Vet88

If anyone wants to have a glimpse of what the future holds for training and athletes, have a listen to the following. It doesn't cover any of his predictions, it covers what is actually happening now in labs and just released and it's quite goddamn scary is some respects. It does cover other things besides sports but it's an interesting listen anyhow, especially the fighter pilot stuff and the neural interface. The relevant point for hockey is what they did with the US ski team, 20% improvement is an awful lot at that level. I know of a program developed for keepers that tracks eye movement and they have interfaced that to AI and VR so keepers can train off ice in a simulator. Add AI driven neural interface learning and at what point does sport end and programming begin? The Futurist - Matthew Griffin https://open.spotify.com/show/4UR9Kj8YtPcT0iLgqWL8tJ

Whilst I would love to try sandals with a holder on them (and I have been seriously considering trying this), I will readily admit the support the boot provides around the bottom of the foot is critical to good skating. IMHO it is the advances in boot technology that makes untied skating so different to anything that has come before. We could debate for ever the cons and pros of untied skating and the rabbit hole of bio mechanics and force loadings. Until a skilled untied / tied skater can get a skate on a fancy force-measuring treadmill (which cost a few 100k $'s and then you have to convert it for ice skating) and then model the data along the lines of the work done by people like Daniel Lieberman, we will never know the answer. Putting aside my unqualified comments and everything that I have seen working with skaters, I still go back to Darryl Evans, there is just no way he would have kept his place with the Flyers if his power, acceleration and explosiveness was compromised as he got to 5 eyelets only lacing.

Do you pronate at all? Pronation can impact on different areas of the foot and one of those areas is the ball of the foot and with a +3 pitch it places even more pressure there. As the foot rotates in the boot, the ball of the foot becomes the main loading point against the sole of the boot. For a quick fix you can try a gel pad under the footbed and check the tops of the rivets in that area, with a little bit of rust and excessive pressure in that area the fingers on the rivet can become raised up and these pound away at the foot. I've seen instances where they have punched thru a superfoot insole and lacerated the bottom of a players foot.

This is true if you have any technical issues with the way you skate, the boot hides the flaws in the foot and ankle movements. If your technique is good enough and you have learnt to skate laces untied then the stiffness of the boot does not matter. Let me put it this way, accelerating / exploding when skating unlaced is like learning to balance on your forefoot whilst standing on top of a nail whilst you attempt to drive full power downwards and transfer your body weight over the top of the nail. Your forefoot has to learn how to balance on the point of the blade AND control the deflection of the blade as you drive power downwards and forwards whilst remaining stable in the boot. This is why it takes so long to learn this, it's something the body has never done before, the closest I can think off is someone who is learning classical ballet and can do a full pointe. You come up on the forefoot, lose your balance and ergo can't apply any power. Your son struggles with this simply because he hasn't trained enough and learnt to do it. And I understand why skaters choose not to do this, it can be a huge hit on development time and performance and its just easier to lace up and not focus on this final piece of the puzzle.

Yes, you do as you are learning to skate this way. But the loss is caused by your foot mechanics, you are trying to skate as you walk (laced up locks the heel and even though the foot tries to lift thru the heel it can't). Untied, your heel lifts as it naturally wants to do but as you keep practising your stride mechanics optimise to a flat push with no heel lift and your speed and explosiveness returns. This is the hardest and last element to learn because of how BIG a change it is, it doesn't matter how long you have been skating you have to go thru this change because of how intrinsic it is to how you walk. In his later years, Darryl Evans played his NHL games with just the bottom 5 eyelets laced up. I only lace the bottom 4 and my lap, sprint and beep test times now are better than when I laced up, which is saying something as I'm now at the age where every year I just get slower....

YES!!!! and people wonder why I preach about laces untied / lace free skating.

The biggest miss fit is the chin cup, it sits miles away from my chin. Regardless of what I do it will never fit, I tried fitting it on the helmet in every way I possibly could and my chin will never sit in the cup. Comparing it to other Bauer and Easton medium cages I have, there is a significant difference in height, from 1 - 2cms longer depending on the cage. And on my E700, Re-Akt 100 and IMS 11.0 helmets it isn't a good fit, imho they have done something funny with the shape. The 1st 1/3 and the last 1/3 of the cage (where it fits around the helmet) are really narrow meaning I would have to try and bend the heck out of it to get a good fit. When I compare the shape to a E700 cage and a Re-Akt cage this difference is very obvious. However I didn't bother to try and alter this because of the chin cup issue. If my other medium cages didn't fit then I'd know I have a weird shaped face but it's just this cage that doesn't work. Your comments are basically the same as mine:- tight on the helmet, chin cup fit and heavy.

We can't come to terms over the return. Because it was shipped overseas to me, we couldn't agree on a cost of shipping for a return and replacement. My point to them was that the size options when I ordered at the very early pre ordering stage was misleading and this was their fault. Regardless, they want me to pay full costs there and back (costs will be more than the helmet cost) which really bugs me.

I have the Avision Zero Plus. If you order it be very careful about the size. I'm an adult medium and ordered an "adult" when they were on pre order, back then the ordering details were not clear, the adult size was only for large and x-large helmets. I'm a senior medium so needed to order a "junior", go figure that one out. So mine is unused, they wouldn't take it back so I'm going to have to try and resell it eventually, I'm so pissed off with it it's just sitting in a corner, grrrrr.... Having never used it I can't comment on how good it's anti fogging capabilities are but I can say this, it's damn heavy. It's like twice the weight of the E700 cage I currently have. A visor and a full cage (Bauer 4800) weighs just a little more than a Zero Plus (460g vs 440g). Given the Bauer cage weighs around 250g and half of the cage is missing in the Zero Plus, there is a lot of weight left in the half cage so the bottom feels really heavy. Weight is the main reason I'm not going to get a replacement.

Welcome to the world of podiatrists, everyone has a viewpoint on pronation and there isn't a lot of consensus / knowledge wrt to feet in hockey skates. At least you recognise that orthotics aren't the only answer so that weeds out 99% of the bs artists that want to sell you an orthotic so they can make money from it. There are NHL players that pronate and skate really heavily on their inside edges, pronation isn't the only limiting factor to you becoming a good player. And your dad is right, there is no miracle or quick fix, orthotics, shims, wedges, holder movement are just band aids on the problem. All of the research that I have been / still am involved in consistently proves that there is a long term viable solution to fixing pronation in skates, learn to skate laces untied / lace free. Yes, you take a hit in your development over the next year or so as you learn the base skills to do it and then over the next year as your body learns to control the skates at high speed and then even another year as you learn to refine all that has come before to a consistent high level but... at the end of that time you will not pronate in skates, ever again. Period. You said you "wanted to keep on working harder" then this is what you have to do, it WILL fix your pronation and at the end of the process you will have the skill base to be the best skater you can possibly be.

to which I'd have said they are possibly a 1/2 size too small?

If they fit you well everywhere else why don't you take them to a shop and get them stretched? I did this with my Jetspeeds (admittedly I did it at home but a shop can do it just as easily).

I'd have called the one handed wood chop first but I think the ref called the attempted stick lift where the stick is up in the gloves.

fwiw - comments I have received from True about their skate length:- "The internal measurement of True skates are a 1/4 size longer than the equivalent internal measurement of Bauer skates. The external measurement of True skates is longer than equivalent sized Bauer skates because of features in the True boot and it's design - for example the True one piece shell has an inner carbon toe box that is covered by an external toe box." Sadly their is no rational explanation as to why someone who can fit their foot (25.5cm long) into a size 6D Bauer (with toes just off the toe cap) can fit the same foot into a 5.5R True skate (with about a 1/4 size of room to spare). True insist that their skate sizings are equivalent to Bauer and refuse to acknowledge that the internal measurements of their skates are at least a 1/2 to 3/4 size larger than same sized Bauer skates. It's the CCM debacle all over again. At least CCM fronted up about it, eventually. One can only hope True will bite the bullet and do the same and fix their sizing in the next release, this was alluded to me by the comment "as we incorporate your feedback into the development of our next skate models".

Did you change the holder size or leave him on 254?

9' front, 10' back.

Stretching for length is near on impossible, it has to do with how the boot is constructed. Stretching for width is easy when done slowly and over time. I have moved sides by over a 1cm. Whoever did it for you wasn't doing a very good job.

I did some FPV drone racing the other day, what a buzz. From that I wondered what would stop the NHL from going the next stage on from player tracking, fitting players helmets with miniature cameras and doing FPV live stream casts. Sell an intro package which includes goggles, any necessary software and subscription to the package then you buy per game for the player you want to follow. Get inside McDavid's head for a game, listen to everything he says and does, follow what he sees on the rink. Thanks NHL, send me a cheque for the royalties when it goes live 🤑

If you know the size for length, buy these in an EE. then stretch them to fit your width. Stretching isn't hard, any shop can do it and if you can't get to a shop you can do it at home with some basic tools from a hardware shop and time. If you want to know more about this just ask or search this forum for my post that shows the tools you need. And if the volume is too shallow you can fix this with eyelet extenders, this is covered by me in another thread in this forum, either make your own or buy them from a shop.

This is going back a few months but you say the 6.5R TF9's have 272 holders, is this right? I got the following from True for TF7 and TF9, they have the holder size as 254: TRUE Skate – Holder chart 3, & 3.5 - 230 4, & 4.5 - 238 5, & 5.5 - 246 6, & 6.5 - 254 7, & 7.5 - 263 8, & 8.5 - 272 9, & 9.5 - 280 10, & 10.5 - 288 11 , & 11.5 – 296

Where does it hurt:- inner groin, front of groin, outer hip, on the hip bone (greater trochanter area), inside the hip, back of the hip etc etc? Any pain at rest, during the night when sleeping (it wakes you up especially if you are lying on your side), in the morning when you wake up? Can you press in the area where it hurts and get a pain response? Or you can't press into the pain because the pain seems to come from inside the hip? If you can press into the pain, does it feel like a hard knot or multiple knots where you are pressing? Any pain when walking, running or doing off ice exercises say in a gym? Any pain or tightness in the front of the groin when you do deep squats or are sitting for while, especially after a game? Any pain if you do stretches or rotate the leg thru different angles (say when lying on your back - lift the knee up to the chest then rotate the knee outwards until flat on the surface)?

imho how long a skate stays stiff is primarily dependent on your bio mechanics. If you are balanced over the top of the skate blade and don't exert extensive side ways forces thru the boot, the boot should stay stiff for ages. If, for example, you pronate heavily in your skating then the boot will open up over time and go soft really fast.

Maybe I missed something here. You started out in skates 2 sizes too big and then got Bauer customs and they were way too big? Why didn't you get the Bauers remade if that was the case? I'm assuming here you got measured up for the customs??? Any boot is dependent on the accuracy of the measurements and the skill of the fitter, garbage in equals garbage out. I'm sorry if your friend had a bad experience with True (and you with Bauer) but overall the process for customs is generally very good regardless of who you go to. And True stand by their boot, if they can't get it to work you get your money back (I don't know what Bauer or CCM will do if they can't get the boot to fit). I can't comment on the CCM retail custom process, someone else with more knowledge about the process may want to chime in here if CCM will make a custom boot for you from the ground up. The sad fact of a skate too big is that it remains that way, you can't make it any smaller (or at least in any meaningful way that I have ever found). If the width issue is in the heel you might want to try some ezyfit booties in the 2mm or 3mm thickness, these will help to fill the negative space in the heel. For myself personally, heel lock and width isn't the solution skaters believe it to be, how well you can skate is what primarily determines your comfort in the skate.

I think it was back when nxg was released, I measured every Bauer boot from size 6 to 12 and noted that as well as the holder change, the length of the boot also changed - EE was around 2mm-3mm longer than a D. I don't know if that is still the case today but it offers up a potential reason why the holder size is different.

Sadly I think this is the future of skates, and customs where you can put your own graphics on them. I asked junior players at a practice I run and they were all "those look sick". The Finnish skate in particular got the most favourable comments. I'm sure Bauer are aware of this, for us older guys we'll have to get customs just to have a traditional looking skate, lol. So saying, I do think the Swiss skate looks ok.