welcome to a brand new episode of bike fit tuesdays in today's
episode we're going to be covering pedals
all of these pedals here most of them are clip-less the clipless pedal thing thing's
quite confusing isn't it because they're not clipless they clip in so we're going
to run through one by one each of these most popular pedal systems and hopefully
that will help your decision making process if you are looking at using one of them number one
this is the original clipless pedal it originally came out with a with a fixed clip like a black
cleat and that that tends to cause problems for quite a lot of athletes way back when in the 1980s
uh not none of it was fixed until time i'll talk about in a minute um developed
a free flight system they come in a multitude of different materials they come with a multitude of
different axle options in terms of the material so you can have chromoly axles or promoter steel
or a titanium axle you get a number of different bearing options and uh some of them
offer adjustability a lot of the high-end ones use this uh carbon leaf spring to offer you retention
uh i i personally i actually don't like this because it lacks any adjustment and uh it can
wear out so the system i tend to recommend the keyo2 max which is an adjustment um uh adjustment
to it for the for the release tension uh i tend to recommend these for lighter riders for a lighter
or smaller ride as as the um the resistance isn't quite as strong as it is on some of the other
systems we're going to look at today uh it's also kind of brand neutral so if you've got a campag
bike or a sram bike it's a little bit of a faux pas to have shimano pedals on your bike um but so
this offers a brand new alternative it's very very similar to an spd sl in terms of its engagement
performance functions not quite as stable though because it develops rock quite quickly
three different cleat options a gray four and a half degree float a red nine degree float and the
illustrious work of the devil the black zero flick never use those and if you cherish your knees
they've got a number of different price points starting from like 30 40 quid going all the way
up to 250 quid for a top end titanium axle with middle roller bearings they also interestingly
have slightly longer threads on them which allows you to stance them out a little bit more than you
can with their other counterparts so that can be useful uh in a bike fitting scenario we now
have um some specific two millimeter thick pedal washers that we got from our friends at form iron
this brings us on to uh our next system which is one of my least favorite systems the time
system is the very first system to offer any form of float just to be clear float is
the amount of rotation that you see in the cleat in the pedal it allows the the foot to travel a
slightly more natural movement uh and it tends to save your knees a little bit so these are the
first people to develop a pedal which had any amount of play between the cleat and the pedal
the reason i dislike this is that it doesn't really have any adjustment in terms of starts
at the cleat so the cleat is basically fixed in one place from a medial lateral perspective
and it can't really be adjusted furthermore there isn't really much rotational adjustment
uh benefits are it's mutually balanced and mutually weighted which means that it's quite
easy to clip into uh it's very very popular with riders who who struggle with clipping in and out
so again it's a light action system similar to the look system which means that newer
riders might benefit from them uh more seasons riders i mean i certainly speak for myself here
where i find i used to pull out them all the time uh so if you if you're putting
quite a lot of power through it it tended not to be quite so good in retaining the retaining
the cleat uh again multitude a plethora of different uh materials and and tensions and
bearing qualities but like i say it's one of my least favorite but might be good for a beginner
this brings us on to my favorite system and without shadow of a doubt our most popular
system in the store shimano's spd sl uh sorry these are my old pedals they are minging comes
in a multitude of of different materials starting with a plastic pedal so actually starting with a
metal pedal sorry which is an r540 which you can pick up online for probably 20 30 quid
all the way up to the uh carbon fiber japanese needle roller bearing dura ace pedal this is by
far and away the most stable system it's got the widest contact patch it's also the most durable
the bearing quality on these is second to none it's better than basically every other pedal
here in my opinion and uh the the cleats is also extremely durable one of the best options about
the spd sl is the sle which is an extended axle four millimeter axle extension this is
this probably comprises about 95 of our pedal sails is an spd sle on the grounds
the bicycles typically are designed around 20 year old athletes who weigh 60 kilos and
need to pedal through corners doesn't represent the individual that buys them who are typically
individuals of a slightly larger proportions and older generation anyway this is one of
my best-selling pedals it tends to result in a much better connection with the pedal it's very
good at relieving symptoms like pressure on the outside of the foot and ultimately
a certain a certain take egg and heart start using these recently on my recommendation so
that's my favorite bearing quality is fantastic uh really good levels of stiffness super durable
the cleats are super cheap to replace their own about 20 pounds as with the look you have uh three
cleat options you have the yellow which is six degrees the blue which is two and a half degrees
and the work of the devil again the red which is zero degrees which fixes your foot
i've had to move location because people keep coming into my shop and spending money
bloody customers my perhaps well not perhaps it is my least favorite uh this is an old version
it's now being taken on by um the people at wahoo uh speedplay now there are a number of benefits
to a speedplay system it offers the most adjustability i would argue too much
uh but it does offer a dual sided uh entry system so you you basically can just stamp on the thing
and away you go these have enjoyed the myth that they cure knee pain for a very long time
we actually see a stronger correlation between these causing knee pain and the other way around
but ultimately i wouldn't go as far as to say that any pedal system causes knee pain per se uh it is
our least favorite system on the ground that has a much reduced contact patch uh there's a lot of
people who this is gonna be quite unpopular but uh there's a lot of people who will talk about
a shoe being like a carbon fiber sole offering the same level of stability but frankly the
pedal still isn't as stable as something like a shimano actually the lack of stability tends to
come from the c-spring that retains the cleat on the pedal wearing at quite an alarming rate
usually within a thousand miles or so which means that the pedal tends to develop rock so
with large riders it tends not to be a great system furthermore since wahoo took the system on
it they have removed the two major benefits from behind using the system one was the four
off extender plate which enabled you to get the cleat significantly further back on the shoe so
if you had a shoe that was perhaps too big or it didn't the cleat location didn't really work for
your foot then this plate enabled you to get the cleat much much further back on the shoe
taking pressure away from the the dense capillary structure of the forefoot this no longer exists
you can also no longer get different axle lengths once upon a time speed plate was available in in
as much as four or five different axle lengths which enabled you to increase the stance quite
dramatically in some cases which enabled you to optimize the rider's pedaling dynamics uh i'm sad
to say that that has now gone so unfortunately sorry wahoo by far away my least favorite pedal
system we find ourselves removing a lot of these and replacing them with the schmoyer they come
with a little aero covers that go over the cleats they probably are aerodynamic the other thing that
people quite like the fact that they're a very light pedal but that's then accompanied by a
very heavy clean so it sort of outweighs the the weight saving but you know if if if you want to
be really fastidious about your about your clean setup i don't believe you need to be but if you
do want to be then this could be a good system for you because it offers a huge amount of adjustments
there are lots of other road systems this this key win and all these other kind of slightly
more obscure brands campaniolo used to do a road pedal as well uh but those are the main
ones that are that are worth noting those are the ones that you'll tend to find in the marketplace
we probably want to talk about particularly with the rise of gravel uh off-road and mountain bike
cleats that have a uh or pedal sorry that have a recessed cleat when we say recess
cleat the clutch you don't actually walk on the on the surface of the cleat you walk or
the the cleats it's recessed up underneath the sole of the shoe uh this is probably the most
popular one this is a shimano spd uh these again come in several different iterations
it's got much shedding ability dual sided entry and again comes in a plethora of different options
some of them i ride them on a mountain bike with a kind of little cage around the outside which
tends to improve stability a little bit it's also a much bigger it's a bigger target for your foot
so when you're trying to clip in particularly mid trail if you if you pop out accidentally
then it makes it easier to get get on get onto the pedal again huge amount of adjustment with these
really really great system starts about 30 quid and goes all the way up to a couple hundred for
your top end xtr jobs with titanium axles there is also now this is quite a rare or uncommon sighting
this is an sq lab extended axle spd you probably won't need these on your mountain bike because
a mountain bike's bottom bracket is wider than a road but going back to what we were talking about
earlier about bicycles all being a little bit too narrow for a lot of consumers that ride them
this is again it has the same benefit of the long axle shimano spd sl that we were talking about
earlier in that it offers an eight millimeter it's it's a six or eight millimeter increase in
the stance i can't remember which is fundamentally exactly the same as a standard spd at the moment
you can't get them uh i have been trying for some months to try and get about a boatload of them to
sell them via our webstore uh we're gonna put a link to our webstore down there i must say that
if you're thinking about going to long axle pedals it's worth employing the help of your bike fitter
asking them whether it whether it's going to you know work for you or not if you're a really super
skinny individual that's relatively short might not be the right thing for you but then again
you know i've fitted small people on the with these and have gotten really great results so in
conclusion slightly smaller pedal the cleats very small as well so slightly smaller contact patch
which tends to yield slightly less stability as we've discussed with the speed play but uh so
you might want to think about getting a stiffer shoe or more supportive shoe particularly going
to be using it for bike packing or gravel riding that kind of thing but it does enable you to walk
around in them because of the recess cleats set up so something just worth thinking about as well
i'm only talking about this because francis is making me this is a flat
pedal this is what we all used to ride with um toe clips and death straps uh once upon a time
this in performance cycling i don't think has much place it basically enables you to
just stand on it and pedal the benefit of a clipless system over this is the well let's
talk about the reason why i don't believe in this ultimately it enables your foot to move
around on it it doesn't keep your foot fixed in an optimal place and but and that is probably why
a lot of riders who use these over eclipse pedal don't get so many issues because it enables their
feet to sort of self select so for example if you need a wider stance your foot will sit on the
outside if you need more rotation or not few very few people do but if you need loads of rotation
you can sit with your feet like so uh furthermore it doesn't require there aren't any ramifications
behind using a poor quality shoe uh other than the fact that this is usually quite soft in
when using conjunction with these that's sort of the benefit but it doesn't keep your
foot in an optimal place so your foot moves around which influences your sample height
influences your foot uh stability frankly it'll even influence your saddle comfort if you're
just kind of popping down the shops that sort of thing then this is absolutely fine maybe you know
chasing the kids around the park this is also fine if you're going to be doing longer distances the
softer sole associated with shoes that tend to be used with these tend not to offer as
much stability and support so as a result you tend to get kind of foot problems that sort of
thing as a result of using this sort of system that marks the end of today's episode of bike
fit tuesdays let us know in the comment section down below what pedal system that you're using if
you have any questions please put them in the comment section as well and we'll do our best
to answer them if you would like to book a fit with james website is in that description down
below thank you for watching please like and subscribe and all that stuff and bye