A Sure Fit for the Mountains

Anyone who has been skiing knows that the difference between a fantastic day of carving and a night of aches and pains can come down to the fit of your ski boots. New boots are the easiest way to improve both the comfort and quality of your skiing experience, and the only way to achieve a perfect fit is with a custom boot.

One company, Surefoot, has created a design unique to the industry that offers customers the perfect pair of made-to-measure ski boots.

Poorly fitted ski boots waste a great deal of movement, causing fatigue and lack of control, and can even result in injury. Ski boots consist of a hard shell, with a separate liner and insole. The boots attach to the skis via mechanical bindings, creating a rigid connection between the skier and the ski. In order to prevent injury and loss of control, this connection must be as direct and immobile as possible.

To turn a ski, you apply pressure to the edges of the skis, which bite into the surface of the snow and pull you in that direction. Today’s skis feature advanced designs and materials, making them highly responsive to the skier’s input. However, most people have irregular feet, with high or low arches, or directional biases, which can cause unintentional inputs. For example, many people have pronated feet, which cause the skis to naturally turn towards each other. Your body compensates for these normal biases by adjusting the leg muscles; however, this means that you are constantly fighting your own body, wasting valuable energy, and giving up control.

That’s where made-to-measure boots come in. They place your feet into a neutral position, compensating for any natural biases of the foot, allowing you to carve comfortably with minimum fatigue and maximum control.

Surefoot supplies its customers with the perfectly fitted boot, thanks to its unique measurement system. Their proprietary foot scanner measures the customer’s foot in 538 individual places, creating a topographical map. This map is used to mill the insole, which is then added to the ability-specific shell, chosen based on the customer’s particular skiing habits. Finally, a custom liner is injection molded into the boot.

This process removes the hotspots and pressure points common in many stock boots, increasing comfort and vital blood-flow. It also puts the skier into a neutral, balanced stance—and all with virtually no break-in period!

As a leader in orthotics weight bearing CT imaging, CurveBeam cares deeply about innovations in the orthopedic and podiatric industries. Surefoot’s unique method of fitting boots is a brilliant use of cutting-edge industry technology. In order to ski comfortably and maintain peak control, skiers need boots that work with their individual bodies. Surefoot’s proprietary system allows them to measure and manufacture the most precise fit possible.

Just like Surefoot, CurveBeam allows orthopedic doctors to quickly and accurately serve their patients’ individual needs with the latest and most effective imaging technology. CurveBeam’s unique Cone Beam CT technology employs a wide, cone-shaped beam. One rotation captures the region of interest. CurveBeam systems have a fixed tube current (mA) of 5, which is well below ultra-low-dose settings of traditional medical CT. Its image quality of high contrast, hard tissue features is equivalent to conventional CT. The flat panel detector is positioned closer to the anatomy being imaged, which means less X-Ray dose is required to capture similar signal strength, as compared to conventional CT.pedCAT system allows foot & ankle specialists to obtain a true weight bearing, bilateral scan of the feet & ankles in 48 seconds. The pedCAT is compact and plugs into a standard wall outlet, so can easily be placed in a podiatric or orthopedic clinic. Scans are high resolution and ultra-low dose.

To learn more, visit CurveBeam online today! To learn more about the pedCAT, click here.