Bootfitter Training Options
There are two ways to become a competent, respected, and sought after bootfitter. One way is to get hired at one of hundreds of ski shops around the country that need help for the season, and once you are on the payroll hope that the shop boot tech will let you learn from him.
Another way for you to get on the right road to becoming a master bootfitter is to seek out one of Masterfit University introductory, or Associates course in bootfitting. Masterfit "U" holds these courses each fall and most participants in the Associates program are sent there by ski shops. I recommend that anyone interested in a career in the ski business as a bootfitter should invest the money and time to take this course.
At the Masterfit U seminar you don't have to hope for a teacher with experience; at the course I attended the staff had well over a hundred years of combined bootfitting experience. Every instructor seemed honestly glad to be there and happy to pass on their knowledge of the craft.
To be sure, you are not going to leave at the end of the Associate course totally capable of diagnosing and fixing major boot problems, but you will leave fully versed in the basics of making people more comfortable in their ski boots.
Know Your Job
The Associate course is structured on understanding what your duties as an aspiring bootfitter are, and then adding skill sets to the basics. Remember that you, as a salesperson, sell the ski boots, but you, as a bootfitter, take that sale a step further. When you make boot and foot accommodations that bring a person to a neutral ski stance, with good body alignment, you set them up to ski better. Once the customer realizes that he or she does ski better, you have made your shop a loyal customer.
When you, as a bootfitter, make modifications to a walk-in customer's boots that relieves pain or makes the boot fit better you not only make a loyal customer, but probably a friend for life.
Know Your Customer
It was quite obvious that the Masterfit instructors had years of experience dealing with people looking to buy ski boots. One of the keys to their success in the business was their personalities, or you might say, their salesmanship. However, this salesmanship was also a way to engage a customer in assessing their skiing abilities and experiences, to better point the customer to a certain range of ski boots. Listening to these seasoned bootfitters explain how to profile the customer, Associate participants learned that you are not doing the customer, or your shop, any favors putting someone with very little experience into a shiny new race boot.
The message here is to fit the person to the boot and then fit the boot to the foot. This way the customer becomes a better skier and becomes a returning customer that may someday buy that expensive plug boot.
Learning to Start at the Bottom - of the Foot
In the Masterfit U course I attended, if the trainees took away nothing else from the course, it was to make sure the boot size and volume are correct; and know that a good boot fit always includes either a prefabricated or custom foot bed. With this as a base rule you can fix a majority of ski boot problems.
The instructors demonstrated that the ski boot liners and the generic foot bed in new ski boots are made to be comfortable on the "average" foot. In reality, there is no "average foot." Sure we all have the same number of foot and ankle bones, but their size and exact placement varies like fingerprints.
To make the boots our own, we really need a base molded to fit the nuances of the bottom of our feet. Then to cure the world's main boot fitting problem - the unstable foot - the rigidity of the foot bed comes into play. Listening to the instructors explain the benefits of a foot bed, you would wonder why anyone would want to ski without them.
Really, if you are confident that foot beds help you ski better, and once you know why, you will be more confident passing that on to a customer. That's what you learn here from the foot bed pros.
Hands On Footbed Making - The Instaprint Zapz
The Masterfit U Associate course gives you the hands-on benefit of molding and fitting a pair of Instaprint Zapz footbeds. The Zapz are semi-custom moldable prefabricated insoles that, while not making an exact imprint of the foot, come very close to full custom quality. Here you learn to make the initial fit with a personalized trim and how to microwave the Zapz footbeds. I actually had a personal fit done for a pair of Zapz last year by a master bootfitter and this hands on session tied a lot that together.
