I have had my Them 909s for a few months already when I started noticing pain on the side of my ankle when skating for about half an hour.
As there are so many people recommending Intuition, praising their liners for their good fit, I got their Premium model, hoping to eradicate that pain.
When I tried them I was promptly disappointed: It hurt even more. I removed that velcro wrap which made it better, but still not better than with the old liners.
I went online and learnt that you could heat mold them, which I tried, not going overboard with the temperature, though. It made it better, I guess?
But it still hurts, so I continued my research and found several people claiming that the liners need to be broken in for about ten to twenty hours. I hope they are right, I will not give up yet.
Update (3 days later)
Two days ago I skated them for three hours straight. At first it felt quite alright, especially my right foot felt fine, but there was some discomfort on my left one.
After a while that discomfort turned into pain, and after another while I somewhat got used to it. I got the feeling that I was breaking in my feet instead of the liners.
Unfortunately, my left foot still hurts when I put pressure on that one hot spot. I won’t skate until that spot has fully recovered, otherwise I couldn’t judge if liner becomes better anyway.
I had the same issue with the shells on my Powerslide 100 skates. I ended up replacing the stock liners with 2nd Skin liners and that helped a ton. The reality is that the stock liners were way too thick for me, even after heat-molding them. I still had some pain but it was way more manageable. The skates feel amazing now and I never have any looseness or instability issues.
You can try heating the shell too and pulling it open gently. This video goes through some things you can try, and he also goes into detail about heat-molding your shell and your liners.
Thanks for the info, glad you found a nice setup! Never considered heating the boot itself, seems kinda risky.
It turned out that the Intuition liners do adapt to your feet after skating them for a while. I could even put the valcro butterflies back on for better responsiveness without introducing new hot spots.
How about the 2nd Skin liners? Did they require much breaking in? Or did they fit right away?
That’s awesome. Glad they’re starting to feel better! It sucks having to power through that break-in period, but I always try to stress that it requires a little time.
The 2nd Skin liners were immediately a fit for me. I have pretty flat feet that are a little wider than usual, and they required almost no break-in time. I didn’t have to heat mold them or anything (you can though if needed).