Are you struggling to find out how to lace hiking boots properly because you are experiencing crazy blisters due to choosing the wrong way to tie your boots?
“Incorrectly lacing your boots can cause various problems to your feet: blackened toenails, blisters, etc., in extreme cases, it can even reduce the lifetime of your boots.” – Alex D. Bowen, author of huntingbootsbrand.com
Luckily, you don't need to worry anymore, as htbbrand.com can help you address this question and pursue your passion for trekking without any confusion. Let's dive into it!
How To Lace Hiking Boots?
How to tie hiking boots to prevent blisters is a commonly asked question in many trekking forums recently. In this blog, we will dig into three main methods to re-tie your hiking boots for foot discomfort relief; they include: Surgeon's Knot to stave off heel slip, window lacing for alleviating top-of-feet pressure, and toe-relief lacing’s technique for releasing toe-box pressure.
Surgeon's Knot
First of all, we are going to mention the principal way, namely Surgeon's Knot.
During your trekking trip, your heel has excessively slipped, possibly because you carry too much weight on your back and directly affect your feet. In this situation, cinch down the boot and use two surgeon's ties to keep it. When these points are secured, they will hold secured places and will not run themselves loose.
- Snuggling your boot following in the direction of the top of your feet, then tug off slack of the laces.
- At the point when the upper of your feet start to bend forward, you need to identify the location of the top two pairs of these lacing hooks; make sure that you knot a surgeon's tie at every one of those pairs.
- Cover these laces roughly each other two times, then tug them tight; make sure to work these laces directly over to the following hooks to “lock” in the tie's tension.
- At the following set of lacing hooks, particularly the top point, let's redo step 3.
- Finish knotting the residue of the boot in your familiar way.
Window Lacing
If you are in an annoying situation stemmed from your too-tied boots, which begins creating a certain pressure point on your feet. This window lacing way (or called with another name -” box lacing”) could help lessen the issue:
- The hooks are below the stress point, which needs to be unknotted down.
- After that, going right up to the following hook to re-lace and cross those laces over.
- Carry out knotting the residual of the boot in your familiar way. Besides, you can also lace a surgeon's tie at the upper and lower edge of the window for a more comfortable hold.
Toe-relief Lacing’s Technique
In case your toes usually injure when you trek, the stopgap way could recover your digit and allow it to back the trailhead quickly. This way can lessen pressure on your feet, especially your toes.
- Firstly, unlace your boost entirely.
- Knot it back except the highest set of hooks to release some pressure from the toe box and give more comfort to your toes.
Some Basic Tips To Lace Hiking Boots Properly
Use The Right Bootlaces
The majority of boots come in the market with long laces to permit various techniques or tricks. Hence, you can apply any lacing ways with these laces.
If your shoelaces last for a long time and are worn or torn out, you should consider buying new ones that suit both the length and the shape (flat, oval, or round) of your previous shoes to replace.
Please be mindful in choosing the right boot laces, as too tight lacing hiking boots for wide feet will not match ideally to your feet ‘ and shoe shape. As a result, there would be no flexibility, leading to pressure marks on your feet.
Use Suitable Hiking Socks
Wearing proper and correct socks is necessary to avoid or minimize the percentage of marks and even blisters. They bring cushioning/ softening at some problem sections like the ball or heel of your feet, to name a few.
Especially with a waterproof pair of shoes, you need some socks that are good at absorbing sweat without feeling annoyed or wet. In this case, Merino-wool socks are a relatively perfect option. While cotton socks are unsuitable because they easily lose their shape, wrinkles will make you feel wet as they stick to your sweaty skin after being soaked or washed with water.
Thus, socks are crucial to making sure that it doesn't have any friction between shoes and feet; which is the first condition to prevent blisters.
Note: if your skin is too sensitive to catch blisters, you may try to put tight and thin nylon socks in your shoes under your socks. In this way, the cloth of your trekking socks will not rub against your skin but slide mildly onto this pair of nylon socks.
Center The Flap
A flap (a tongue of shoes) sliding to one side could cause a crease and annoying pressure marks. At this point, the tugging power of laces can not deliver evenly, and our feet will feel pressure and hurt while hiking on the trip.
You must ensure that the flap is placed in the center and sometimes inspected during the trekking. Besides, some trekking boots come in the current market with outstanding hooks that fixate the flap in the middle.
If you have tried all of the mentioned ways and tips above, but your toes and feet still feel hurt as they were when you trek, you can try heel lock lacing boots- a wise trick to knot laces.
You can also bring spare comfortable hiking boots to replace the uncomfortable ones you are wearing to lessen the pressure on your feet on the long trekking trip. Furthermore, don't forget to learn how to tie hiking boots to backpack before starting your tour.
Conclusion
If you have reached these final lines, we believe that you’ve got a clear view of how to lace hiking boots and some practical tricks to prepare for your next trip.
Thank you for reading. If you feel our article is useful for you, don't forget to follow us and share it with others to have more tips for our lives.
