Breaking-in hiking boots can be a pain. Get tips and advice on backpacking, hiking, and the great outdoors in this video.
Use more time to break in bigger boots
Wear boots around the house first
Avoid long hikes
John Flaherty has a great love for the outdoors. In 2003, John and his wife started Central Coast Outdoors in northern California. His company provides hiking, kayaking, and biking services for those wanting to be closer to nature. John has traveled all around the world through his love of hiking.
JOHN FLAHERTY: "Oh God, these boots! Oh! It hurt! Oh!" Oh hi, my name is John. And today we are going to talk about breaking in hiking boots. That is not a good situation to be in. A place where you feet hurt so much you just cannot stand your boots and you want to take them off and huck them away from you and give up hiking forever. Not a good situation to get into. Let us talk about how to avoid that by breaking in boots properly. These boots that we have here are relatively heavy duty hiking boots. They are not up and over the ankle, but they have got a lot of good support and they are pretty thick and heavy. In general, the bigger, heavier and stiffer your boots are, the more you are going to want to spend time breaking them in. If you just have a pair of running shoes or very light weight hiking shoes, they are often pretty good to go right out of the box. I would go for a shorter hike, maybe two or three miles in those types of shoes. And if it is not a problem, you are good to go. The bigger and heavier shoes, I would spend a lot more time breaking them in gradually. First, I might wear them around the house or doing light yard work. And if there are no problems after that, then I might go on a short hike. Two or three miles on level terrain, and do that several times. Then and only then will I take it on a full day hike, eight to ten miles, something like that would be good. All the while, these shoes are forming to your feet. What you want to avoid is doing a huge hike right away in very stiff boots because they can rub on your feet and produce blisters, the big bad B word. Blisters are very bad. So after you spent several shorter hiking days hiking in your stiffer hiking boots, then it is appropriate to take them out if you want to for a backpacking trip where you might be going for multiple days and carrying a lot of weight. The more weight you carry, the more important it is for those boots to be broken in. So, do not end up like I was all frustrated with you boots! Spend time with them, break them in gently and they will treat you well.
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