About our services
Ski Boot Fitting
Assessment
Assessing and identifying your body’s functional strengths and limits is key to great ski boot fitting. As a leading ski boot fitter in Melbourne and Mt Buller Australia, our podiatrists carry out a full biomechanical assessment and history. We find out what kind of skiing you like, previous boot problems, injuries, biomechanical function, and anything else relevant. This is all claimable through your private health fund when you are seen by one of our ski podiatrists.
Ski Orthotics
When it comes to custom ski boots, the key factors in orthotics are even pressure dispersion, foot alignment, support, and cushioning. Everyone in a ski boot needs this, as the ski boot is a hard, plastic shell that goes almost up to your knees – not a natural thing to have on your foot. So, having support from a ski orthotic is vital to help your foot, leg and everything above function comfortably in what is otherwise an unnatural position for your foot.
Pronation: This is a combination of foot and ankle movements required for skiing. A ski orthotic does not prevent pronation but supports the foot to prevent excessive pronatory force that can lead to poor performance in injury.
Even pressure dispersion: This is especially important for foot comfort, blood flow and nerve pathways to prevent cold toes, cramping, nerve impingement and numbness. Think of it like filling in the gaps or space in your boot.
Supporting the foot in its ideal position provides the best alignment for the ankle, knees, and hips and support for the upper body for the best neutral-stance start position. This lessens muscle overuse and fatigue, reduces injury risk, and improves ski performance. And you will impress your ski instructor in this position. A ski orthotic is the first place to start to resolve any ski boot fitting problems. Without stabilising the foot, any changes made to anywhere else in the boot will not fix the problem.
As a professional ski boot fitter in Melbourne, Ortho Ski uses its podiatry knowledge to create custom ski orthotics for your custom ski boots. These are made specifically for your foot. Ski orthotics are claimable through your private health fund.
Custom Liners
These are game changers, which is why we keep the country's largest range of liners for custom ski boots. Custom liners are what you never knew you needed, but once you have experienced them, you will never go back to regular retail liners. Let us see why they are so great. Why do I need them? In short, they give you comfort and performance because they are customised to your foot shape.
Custom liners give you the best fit between your bony, lumpy, funny-shaped extremity, which we call the foot and the unforgiving hardness of a plastic shell boot. It gives you the closest fitting interface between your precious skin and bones and this necessary brute-of-inflexibility called the shell, so you get even pressure (which equals comfort and warmth), and no space in the boot (which equals performance with no lag time between your movement and the skis’ response).
The other benefit of custom liners is that they last longer than the regular ones that come in a boot. Regular liners give you about 100 to 150 ski days before you may start feeling sore. Custom liners (depending on which one you get) last anywhere from 250 good ski days to 400 good ski days. Our range includes Intuition, Svenfit and BootDoc foam-injected liners.
Custom Ski Boots
There is no piece of ski equipment more important than boots. No other single item has as big an impact on your skiing experience as boots do. This is why Ortho Ski offers a range of structurally different boots and a swathe of custom liners within our clinic that we can customise to suit your needs.
What is a Custom Ski Boot?
A custom ski boot is bespoke, tailormade, and made-to-measure. Whatever you want to call it, a custom boot is simply a shell that has been selected specifically for you and modified as required, depending on your biomechanics, and fitted with a custom liner.
Custom boots fit you better than an off-the-shelf, try-on-and-go ski boot. A well-fitting boot provides warmth, performance and comfort. However, if you have had chronic ski boot issues or trauma to your feet from knee and hip reconstructions, bone fractures, scoliosis, limb leg length differences, ankle and foot injuries, or neural and blood flow problems like Reynaud’s Phenomenon, then performance and warmth may sound like secondary luxuries compared with just getting through a day in your boots. Custom boots are ideal for people with chronic foot and leg issues, as they allow complete customisation of shape and fit to accommodate the foot’s complex needs.
With our combined knowledge of how the foot and leg function in a custom ski boot, we can provide you with a solution for your chronic ski boot fitting problems that have previously prevented you from enjoying your skiing experience.
Our anatomy and biomechanics knowledge focuses on foot and leg function in skiing. We also understand other medical diagnoses and injuries and how these will impact your skiing and boot setup.
We clearly understand the role of all equipment in your ski setup and how it all works together. You and your boots need to work within this system to give you the best possible day on the hill.
We know the scope of possible modifications that can be made to a ski boot and how to balance these to get your boot to work best for you.
When carried out with our skills and knowledge, these custom ski boots will give you your best ski experience yet and have you skiing better and enjoying yourself on the snow.
Boot Modifications
Boot modifications range from shell expansions to remove spot pressures, all the way to tongue liner surgery and ‘frankenbooting’ (making alterations with extra bits). Ortho Ski has the equipment to perform any necessary boot modifications for optimal ski boot fitting. Our Masterfit trained staff, combined with our Ortho Ski training system, develops all staff to have a high quality understanding of what a boot can do and how we can alter a boot to work for you.
Please note boot modifications are unlikely to fix symptoms unless the cause is identified first and the foot is stabilised with a ski orthotic. If you already have a good custom footbed/ski orthotic in your boot, then we can certainly provide any boot modifications that you may need; otherwise, we suggest a ski orthotic to start.
Snowboard
Boots
Not a skier? We fix snowboard boots too. Whilst we do not stock boarding boots, we certainly can make them comfortable and improve your performance in them. It all starts with an assessment to work out what’s really going on and from there we make a plan and treat the problem.
We make custom snowboard orthotics, help with boot set-up, heat moulding, boot stiffness, liner modifications and stance assessment. We can help you manage or prevent symptoms like numb feet, burning under the forefoot, heel lift, and sore calves.
Book an appointment online with Ortho Ski.
