It increases grip with the pedal, although it could also be described as keeping you ‘in’ the bike. Your feet can’t fly forwards off the pedal when the heels are down.
try it and see – seems to increase your linkage to the bike plus it keeps your weight behind the pedals I suppose, rather than edging forward towards the front of the bike.
Your feet can’t fly forwards off the pedal when the heels are down
they can slip behind the pedal if bounced off the pedal from a bump, and then your DMR style pedal rips the front of your shin open because the studs are so sharp, and then you spend 4+ hours in A&E waiting for it to be stitched up.
Manuals (lofting the front) isn’t really done by physically lifting the front with one’s arms; it’s more about moving body weight back and pushing the bike forward. This is considerably easier (at least for me) to do if the heels are down and I can push on the pedals with the soles of my feet. Im not sure I can even imagine how that would be possible if my toes were pointing down.
as above +
1. When you brake hard, your body carries moving forward. If your heels are down you move ‘into’ the pedals which stops your weight moving forwaard, If heels are high your weight is more likely to move forward and you over the bars (or at least, less control). Try stopped hard and throwing your weight back as you do it – feels much more controlled
2. If riding flats it means you push the bike back into the ground on drops – stops bike disappearing from beneath you and keeps you in control
its not just grip which wouldn’t apply if you were clipped in. Its not just lowering you centre of gravity, or you could just bend your knees. its to do with dynamic stability. With heals dropped if you brake hard or hit something as you move forward on the bike your centre of gravity will drop as your heals go down. So this drives the bike forward and resists you going over the bars.
So I have tried the heels down approach and it does feel more controlled. As I ride a hard tail I am used to using my legs to absorb impacts from drops etc. However with the heels down approach it does seem to mean that the legs are locked and therefore less able to flex with drops. Should I have heels down and bent knees?
yeah you need to drop your saddle on descents so that you can get your weight right back and over the back wheel. Don’t lock your knees, if you can’t be bothered lowering your saddle then try and at least keep ‘microbends’ in the knee otherwise you will end up having all sorts of joint problems. On a HT myself and find that hips and feet placement (as well as looking where you are going) is the most important thing, having hips and feet down and back allows the front wheel to skim over bumps more as well as feeling much more in control when going down steep bits (it also allows you to bail out safely as you can just get off the back of the bike)
Yes. For a lot of trail riding, the saddle’s ‘best’ place is high enough to still allow a fair degree of comfort/efficiency when you pedal, but low enough to allow you a good range of motion on the bike, and the bike a good range of motion under you.
After a few tips from still tortoise and Dale from off here, I’ve been practising hard with keeping the heels down on descents, it really works.
Also I’ve changed my brake levers to a better position so that my wrists aren’t so far over the bars, meaning i’m not reaching over and reducing my chances of going otbs.
It helps to keep your feet on the pedals if you’re running flats. Also puts your weight behind the mid point of the bike slightly, which keeps the front end light over bumps which reduces the eftect of the bumps on steering. It also helps keep the rear wheel planted and ploughing a straight furrow.
As jedi says + it keeps your weight back and into the bike to allow the front end to become light and take hits.
I can feel my saddle with my knees when descending which keeps me central.
when you get better you will find your all over the pedals transferring weight without thinking to much!
A wise bloke pointed out to me yesterday ‘it’s physics innit? Opposing forces. All forces you encounter riding along come at you in a diagonal direction from the ground upwards so having your wrists and heels dropped means you have something stable to push against.’
He then said something like ‘did that look alright?’ and went and rode some scary woodwork…
Dont just ride with your heels down
You need also to have your knees slightly bent including your arms.
The whole idea is to push into the terrain taking the impact of small and large hits.
and keeping traction with the bike and will also give you more control on the descents
When you feel right on this then try pumping for speed, the Two will become one
once you get the understanding of the first.
