Just rode the mile and a bit each way on an old bike of mine, with cheapy flat pedals on, my feet were all over the shop, sliding off the pedals, the works. Can’t ever see me using flats for any proper riding I do. Have SPuDs ruined me?

just wear shoes with a grippy sole instead!

Sounds more like you’ve ruined any technique you ever had all by yourself, you can’t blame the SPDs. plenty riders can switch between the two with no problems, just as many riders can ride flats perfectly well without having to resort to wearing shoes with stupidly grippy soles. 😉

just go and ride them more.

lower your saddle slightly (if the posts at full XC height) and ride stood up more to get a better feel of what’s going on with your feet.

No, SPDs are just better for pedalling. Not better for bailing out, but better for pedalling.

When people talk about ‘proper technique’ they are talking about jumping.

what people? “proper technique” is self explanitary and doesn’t only apply to jumping 😕

i cant bear using shoes that are too grippy

what people? “proper technique” is self explanitary and doesn’t only apply to jumping

Of course.. I meant when people talk about flats making you a better rider they’re not talking about pedalling technique (or they shouldnt be). They odn’t make you better up hills. Good pedalling technique is good for reasons of efficiency and it means you have to keep as smooth as possible all the way round, and to do that well you need spds.

people often talk about ‘pedalling technique’ as if such a thing existed – however, unless your feet actually come off the pedals, they are constrained to follow a rigidly circular path (or a cycloid to be pedantic) and the various methods discussed are purely mental constructs, surely ?

Well I reckon I’d ride like a sack of shit on flats, whereas with spds I can be just plain old shit.

I’m sure my feet would be coming off the pedals if used flats. Then again, I’m sure I’d get used to them.

molgrips – What a load of shite you talk 😕 (and whoever you’re listening to)

parts don’t make you a better rider, riding more and comitment does 🙄
and why would you need SPDs to pedal smoothly?

I ride flats. My feet kept sliding off on Wednesday. They were solid with ice 🙂

a bit of both here I reckon – flats teach you to balance better on the pedals, spds let you pedal in circles / pull up on the pedal.

to have proper technique you need to be able to do both. So riding on flats teaches you about balance and angles of the pedals which in turn will improve your jumping and general handling even if you use SPDs – thats how it works for me anyway.

I far prefer SPDs but a few hours on flats (with someone teaching me)improved my technique even using spds as I was better balanced on the pedals

I temd to think my problem is I was lifting my foot slightly off the pedal on each stroke. Strange, as I never realised that I pulled up so much.

TJ – you didn’t percivere long enough 😛

It’s possible to pedal in circles and pull up* just fine with flats too.

* well, actually you are pushing the rearward pedal back past the 6 Oclock position to the 9 Oclock position but by then your other foot is the one puting the most power down 😉
pedalling in circles with only one foot is also possible with flats although you will have close to no power as you go past the 9Oclock position up towards 12Oclock position. try it, it’s not difficult to do, do it for years and it’ll be second nature.

I only use SPDs on the roadbike these days but other than the fact I can’t shift my foot position as much I still pedal as if I was on flats.

paul – it’s more likely that you were simply no longer weighting the pedal enough (or using your foot position) for your shoe to keep a good grip of the pedal after the downstroke. (this is why I recomended you to drop your saddle a bit and stand up more, once you’ve got the hang of it raise your saddle again (but slightly lower than full XC height) and you should be able to grip the pedals better seated.

you don’t need to be attached to ‘ankle’ properly. Pulling up is actually bad technique…

Jesus not this shit again.

What, talking about bikes, on a bike forum. It should be banned.

GW is talking a lot of sense.

“Good pedalling technique is good for reasons of efficiency and it means you have to keep as smooth as possible all the way round, and to do that well you need spds”

bolloks, unnless your stood up you barely have any ability to pull up o the pedals. The mechanical leverage is enought to pull your knee apart (got bored in a lecture and word it out). If you could put in 10% of the force into the upstroke as the downstroke your ligaments would part company with their respective bones and youd be in a lot of pain.

Its perfectly easy to pedal smoothly sitting down with flats as it is with spd’s, the only time i ever miss spd’s is when its frozen an as SFB said, your feet end up going everywhere (but then i guess spd’s ‘d be frozen as wel)

quite.

Have you ever seen a 1 legged cyclist?
I’ve been passed by Brett Wolfe on a race climb.. guarantee that he was putting more than 10% through his upstroke… otherwise he wouldn’t be going anywhere.. let along up.

According to a book I have on the side, “mountain bike skills – brian lopes & lee mccormack”, pedalling should involve a little ‘scoop backwards’ during the pedal stroke (at approx 5 to 8 o’clock) and then a pull upwards. (there is a lot more info, too much to regurgitate here)

that’s based on clippy-pedals though of course.

I ride clippy on my commuter/none mountain bike, and flats on the hardtail. I find my pedalling ‘technique’ is helped to become smoother and less bashing up and down using the clips, so when riding on flat pedals, my pedalling technique (if you can call it that) feels a lot smoother, ergo, more efficient.

Then again, my comments are from a bloke with one leg shorter than the other, so perhaps take it with a pinch of salt.
jt

thisisnotaspoon -s, the only time i ever miss spd’s is when its frozen an as SFB said, your feet end up going everywhere (but then i guess spd’s ‘d be frozen as wel)

*cough* 5 10s *cough* cough*

GNARGNAR – Member

thisisnotaspoon -s, the only time i ever miss spd’s is when its frozen an as SFB said, your feet end up going everywhere (but then i guess spd’s ‘d be frozen as wel)

*cough* 5 10s *cough* cough*

They’re supposed to be super sticky aren’t they? Almost as if there’s a spring loaded mechanism holding your shoe to the pedal.

ladies, gays and mincers = Spuds
Granrly huckmeisters = flats
everyone else = applaud or mock the above?

So let me get this straight, if you use flats you are automatically better at mountain biking? I must have been amazing when I first started.

Horses of courses, the XC world champs will never be won on flat pedals………….
but i’ve heard that said before! (About the DH world champs)

As for flats making you better, I wouldnt say beter, just different. It teaches you not to rely on being cliped in to get you through sections. I also think ive got more confidence at high speeds on flats, esecialy over anything technical or corners. But equaly i recon spd’s make learning certain things easier, its not safer to learn jumping at the BMX track on spd’s, but it is easier.

GNARGNAR it wasnt my shoes at fault, there was ice frozen over the pedals to a depth that completely covered the pins, ergo no grip at all! Unless 5.10 have brought out crampons they’d have been equaly useless.

Flats don’t automatically make you a better rider but I reckon they are better for technique in general. Clips seem to help at high cadences, but that’s not what you’re doing for most of the time on a mountain bike. Having ridden with clips for years, a few years of BMX riding got me off spds and crap bunnyhops 🙂 I find I have much more control over the bike with flats and you actually feel better connected to the bike. You can pedal fine too, you shouldn’t be actively pulling up anyway so you don’t need to be attached…

maybe my maths was wrong regarding the one legged thing, tbh it wa based on a lot of assumptions about lengts/cross sectional areas etc etc

hats off to the one legged guy, read a story about him doing a south africa multi day enduro. IIRC he had to retire due to tired arms! But i still suspect if you hooked his bike upto a powertap its probably stil 90%+ on his downstroke.

and…………….

Look at the size of your quad, Vs your hip flexor (just baove the quad conecting your hips to your legs), thats the muscle that puls up on your leg, its failry small.

this is not a spoon – since using spds both me and my missus have developed a muscle on the outer edge of the shin – that one lifts your toes up – definitely a sign of pulling up as well as pushing down consistently.

If / when my feet get cold I do a few turns pulling up only to alter the blood flow – feels weird but gets the blood flowing and I don’t really slow down much

I ride flat pedals and can pull up on the up stroke, just by tilting the pedal forwards and pushing back and up, makes for a more consistant power stroke.

Basically what MrNutt said is 100% the truth and dont let anyone tell you different.

I can’t find my copy of Bicycling Science anywhere. But there was a proper experiment in there, with strain gauges and pro cyclists and that, that found that they didn’t “pull up” on the pedals at all. Unweight them a bit, but not pull up.

It’s all about personal preference I think, I rode flats for years, got a new hardtail decided to try spd’s. 8 months later I’m fed up of smashing the crap out of my knees by not unclipping in time (I don’t blame the pedals by the way I know it’s all about my use of them) so I’ll be getting some new flats and AM40’s.

Mates who ride SPD’s are far more graceful than me, I just prefer the option to bail out without having to unclip as I’m just not as graceful.

unnless your stood up you barely have any ability to pull up o the pedals.

You do. At least, I do. I pull up a bit, not yanking hard on the pedals (obviously). So I should listen to TINAS instead of countless cycling coaches telling me to pedal in circles then? Right, got that. TINAS knows best 🙂

There’s a theory that suggests pulling up on the pedals can help over rough terrain – or at least pedalling circles so that you can keep torque really constant. On road you can get away with mashing the pedals a lot less evenly.

How about you (people who only ride spuds) try this. Pedal without pushing down, only pull up and see how far you actually get, how fast you can go and how long you can maintain it for.

Then sit and think for a minute about how much input “Pulling Up” actually has on your pedaling cycle (pardon the pun).

I don’t know the answer (not being a sports scientist who specialises in pedaling dynamics) but it’d be nice to know, how about some video evidece too ❓

Is one way to look at simialr to the moving of a heavy object; it’s far easier and more productive to push than it is to pull (assuming it’s a flat surface with identical friction in either horizontal plane)

Doh, Double postage

Steve, pulling up on the pedals doesn’t generate as much power as pushing down – that’s obvious. However it helps. Or rather, pedalling in circles helps which means a bit of pulling up and a bit of pushing forwards and backwards. The idea is to be a bit more consistent. It helps efficiency and it also helps in low traction scenarios.

Most coaches agree on this.

Is one way to look at simialr to the moving of a heavy object; it’s far easier and more productive to push than it is to pull

Totally different. Depends entirely on the situation.

steve: i do – it’s called pedalling drills! then i do only the top section then the bottom.

to the op: had that about 6 months ago – seeing as i came from a bmx/ trials background i was pretty unimpressed with myself – i’ve now got one bike that runs flat pedals most of the time and i’m actively trying to ride with flats more.

IMO: the best technique will come from riding both. It’s a bit like DHrs doing XC training and vice versa.

Its actually easier to pull something that push it as you don’t apply the force horizontally when you push something like a heavy box.

totally non applicable to this situation anyway

I was thinking about the pulling up with spds yesterday when riding. I could hear / feel the cleat moving in the pedals to take out the vertical float so for sure I was putting some upwards force in – click click each pedal turn and the evidence from the muscle development in my legs convinces me – the minor muscle that lifts your toe is noticeably more developed since I started using spds

Steve – you I can do that and often do for short periods. Its nothing like as powerful but I can mantain my speed