Your snowboard boots are by far the most important piece of equipment. Nothing will affect your riding as much as having boots that don’t fit your feet.
If your feet aren’t comfortable, you’re in for a bad day. Snowboarding is not fun when your feet are hurting the whole time.
So here’s how you pick boots that will work for you.
1) A tight fit is a good fit
The biggest mistake that most people make is buying boots that fit well at first but won’t fit you later.
Boots expand. After a solid week or so of riding, the padding in your boots will shrink about 1/2 a size to 1 size. You always want to buy boots that feel like they may be a little too tight at first.
How tight do I want to go?
Stand up in them as if you were riding a snowboard, if your toes are curling, you’ve gone too small. You want them to feel pretty tight with pressure against the front of your toes, but you don’t want them so tight that your toes are curling.
You’ll typically end up with boots anywhere from 1/2 size to 2 sizes smaller than your regular shoe size. Also, make sure you wear your snowboard socks while trying boots on.
2) No pressure points
Make sure you keep the boots on for a good 5-10 minutes in the shop. You want an overall tight fit, but if any parts of your foot are getting pushed too hard, that’s called a pressure point and you don’t want that.
You can sometimes fix this by heat molding the boot, but they won’t heat mold the boots until you buy them first. This can be bad because if the heat mold doesn’t fix your problem, you’ll be stuck with painful boots.
3) Boot flex / stiffness
There’s no set rule saying that you have to use stiff boots for freeriding or soft boots for freestyle, go with whatever you feel the most comfortable riding with.
Here are the benefits of both:
- Stiff – More impact protection for your ankle, much better response and feel while riding
- Soft / Flexible – Better ability to tweak and move your ankle for tricks and small adjustments, a more relaxed / cushy feel
Most people start out with something mid range, about a 5 to 6 out of 10. As you become more experienced, you’ll discover what kind of flex you prefer.
Just be aware that if you have ankle problems, you’ll probably want a really stiff boot to protect your ankles.
4) Foot width
Different boot companies make boots that fit best for different foot widths. You can narrow down your choices of boots by selecting brands that make boots aimed at your foot width.
How do I figure out my foot width?
The easiest way is to go into any decent snowboard or shoe store and ask them to measure your foot. They’ve got a fancy contraption called a ‘Brannock Device’ that will tell you how wide your feet are.
How do I know which brands are best for which foot widths?
The simplest way is to ask the shop’s bootfitter about this. Some shop employees will not know which brands are best for which widths, but any good bootfitter will have a good knowledge of boot widths. It’s their job after all 😉
5) Try on as many boots as you can
I said already that boots are your most vital piece of equipment. So please don’t just go into a shop and try on 1 boot before you buy it and go home. That’s a recipe of disaster. You should take a day or two of trying on lots of boots before you pick a pair.
You don’t know exactly what boot may be the best fit for you until you’ve tried it on. Even if you’ve found a decent fit, give the other boots in the shop a go. The only exception to this rule is if a boot brand is obviously too narrow for you.
Example – I can’t wear Nike boots because I have wide feet and all their boots are narrow.
It doesn’t cost you anything to try on different boots and it’s definitely worth the effort to find boots that let you ride comfortably all day.
One final piece of advice
Please don’t buy boots over the internet unless you’ve tried them on first and you know that they’ll fit for sure. Never go online and buy boots just because “my friend wears this and our feet are similar.”
That’s just asking for painful boots that won’t fit you quite right. Always, always, always try on your boots first.
ps – I know I didn’t cover custom footbeds and heat molding. That’ll be in a future blog covering boot adjustments and boot fitting 😉