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Good riddance, I say. More specifically, to the aesthetically-limiting collars, weird-ass shoulder dimples, and their tawdry, overpriced Indo-authentics. Thanks for coming to the party, Adidas. Leave the wine bottle you brought and piss off.

I got a chance to try on (and bake) 8.5R Cat 9 skates. Those skates fit smaller length wise than the 8W I had for TF9. I might be getting a pair of the 9s so if I do I'll be sure to compare the lengths and see how they fit after a proper bake and everything.

I pronate and have been measured as a severe pronator on both feet (20 and 23 degrees). In addition to this my right ankle has suffered multiple critical sprains during my life and has never worked properly since my teens. For those of you that have read my many posts on the subject, I support lace free skating - to teach you how to skate and to counter pronation. On the former, it definitely does this, you can't hide from poor technique. On the latter, it does work, to a degree..... It works for balance, it works for straight line skating, it works for mild edges. But after 3 years or so of training lace free I still find that when I get deep on an edge with lots of power I pronate. My reasoning for this is 2 fold - 1: You just can't spend enough time in this position to retrain your muscles. Maybe after 20 years of training you might get there, I don't have that time. Or if you spent all day every day in skates but that is just not practical. In addition to this, training lace free is hard. It comes with a lot of downtime as you retrain and often is considered just too hard to do for most skaters. 2: As soon as you take your skates off you go back to pronating, the muscles just do what they have done for most of your life and follow the path of least resistance. PRONATION IS YOUR NUMBER ONE ENEMY IN LEARNING TO SKATE!!! So it was back to the drawing board. I'm not going to include the theory, last year's 15 skater pre trial study, the 100% improvement success stories (see end for 2 stories) or the 120 skater study we are going to do this year. What I will state is this: The calcaneous (heel) bone is the most important bone in the body in relation to ice skating. It is the largest bone in the foot and it is the one that takes the most weight. Now here is the important bit - the angle of the heel bone in relation to the lower limb determines the angle of the boot and blade in relation to the lower limb. This is why manufacturers make ultra stiff form fit hugging skates, to help straighten and hold the heel bone and ankle in place in relation to the lower limb. The downside to this approach (unless you can afford these skates whenever you want) is that you are STILL pronating in the skate. Over time the skate will open up, guaranteed. And even with the stiffest best fitting boot, get deep on an edge under power and you will pronate in the boot. So what can you do? The known boot fixes - orthotics (these don't work for pronation) / shimming / holder movement / posting are just band aids on the problem. Whilst they can help for a straight line glide, get on an edge under power and all your pronation problems are still there. The fix is to address the problem outside of the boot and off ice, we need to reshape the heel bone to get it in line with the lower limb and to set it permanently in this position. Others have posted various off ice exercises, the toe scrunch with a towel is popular (see reference in video later on). Myself and 4 of our study group tried this for 6 months, it made no difference. I don't discount the drill, it does help to strengthen the intrinsic muscles at the front of the arch but we found it did not help to straighten the heel bone. However there is one exercise that specifically targets the heel bone and straightens it and the ankle in relation to the lower limb. This exercise you need to do - every. single. minute. of. the. day. The beauty of this exercise is that you can do it every minute of the day, you don't need to set time aside, you just have to remember to make it part of your waking life. Watch this video, it’s the exercise from the 6:10 minute mark (thanks to Sport Injury Physio for this video until we can do our own) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ompYPEHbyM See how at 7:15 she “rotates” the ankle outwards. This is the exercise you need to do every minute of the day. You can do it sitting, standing, driving the car, washing the dishes, cleaning your teeth, eating breakfast / lunch / dinner, at work, anywhere anytime. Every single minute of the day you want to be trying to rotate your ankles outwards to straighten them. Start with sitting, then standing, then balancing on one foot, then balancing on one foot and doing a small squat, then try walking – I would take 3 steps then stop then lock the ankle then walk 3 steps trying to keep it straight then repeat (I now walk the dog for around 1 hour a day practicing this). How do I know when I am rotating the ankle enough? The key is to look at your achillies tendon, the ankle is rotated far enough when the achillies tendon is straight up and down in line with the middle of the lower leg and you can hold it in this position as you weight bear on it. For example if you are slightly bow legged this means the heel needs to supinate slightly to get this line correct yet the forefoot is level on the ground. As you get the heel starting to straighten then focus on the forefoot, concentrate on pushing the ball of the foot into the floor (with toes relaxed). You have to untwist the forefoot AS WELL as straighten the heel (when you first try the ankle straighten, watch the forefoot and big toe, see how it rises as the foot follows the ankle shape). After a while you will find you can activate the ankle roll by pressing the ball of the foot into the ground. Re the other exercises in the video (and other exercises for pronation), they help but the heel straighten is the key one, straighten the heel and the rest will follow. A straight heel in skates means you will balance easily over the skate blade, a pronating foot makes it hard to balance properly over a skate blade. Become obsessed with this, try and do it every minute of every day, make it part of your life and it will change how you skate. If you do try this, let me know how it goes. Then message me in about 2 months time and I will give you other drills to strengthen the arch and keep the mid foot / heel straight whilst under load. However you can't do this drill until you have learnt to straighten the heel and untwist the forefoot. I will give two warning notices with this:- 1: the recommendation from the consulting PT's is to not do any running whilst you are doing this, at least for the first 6 months or so. This is changing your bio dynamics, pronation is a natural foot movement and acts as a shock absorber for the foot. You need to learn how to walk before you can run. 2: Lace bite. When you first start this you will be activating the Tibialis anterior muscle and the Extensor hallucis longus muscle. These are the muscles at the front of the ankle that are involved in lace bite, by rotating the ankle outwards you are activating these muscles. For the first 6 months or so, until this becomes learned muscle memory and these muscles begin to relax, you may get lace bite. I didn't as I don't lace up, 3 skaters from our pre trial control group reported minor pain, they were in low volume boots. Success stories (these are 2 of the 15 skater pre trial study group): 1: 45 yo female figure skater, ex national single figure skating champion. Retired from all skating 4 years ago after falling in competition and breaking 2 bones in her right foot. Her right ankle has never worked properly since the very first day she put on skates, for example she has never been able to properly do a one foot slalom on it. She pronates badly in both feet (<20 degrees), has tried everything to fix it, nothing worked. 3 months after doing this exercise, she can now balance and slalom properly on her right foot. She has removed all modifications to her skates with the blades returned to a center alignment. Her pronation has gone, both on and off ice. She has now entered our 2023 national figure skating competition. 2: 25 year old male figure skater, beginner (started skating 3 months before entering the pre trial study). He pronates badly in both feet (<20 degrees), has tried everything to fix it, nothing worked. At the time of entering the study, he could not skate backwards, he had no balance. He spent 3 weeks off ice doing the exercise. On the day he returned to the ice, within 15 minutes he was able to skate backwards and balance on an outside edge. His pronation on and off ice is still there but greatly reduced (<10 degrees) and we expect his heel to return to neutral alignment within the next 3 months. In summary - do the exercise in the vid, it will fix your pronation. It has completely fixed mine and improved / fixed everyone who has been involved with the study so far. Fix your pronation and take your skating to a new level, I can't say strongly enough how this is a game changer for pronation. I don't know why pronation isn't talked about more, it's like the dirty secret of ice and inline skating, it impacts on EVERYTHING you do in skates. I just wish I had a coach who told me this 40 years ago, if you pronate I hope this helps you.