How To Stop Snowboard Boot Foot Pain & Find A Good Bootfitter

Today’s reader question:

I get really painful feet on my rear foot, mostly on the outer front edge of my feet? What’s causing this? Is it because my boots don’t fit properly?

It’s very, very likely that your foot pain is because your boots don’t properly fit your feet.

There’s a standard solution that I use for ANY snowboard foot/boot pain problem.

Find a good bootfitter

Painful feet while snowboarding is caused by your boots not fitting correctly. A bootfitter’s job is to make your boots fit correctly. Hence, you want to find a good bootfitter.

A good bootfitter is worth his weight in gold because they’ll be able to diagnose what is causing your feet to hurt and how to fix it.

How to find a good bootfitter:

There’s a big difference between a good bootfitter and a crappy one, so here’s the simple way to find a good bootfitter.

The easiest way to find a good bootfitter is to ask around town. If you don’t know anyone in town I suggest going into a snowboard shop and asking who the top bootfitters in town are.

This is common knowledge to most locals and if you’re in a ski town then you can expect that there’s going to be at least one guy that everyone respects and recommends for his kickass bootfitting skills.

Interestingly enough you’ll often find the best bootfitters working in ski shops instead of snowboard shops, due to the complexity of fitting hard shell ski boots.

What you need to be prepared for:

You should be ready to pay a little to get your boots fixed. While the solution may be something cheap, such as heat molding or j-bars to hold your ankle in place, other solutions can be more pricy such as custom footbeds.

It’s hard to say how much it’ll cost to fix your foot pain problems until they’ve had a look at your problem. However, I do think if snowboarding is something you’re serious about getting into then getting your boots to fit is a cost you’re going to have to pay.

Also be ready to try more than one solution. It can sometimes take a few trips and adjustments to get things tweaked and figured out.

Hope that answers your question.

- Jed

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