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Greno steel city yesterday morning for the jumps - flats
Wharny yesterday afternoon for the jank - clips
Persevere....
One advantage of clips I've not heard yet is the ability to hop the back end of the bike sideways without lifting the front
With flats, to do that you've either got to stoppie or do a proper hop. Which may not be possible, and/or it is slower
One advantage of clips I’ve not heard yet is the ability to hop the back end of the bike sideways without lifting the front
No, you can do that with flats?
you can do it without lifting the front wheel but it does require some additional movement/weight shift - if you are doing something technical enough to warrant a rear wheel hop, this may not be easy to do.
with clips you can just bend at the knees for a little hop/rear wheel line correction.
I'm a big flats fan but I do see this as a clip advantage. Of course anything needing this sort of move, is the sort of ride I'd hate to be clipped in for...
I moved to flats about 18months ago after 20 years on spds
its taken me a while but Im very happy now, even for longer xc rides, when I thought Id be back on spds, back wheel lifts, jumping and bunny hopping now as good as I was on spds, just takes practice
Big win for me has been comfort on long rides and confidence on very steep techy stuff
Ive been riding a hardtail a lot more recently and thats taken a bit of getting used, to stop getting my foot bounced off my foot through rough stuff, requires a bit more heels down technique
For me if I know I’m doing a technical rocky steep uphill, then it’s flats…..
After one incredibly painful episode of falling backwards on a steep rocky climb while unable to unclip in time…..that was a painful lesson!
hardtailonly
Full MemberMaybe I shouldn’t be trying to progress with my jumping at the same time as trying flats?
So the question is, what are your goals? Do you actually want to progress and develop good skills? Or do you want to get down the trail by whatever means? The difference is basically that you can use SPDs to jump with poor technique and still get the job done, while if you do the same with flats you just crash.
Where that becomes more important is if you want to progress further- eventually if you want to jump further, or better, or use techniques like prejumping or doing direciton changes etc, you need to get good, you can't just use the hardware to do the job. That has tons of transferrable benefits into other areas too. And at that point, a lot of people find themselves pretty stuck because they're not just learning new stuff, they're needing to unlearn old stuff, the tricks that got them so far can hold them back and just make it really hard to progress.
franksinatra
Full Member<quoting someone else> You need to stick with it for a few months
But why? What is the advantage? I went back to clipless at the weekend and it just felt right.
Because you can't make an educated decision unless you're equally skilled and equally comfortable and equally familiar with both types, basically. it's a bit like what I said just here ^^^ the question is whether that matters. Is stopping using what you're already skilled and comfortable and familiar with worth it to experiment? Will you put in the effort, will you get over the big advantage that your current pedals have and ever actually make that fair decision? And in the end, will it even be different? That's the clincher, you have to put in time and effort and suffer some worse rides, and in the end you might just learn "ok I actually do prefer this".
But, I would add that if riding on flats feels really wrong, and riding on SPDs feels really right, that's probably not just familiarity, you probably have some counterproductive stuff from the SPDs that makes it harder to ride on flats than it should be. Lots of people don't move well with the bike, they fight the suspension and the tyres and they basically only stay together because they're bolted together. And being bolted together is really useful, but it's unhelpful to depend on it. You want to be cooperating with the bike and if you're doing that, you don't need to be bolted on. People who can switch easily between the two are generally better riders.
(myself, I like to know. And I absolutely do believe that both pedals tend to teach us things.
I’m very fussy about my saddle adjustment and I need to move my saddle forward and down a bit when switching to flats.
Somehow this small adjustment also helps with keeping my feet properly over pedal axles.