fek this I am off to bed first gondola up is at 9.

I would say they should be comfortable in ski position as they will be snug, hopefully and exact fit so that you ‘could’ ski in them with your buckles undone.

When on the chairlift or in the resturant you would probably want to pop the buckles as your foot will shift a little forward out of ski position, so there would be pressure on the top of your foot. That’s how it works in my Technicas anyway.

Not sure you need super stiff boots nowadays – many coaches teach ankle flex as part of a turn and you also weight the middle of the ski more on a turn than in the old days as you want to pressure both the nose and tail of the ski into the snow to make the turn, whereas older skis only had wide noses so you had to pressure forward and skid the back round more.

I’d agree based on some of that tripe.

Teaching people to ski and ski technically well demands an understanding of the human ski interface which a lot of bootfitters just don’t have, and neither do ‘racers’. A well fitted boot should be close fitting but comfortable. I could stand in mine for 8 hours and run gates without crying in pain.

Surely how stiff you want the boot depends on the ski aswell?

The reason many expert skiers have stiffer boots is that the skis (on piste skis) tend to be alot stiffer than intermediate skis. With a stiffer ski more force and power needs to be put through the ski and a stiffer boot helps to do this.

Completely agree with the comments about skiing with them undone, we used to train like this to improve technique, but youd always want them done up for skiing hard.

I think most important thing is to consider the type of skiing youre going to be doing most of the time and take it from here.

another reason for them to become uncomfortable when not in ski position will be that your foot will move forward on your footbed as well, which might also cause them to move upwards in the boot a little as well, and if it is a ‘hard’ custom footbed any ridges will be in wrong place.

I have seen recommendations that people have ‘soft’ footbeds, with the top made of cork and without all the ridges you get from standing on one of those heat machines.