Ankle pain, heel lifting, and boot covers (not necessarily all related :D)

[sofakartoffel]

I hope I'm posting in the right section

I'm a new adult skater and I have a month-old pair of Riedell 255TSs that I skate on usually 2-3 times a week since my purchase. I was lucky to have bought them in a pro shop with a really attentive fitters knowledgeable with both figure skates and feet and they spent at least 2 hours making adjustment to my skates right out of the box. They asked me a lot of questions my feet but since I lack a general sense of body awareness due to lack of prior athletic experience, I'm afraid I probably misled them and caused them to make the wrong adjustments. I couldn't even accurately describe where something felt wrong or if something was too tight or too loose, and hey, it was news to me that my ankles pronated!

While I was testing out the skates for a couple of trial runs (they had me test it out after making blade alignment adjustments) I told the guy I experienced ankle pain after skating for 30+ minutes, especially on my right foot. He asked me if the boot was hitting my navicular bone and I was just like "Huh? Yeah, I guess so." since I was feeling something unpleasant in that general area. He ended up punching out the ankle area, but he also said that it might have to do with the ankle pronating which would necessitate adjusting the blade even further to the left to compensate. 

Punching it out seemed fine for the first couple of times I went out on ice afterwards (but only for short durations), but now that I'm skating for longer periods I'm not sure whether that just exacerbated the situation by taking out ankle support that I actually needed? I seem to have the ankle pain mostly in my right foot--the right boot has been punched out more than the left, and my right foot still pronates more noticeably than the left and angles towards the inside edge. Also, I've began to notice that my heel on my right foot tends to lift up slightly while skating. I've never noticed this before since it is really slight and like you probably figured out by now, I'm really clueless and unaware  The ankle pains happen on both feet but are most pronounced on my right, and also seems to increase whenever I get a good knee bend, but the heel raise only happens on the right. I don't know if these are related.

What should I do? If it is indeed a matter of punching the boots out too much, is that sort of thing reversible? I know that blades are replaceable on the 255TS boot but how hard is it to make a blade alignment adjustment if it's "permanently mounted"? I know that ankle pain is a fairly common concern so I'm wondering whether my aches are just normal. It's also helpful to note that right now I'm only taking group classes and working on Alpha/Beta elements and getting in 3x week practice + group lesson max, but the fitter said I could do a proper bend in the 255TS so I don't know if boot stiffness is a factor here or not.

I'm at uni now and I am not familiar with the pro shops at the rinks I go to here, but I'm making a trip home soon and I'm planning to drop by my home pro shop to get this checked out. However, I want to be able to explain myself more eloquently and most importantly, correctly, when I get there! I think it's less of a problem with the navicular bone and more of a problem with the arch region below that bone, but I didn't know that back then! I searched "arch pain" in the forums and I saw a thread about arch pain and used skates, but I bought my skates brand new just a month ago so I'm not really sure what's going on. I usually also wear arch supports with regular shoes (nothing fancy, just an off-the-rack kind) since I had arch pain with my left foot while walking, though not in the same area as when I skate. The inserts seemed to have alleviated my walking discomfort, but I don't know whether I could, or even should, just slip them in my skates?

Last but not least, I bought black boot covers for my skates and practice with them on regularly. However, it seems to have made the laces of my boot grayish and dingy, and worse, the entire "inside" part of both boots have this huge unsightly grayish-blackish smudge that didn't come off at all when I tried wiping down the boot with a damp cloth dipped in soapy water. I haven't tried any other methods of trying to clean it but it definitely looks like some kind of transfer from the boot cover to the skates. I've been drilling backward pumps recently and I'm working on getting the free foot right next to the skating foot after the push, so there's been a lot of boot to boot contact on the inside part of the boot lately, which corresponds with the smudges.  They were just generic boot covers I got from a shop and I think they are made of lycra, but I'm not sure. I'm not overly obsessed with boot aesthetics but it seems a little ridiculous that a boot cover would actually mess up the boot when its main purpose is to protect it. Any idea how I could clean it off?

Ah, so many questions... Thanks in advance to anyone who even gets through reading my lengthy spiel, much less answering it 

[Query]

I've been warned that I keep saying the same thing, but I'll try to make this as individual as I can. It's a shame we can't make this sort of thing an FAQ, because it seems like a large fraction of skaters have pains or sores or inflammation in or on their feet, of balance problems, all of which are mostly unnecessary, and which theoretically have quite simple solutions.

1. It's really hard to figure anything out, cuz you haven't described exactly where the pain is. E.g., is it deep or skin-level? Exactly where? Is there extra pressure on your skin where it was punched, or less than exists on other parts of your feet? Does skating create any sores or blisters or any other marks on your feet? Exactly what parts of your foot that feel more or less pressure from the boot than others? It could even be an ultra-tight lace.

You need to figure out what you feel in order to solve the problem. Until someone creates a sensor net sock that measures the pressure on all parts of your feet (do podiatrists have something like that?), only you can tell what you feel, where.

2. Un-stretching leather is far too easy. Take a hair drier and warm up the specific area stretched. It will come right back most of the way. It is even possible that it has un-stretched itself over the past couple weeks, especially if you leave it in a hot car, and that could be the problem.

3. Because it takes so long for the pain to develop, it might well be you are over-using one particular set of muscles, ligaments or other connective tissue, because some part of your foot is not fully in contact with the boot, or because of something about your internal anatomy.

4. For example, if one part of the bottom of your feet barely touches the insole, you need to use extra muscles to make it touch in order to control the orientation of the boot and blade. I like putting athletic tape under the insole to adjust its shape, until all parts of the bottom of the foot feel equal pressure. Other people on our board have used other types of tape or foam.

Say for example that your right foot has room to raise your right heel, because the insole there is not high enough. Then, so as not to constantly touch your toe pick, you need to keep pulling up your toe and pushing down your heel with muscles. Eventually those muscles get sore. Or one part of your foot may be constantly hanging its weight off of a muscle or ligament or other connective tissue to support itself against gravity, and it gets sore. For reasons only a medical person could explain, incorrect heel height can create pain and inflammation many different places.

Likewise, if one of your arches need extra support (say, because something internal to your feet doesn't have quite the right size or shape - e.g., if some of the ligaments that holds it up is too long), you may need a little extra pressure under the arch, obtained by putting a little extra tape (or insert, though that's more expensive) under there.

People sometimes mount the too far blade left or right, because they think that is an easier way to balance your inside vs outside edges than adjusting the shape of the insole or boot interior - but a too far off-center mount creates unequal tension or pressure on different parts of your foot, eventually making you sore. One rule of thumb that matches the line of support where a lot of people find it comfortable to bear weight is that the back of the blade should pass through the center of your heel, and the front halfway between your big and second toe, but that may be somewhat individual. Unfortunately, when you adjust the interior shape of your boot (e.g., insole), you may need to re-balance by changing the mount position, and vice versa.

Likewise, if the blade isn't roughly centered front/back on your foot, there could be problems.

5. If in the end, if you, the expert fitter, and your coach all can't figure things out, you can always try a podiatrist, physical therapist or certified athletic trainer who specializes in sports medicine - but they will charge a few hundred dollars, in the U.S. And they still need you to say exactly what you feel.

6. I've never heard before of dye transference from a boot cover. But try a cover color that matches your boots. You could also wash the covers to get rid of the extra dye. (Hang dry if you can, because they shouldn't get too hot in the drier.) They come in many colors if you mail order. Maybe someone else who has seen this before has a suggestion?

[sofakartoffel]

Thanks a lot for your patient response! Maybe there should be a whole section of this forum devoted to feet and balance problems It was a bit difficult for me to describe the pain at first since I only had a vague idea of where it was, so reading over your points helped me think critically about what exactly is going on.

The pain was a soreness concentrated on the muscle(s) of the medial arch of both feet, but primarily on the right foot. It would increase the longer I skate and was particularly bad during my last practice session, though I have experienced slight to moderate pain in that area every time I've skated with the new boots. It makes sense that the increased pain from last practice might just be from overuse since I did skate 2 hour sessions two days in a row, while normally I try to get in practice on Mondays and Fridays. Said muscles are still fairly sore to the touch and ache a bit even when I'm walking around in regular running shoes.

The heel raising might be because I tend to shift most of my weight forward on the balls of my feet in order to maintain some semblance of balance. Since my ankles pronate as well the weight is almost exclusively on that meaty part of my big toes.  I was working on backward pumps and backward 1-foot gliding, which are movements I have just begun to learn, and I'm really not confident with any backward skating on one foot yet. I don't know whether it's correct or appropriate technique to try to balance that way during these moves.

So, I went back and kept trying on my skates (off-ice) with your suggestions in mind. The plantar medial arch and parts of the lateral side of my soles do not generally touch the insole of the skate. I tried slipping my over the counter arch support inserts in the boots but they seem to wide, so I think I will experiment between using them and modifying the boot insoles with athletic tape. I have a stupid question though--how exactly do I go about applying the tape? Is there a specific technique? I just discovered that I could actually take the insoles out of my skates today, so ... yes, I'm a little slow  . Hopefully some other veteran posters can help me out with that? I feel like I'm already abusing Query's kindness by asking waaaaay too many questions  :angel. You really helped me a lot!  Thanks a bunch :worthy

The fitter did tell me that my "ankle pain" (I had no idea what it was then, so that's what I told him, and I also implied that the boots were pushing into my navicular bone, while it really was sore muscles :bash) might be fixed aligning the right blade more to the left, but they've already made several adjustments to it so he was hesitant to push that as a solution. Now that I know better, I suppose I won't be needing that, but it'll be good to have them examine the boots and maybe do something about unstretching it when I drop them in for sharpening.

I'll post a separate thread about the boot cover/mysterious boot smudge debacle...It won't come off