Custom Injection Foam Liners (Comformable)

A snowHead

I'll set the scene...

I learnt to ski in 2000 and have tried to get between 10 days and couple of weeks every year since. Some years I've failed miserably, although I tended to take private lessons every holiday for the first few years until about 04. I like to think I have reasonable natural balance and was reasonably sporty before I hit my 30s! I have also been lucky enough to get some decent race training (including from Konrad Bartelski, who was fairly good wink

). All in all, despite probably only having about 12-15 weeks I think I'm a perfectly reasonable skier on-piste and am starting to find my feet in powder as well.

For me (and, from what I hear, for most), the biggest improvement to my skiing came when I bought my own boots. Getting used to how they feel was the biggest plus. The comfort, the reassurance of knowing they'll fit and work - all great stuff. Unfortunately, the first pair of boots were too big (poor bootfitter in Verbier) so I had to buy a new pair within a few years - very annoying! I ended up with a pair of women's boots (despite being a guy) as they fitted best... Salomon X-Wave 8s. Not stiff boots at all (I came from Technica Icon Race which were totally unsuitable for my level as well as being too big!) but they fitted my foot shape very well and I enjoyed the lack of stiffness as it allowed me to get over the tips of my skis so much more easily.

I think I bought them back in 05, maybe 06, from a decent shop in Edinburgh. I ensured I had custom footbeds made at the same time as I have flat feet. I thought that would be the end of my boot purchases for a while!

But, when skiing with a friend (amazing skier) who had custom foam liners, I started to wonder about these innovations... and, instead of getting lessons in Courchevel I decided to pay to have full foam inner fitted.

WOW!!! What a difference! I went to Jean Blanc Sports in 1850 (near La Croisette) and had a chat to them about the process. A few options were available - basic Conformables (i.e. without foam tongue) for E200, full Comformables (inc. tongue) for E270 plus the option of new footbeds for anything from about E50 to E100. I was advised I would need new footbeds (my old ones were actually too short - something I must admit noticing for a while) so opted for the "thin" model at E70. All-in for E340, which I think was reasonable value.

The process: you remove your socks and they sort you out with footbeds. Usual process involving the vacuum machine. Then they add a few pads to the sensitive / prominent parts of your feet. Where they apply the pads depends on your feet. I had to have some on the bridge of my foot as I was unsually prominent here (important as veins apparently run near this area, so get it too tight and you lose bloodflow to your toes, hence cold toes!). You are then given toe pads to wear around both sets of toes - to give you a bit more wiggle room. You then put your socks back on (carefully) and they wrap your feet in special plastic bags to protect your socks from the pretty nasty foam. The foam liners (sans foam) are then put into your shells with new footbeds, with various tubes attached and you slip your plastic-wrapped feet into your boots.

You then have to stand on a special platform, tilted backwards (looks like a very mini treadmill) while they get the foam ready. It's a two-compound mix which destroys clothing if you get it wrong, so make sure you go to a decent fitter! They eventually warn you and attach the foam bottle to some of the pipes. You're instructed not to lift your heel under ANY circumstances, but have to do a bit of a latin dance to try to move the foam around as it expands out of the bottle. Oh, and the feeling? A bit lit having someone run over your foot with a truck and park it there! Unbelievable pressure for about 45 seconds...

Eventually, when the foam has made its way around the whole liner (and starts coming out of the exit tubes) they release the pressure by removing the foam bottle. They repeat with the other boot and then do the tongues. All in all, fitting seems to take anything between an hour and a half and probably 2.5 hrs, depending on how busy they are and what kind of liner/footbed combo you go for.

After injecting, you then have to walk about for a good ten minutes as the foam continues to expand and "settle". After this, I was instructed to take the boots home and leave them off until the following morning. I was warned it may be I need to come back to get the boots tweaked, and sure enough, there was a tiny part of one tongue which was slightly uncomfortable so he trimmed the foam back inside the liner the following day.

BUT... WOW! It genuinely felt like I was wearing a glove for my feet the first morning I put them on. I could feel the boot touching every single part of both feet - with equal pressure everywhere. The best way of describing it is that putting on your boot was like dipping your foot into a bath - you feel the water touching all of your foot in the same way the boot is just a perfect fit. As soon as your start skiing, you can feel your skis - not your boots, but your actual skis and the snow under them! Awesome...

I would liken it to cars. I take my wife's car out (a French family hatchback) and you drive it, but everything feels somewhat distant, remote and "interfaced". You don't have much confidence going around tight, twisty roads because of that one-step-removed feeling. Then I take my pride and joy out (a German, rear-engined car that might be described as "sporty") and you can feel everything. Through the steering wheel, through your seat, even. It's not a raucous ride - even though you feel the road surface, it's not uncomfortable, just "there". As you enter a corner, you can feel how much grip you have at the front, at the back and the balance of the car front-to-back. You can push the limits further, because you know where they are.

I have to say, these new boot liners are the second best thing to ever happen to my skiing (after buying my own boots). After getting the slight imperfection sorted, they are more comfortable when skiing than any other boots I've worn. I tend to need to unclip them on lifts because they are VERY tight (and the liners are pretty thin). But that just involved lifting two or three of the clips on each boot, rather than actually adjusting them. Off the lifts, push the clips back down (which is easy as they're are just on the second notch) and I'm off.

I would recommend having these liners to anyone who wants to improve their skiing and is a reasonable intermediate onwards with approx. £300 avavilable to "invest". For the first time ever, I actually look forward to putting my ski boots on because they just feel "right"!!

A snowHead

masopa, good to hear your experiences,

i would however caution against recomending foam liners to everyone..... there are some feet which do not accept a foam liner well, the pressure during moulding can be too much and if so this can cause severe pain in the future, secondly, they are not a "warm liner" fine if you have great circulation but if not then they are generally not a great option and finally you need to be skiing these more than a week a year to get the best from them, otherwise it can be like breaking a new boot in every time you go on holiday

so in short, yep foam is precise, but if the shell fits well in the first place it is not always required, especially for the average recreational skier... personally i prefer to get the shell precise, then use an aftermarket liner if there are other issues such as warmth, space needing to be created or for skiers using their boots 3 weeks or more per season

just a foot note, i prefer to foam the tongue first when doing a foam liner with the foam injected tongue, thaty way i guarantee keeping the foot at the back of the boot, by injecting the main section of the boot first there is a risk that the foam pressure pushes the foot forward

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I have Salomon boots for which both the outers and the liners were customised for my feet. Took a few weeks to get spot on - but I wouldn't swap them now. At the time I bought them I was warned off foam liners, IIRC because skiing only 3 weeks a year, they would take a long time to bed in.

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I've skied standard liners, Comformable Pro Foam and now Zip-Fit Gara liners and whilst the foam does give a very precise fit, it isn't perfect all of the time, I felt that as my foot was either warm or cold, the fit changed. The foam liners were bloody freezing when I skied them in Canada.

I've now got Zip-Fit Gara's, these I feel are the best liners I've ever had, once I got over the initial week of agony whilst they bedded in. They're certainly warmer than foam and I feel that they give a consistently better fit than the foams also, as they remould continuously as they're being worn.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Spyderman, It's strange, so far the only place my feet have been cold, in my ZipFits, is at Hemel. Even when it was very cold in the 3Vs, my feet were toasty.

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Hurtle, It's all about the proportion of time spent actually skiing, very small proportion in a fridge, much larger in the mountains. You need to be moving in order to keep the blood flowing to your feet and maintain temperature.

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Spyderman, I wondered that, but even when I've been energetic and the rest of me has got hot, my feet have been cold. Confused

After all it is free

Hurtle, It just isn't a long enough time in a fridge, 20-30 second run, followed by standing in lift queue, riding drag lift, waiting to go at the top, all of the time your feet are in the snow. Very different to skiing on a mountain.

Spyderman, yeah, guess you're right.

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CEM - very good points. Something I probably should have stressed more - the pressure when the boots are being fitted is immense... If you have delicate feet, I can imagine it would be totally unbearable, as well as the possibility of the pressure of the foam even changing the shape of your foot, leading to later problems.

Funnily enough, I don't actually have very good circulation (my hands and feet are always cold, even sitting at home!) - I don't know whether I've just got used to this, now... Rather perversely, I've actually found my boots warmer than they were; I suspect it may be because I created a hotspot previously through trying to over-tighten them to compensate for the squashed, older liners. Will be interesting to see how they fare in Xscape, given Hurtle's experiences.

Parlor, IMHO you don't necessarily need to be skiing a lot (>3wks/yr) to get the benefit from really well-fitting boots. I have found my skiing improved markedly in the 4-5 days since my new liners, not in the sense that I've magically become Bode Miller, but my consistency has dramatically improved and overall ski control is much tighter.

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masopa, i don't think that any one is suggesting that you must ski more than 3 wks a year to get benefit from a well fitted boot, more than most people skiing less than this are unlikely to tolerate "getting used to" the tight performance fit that comes from foam as easily as someone skiing lots

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Custom Injection Foam Liners (Comformable)

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