Ski boot fitter Tom Gellie explains why boots with vertically angled front cuffs cause pain for skiers with bowed legs. The asymmetrical gap forces the leg to travel too far on one side while the cuff pushes the knee inward on the other, creating pressure points that padding cannot fix. The solution is a boot whose cuff angle matches the skier's natural leg angle.
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Okay, so standing even in the boots, there's two problems that you need to address with these ones. So if you flex, so just lightly touch the front, the first one is your leg is sitting this side of the cuff. So the cuffs are angled too vertical for your bowed lower leg. So you want to have the same amount of space here as here. So you can see Don't move your leg, you relax. You relax. Yeah. There's a lot bigger space, almost double to triple the space here to there. So the boot will push your knee in. This side, same thing. Okay. Heaps of space here, so your leg has to move really far before it hits the cuff. This side, not very far. Okay. So you want to be in the middle. The next thing is boots, because they're very upright. They're kind of an intermediate beginner boot. Your leg is naturally coming up at the angle represented by my finger, and you'll see it in the video. But the cuff is coming up at this angle. So what happens is you end up with a pressure point right there. For 2 years. For 2 years. Okay, very sore. Yeah, and you've done things with the liner. Shops have done things with the liner here to try and pad it. But that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that— I'm a professional soccer teacher. Well, it's just some people just don't know. But the problem is the cuff is vertical at the front. We're not even talking about the back. The back actually looks alright. The front is like this and your leg is like this. So they meet at a point right there. And where's your pain? You can see the mark. Yeah, there. And where's that? Right in line. Yeah, in there. So you need a boot that angles at the, at the front of the cuff this way to match the shape of your leg, so the pressure is even down the whole front of the leg. So that's on both.
