours to fit new boots, custom footbeds etc and although (as advised by S4F) I will never ski pain free they are now bearable to ski in for a few hours at a time. So on my experience you sometimes have to accept that if you don't have British standard feet you may have some pain but a good boot fitter can minimise this to an acceptable level.