I'm 90% sure you're talking about the cable cover (the thing that makes it look like a shoe)...if that's the case, I personally take them off, they get in the way, make is harder to buckle the cables and more importantly it can cause the cables to go into the wrong grooves (so like both sides of the cable goes into 1 groove) which not only ruins the flex of the boot, it can also ruin the cables themselves.