Thanks for your bike cleat survey responses over the past few months (it’s still open if you’re interested in filling it out).
For over 10 years I have been fitting athletes, including many people in this forum, using prototypes and variants of a device I call the Cleat Key. It’s a tool designed to help any cyclist properly install their road bike cleats. Using this tool in conjunction with a simple protocol allows the user to properly install a bike cleat, and most importantly, set a cleat rotation angle that works.
Although there are expensive fitter-specific tools designed to help a professional bike fitter set up your cleats, and consumer-level tools designed to help you document your cleat settings, there has never really been an affordable tool that an individual cyclist (or fitter) can use to quickly map foot/body alignment to a cleat rotation angle on the shoes, and quantify it accurately. Getting the cleat rotation angle right is perhaps the most important aspect of a cleat fitting.
To date I’ve fitted around 600 people using prototypes of this device, including numerous age-group athletes at Ironman, IM 70.3, and UCI events who have stood on podiums around the world. The patent application and trademarks have been registered and I’m launching on Kickstarter in a few days. Given the difficult past 2 years, it’s been great to have this very positive project to work on. It launches on Kickstarter in a few days. Any feedback much appreciated!
A fellow bike fitter just asked me via our FB page: “Your tool focuses on cleat rotation angle… You mention fore-aft placement in the KS promo video, but what about the lateral (left-right) adjustment?”
In making the promo video, instruction video and the tool itself, I had a long think about whether to include a discussion on cleat lateral adjustment. We decided to omit it from the video for a number of reasons:
For simplicity: we thought we could interest more people with a shorter video - the tool is intended to help any serious cyclist set up their own cleats. It’s not exclusively a bike fitter tool.
For more focus on the cleat rotation angle: more people will benefit from a better understanding of how the cleat rotation angle affects their connection to the bike, vs. messing with the lateral adjustment. With a Shimano or Look cleat, you only have a potential for 1mm-2.5 ish mm max of lateral play. You have even less if you have a significant cleat rotation angle to set, say if you happen to have a large toe-out (duck foot) tendency. For example, I personally need around a 4-5 deg correction (I am very duck footed), so after I set that, I have zero possibility of lateral adjustment.
Some people have also asked me, “how would a lateral adjustment affect the cleat rotation angle”… well, for most people, even if you max out the lateral adjustment either way, it only changes the angle by a fraction of a degree. You can do the trigonometry and check that quite easily. So the protocol works. It’s robust, I’ve been testing it with prototypes of the tool on hundreds of customers for many years. I’ve found a better way to address left-right is with variable spindle lengths (like the Shimano +4mm Ultegra/Dura Ace) and/or spacers, after considering stance width given by the crank.
For completeness, left-right and the other FIVE degrees of freedom of a bike cleat are discussed in our FAQ (see under Cleat Fitting).
That said, I think the vast majority of riders (in the order of 2-3 standard deviations of the population, going from my customer base) would benefit more by simply setting a “correct” cleat rotation angle, and a fore-aft that works for them, while leaving the left-right centered. Some people who need a wider pedal stance can benefit from a longer spindle pedal (and/or spacers).
I saw an ad for this on Facebook the other day, thanks for posting here
I’ve never had a professional fit, and I usually just put my cleats on to something that looks like cleat positioning on other shoes. No doubt between 4 pairs of shoes / different types of cleats and pedals, I’m different between all my shoes. Tho I’ve never really felt more powerful based on any shoe / pedal combo
For someone like me, what type of power improvement would you think I’d see based on proper cleat alignment?
No, for many people the toe-out angle (foot splay) is different left/right. Most human bodies aren’t perfectly symmetric, and some imbalances are normal and expected. The process of determining how to set the left and right cleat rotation angles is shown in a short instruction video (and detailed written procedures, if you care for more detail).
I frequently see new customers who have previously set up their own cleats, and then come see me for a bike fitting, get it backwards. For example, I may observe that a client has significantly more right foot splay than left splay, but their cleats and shoes are set up the opposite way, with more splay on the left than the right. But, that’s what happens when there’s no way to quantify that cleat rotation number! That’s why I thought a tool like this was needed.
It would be impossible for me to give you a useful estimate of your potential power gain from having “properly” set cleats. It would depend on so many things, like:
your FTP and time/power curve;
how well or how badly set your cleats are currently;
design and sizing considerations between your different shoes (say a plastic sole vs a carbon sole);
etc.
However, I could definitely say that if you didn’t set them up properly, and in particular, if your natural foot movement is impeded by the limits of of your cleat float, then you are at much higher risk of injury, and very possibly not producing as much power as you could be.
The best way to test this would be to do two simple FTP tests, one before, and one **after **fitting your cleats. You’d need to give yourself some recovery days between tests to ensure you’re equally “fresh” on both attempts. Here’s an article I wrote ages ago on 2 “easy” FTP tests you could do (ok, I know, FTP tests are never really easy!). You’d need a powermeter and/or an indoor trainer that transmits power or “virtual power.”
That said, the Cleat Key tool is designed for people like you. If you have 4 pairs of road shoes, and you set them up yourself, I think it would be really beneficial for you to set up a pair using a consistent and proven method. And, if you find you like how it feels, it would be a good idea to set each pair so they all have the same cleat rotation angle. The tool is designed to quantify, and help you set a quantified, cleat rotation angle on your road shoes.
The tool looks interesting. And the text explanation on your website of the cleat adjustment process was the most helpful to me.
However, one thing that I do not understand. Most cycling shoes have a pretty significant bend/curve in the outsole, but your tool is flat. When the “jaw” of your flat tool is gripping the cleat (when the cleat is mounted on a cycling shoe), the “heel” of your tool ends up far from flush with the actual heel of the shoe.
So how can a user accurately measure the angle between the ‘heel’ of your tool and the exact midpoint of the actual heel of the shoe when the two are so far apart?
Shouldn’t your tool have a big bend in it so it follows the curved profile of a modern cycling shoe?
Good question. This was a design consideration since, as a bike fitter, I’ve owned and used a few cleat fit tools that just don’t quite grip the cleat right.
The clamp design on mine is such that it centers itself onto the cleat and pushes the “tail” of the tool against the heel of the shoe.
I just pulled out a couple of my own shoes, a Giro Factor and Shimano R321, to demonstrate. These are size 43, but even if you wanted to install a cleat on a bigger shoe, in a very forward position, there still wouldn’t be an issue. As you can see it also works fine if you have cleat wedges under your cleats as I do. (These are not marketing promo pics, apologies for the scruffy shoes!)
Ya, I did that too but it doesn’t help you when you get another pair of shoes.
Also, if you wanted to make a change, it doesn’t help you quantify the angle to make comparisons.
An analogy is this: say you had a certain saddle height that you were happy with, and so you made a big mark on your seatpost where it meets the bike frame. What would you do if you got a new bike? That mark on your old seatpost won’t help you, you’d have to get a ruler or measuring tape out, right? This tool is the equivalent of a ruler or measuring tape for your cleat angle.
@playguy
Sorry, doesn’t work with Speedplay, or Time. With Time the window had to be too big, which affects the accuracy, and the pivot point at the front is too different a shape.
It works with these:
Look Keo
Look Delta
Shimano SPD-SL (road-type)
PowerTap P1 and P2 (power)
Favero Assioma (power)
Garmin (power)
Exustar cleats that are made to be compatible with Look and Shimano road pedals
