I had a hotspot where the stitching stuck out and was tacked into the shoe. I got a nail file and gently sanded it, obviously not enough to break the stitching but enough to sand down the tack and soften the stitching a bit. Worked like a charm, took me 20 mins to do and a bit of wearing to ease it out.
Dude… after 15 years of climbing on beginner shoes, I finally started working hard and leveling up. Bought the dope solutions… however the big toe knuckle was impossible painful. Just tried your trick with a ball bearing and a shoe horn and light heat. It works dudes. It works great. In one little session working on the rubber, it went from awful pain to wayyy better tolerable climbable. It will be interesting to see how it continues to break in. Thank you
Good suggestion. Unfortunately my shoes have rubber all over the area. I thought I had blown $240 Australian, even after a shoetree stretch, but tried cotton wool stickytaped between my big toe and the offending first little toe. Works ok now, for short climbs.
Had a very successful break in experience with my Evolv Shamans that took the skin off my big toe on my first climb. Cut two small pieces of neoprene from an old pair of kids wetsuit gloves (1.5mm thick'ish) and covered my big and second toes. Went from painful to comfortable immediately and five sessions later they were broken in and comfortable barefoot. Edit: Did the same with my LS Miura laces which I had not been able to use because of too painful hotspots that up to that point I had failed to remove no matter what methods I had tried, including shoe slave with wood inserts under hot spots.
Thanks! Will this also work on heel hotspots (I bought my first pair today and they really started hurting my achilles after a few climbs). Or are there maybe different tips for that? Thanks in advance!
I did that with my LLBean duck boots. The ball on my left big toe was on 🔥 fire . I stuffed my duck boot 🥾 with a large Idaho potatoe 🥔 and poured scalding hot water 💦 to stretch the area where the ball of my big toe rests on the boot. I didn’t think it would work because the hot spot area is made of thick rubber but eventually it did relax the rubber a bit.
I use a cobblers hammer (but I guess any without sharp edges would work) and smack the rubber just in the hotspots against the wooden last, this softens and stretches the rubber just in that place. This is faster method that works for me:)
+Somepaintballguy how new are the shoes? The amount of stretch differs from shoe to shoe, and the rubber compound that each manufacturer or model uses. Removing hotpots or stretching the shoe will make marginal changes, if you're finding that the difference is too, little perhaps the shoe size is too small? Other than that, climbing with the shoe in smaller increments will stretch the shoe out more naturally but will take longer.
