Cleat position and saddle fore/aft

Triathlon Forum
1

I pulled the follwing from a post on another board… not TNO. Any thoughts on the two points this guy is making?

  1. when your foot is clipped in and your crank is @ that 3 o’clock position (ie: crank pointed straight forward), you should be able to drop a plumb-line from the tuberocity (boney bump UNDER the knee)…and have that plumb-line fall VERY near the pedal spindle. For an ideal wattage-to-hr ratio…I recommend not allowing the plumb-line (when dropped like this) to get farther than 1.5cm in front of, or behind that pedal-spindle.

Going farther than that BEHIND the spindle negatively effects comfort and ‘aero-ness’…Going farther forward (than 1.5cm) negatively effect wattage on MOST people.
The ‘fore-aft’ of your saddle position determines your effective “seat-tube-angle”. And THIS…in my opinion…is why the Cervelos are one of the best bikes around. Because that fore-aft is totally adjustable (w/ the flippable seat-post head)…NOT FIXED.

  1. For cleat position…the cleat (FOR A TRIATHLETE) should be pulled as far back towards the ARCH of the foot as possible. If not, you lose wattage. (We do wattage test to prove this in clinics.) Additionally, it the cleat is forward (towards the toes), the ankle is flexed, toe-down…and it’s the gastroc (calf) muscle that must KEEP it flexed while pedaling. THis is BAD…because it a primary ‘mover-muscle’ in your run-stride…and will be ‘pre-exhausted’ before you EVER get off the bike if cleat position isn’t just right (& pulled back).
2

Here’s an interesting thought as to his first point

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/kops.html

I’d really have to do some thinking about the cleat position but I’m kinda brain dead by this time on a late Friday afternoon, especially after a week like this one. Still trying to deal with my “celebrity” status over at TNO.

3

Sure would like to hear from Tom or Slowman on this
.

4

Dan answered the saddle fore/aft question on 3/1, it’s under the post “question on hip angle” by billb. I didnt ask him about cleat position, but if I remember correctly in the tri-bike-fit article, he likes the cleat under the ball of the foot.

5

I have some literature on this somewhere. I’ll try to remember to find it on Monday. Going away to the big city (Toronto) to the bike show for the weekend so I’ll look for it when I get back.

6

CG,

Any luck w/ finding that info?

I just got my first pair of bike shoes and was looking for info on CLEATS POSITIONING…

Got these - http://www.sportsbasement.com/jump.jsp?iShadCat=1767&itemID=3328&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=1780&iSubCat=1800&iProductID=3328 - w/ SM-SH 51 cleats and planing to use’em for spining.

Thx!

7

If your doing Triathlons then there are a whole lot of different ranges that I think you need to consider. For cleat placement a lot of times we use your running speed to determine placement or your foot pressure pattern. If say, you’re a 9+ min. runner and a heavy heel striker then having your cleat far back might be good. If you’re a sub 8 min. runner and run more on your toes then I’d keep the cleats more forward. I use cleat movements a lot for dealing with upper leg length differences so it is common to have your cleats different on each shoe. Another area to consider is that if you have overly tight Achilies tendons or you’re dealing with some heel soreness then moving the cleats to the rear will help with this. I would also say that having your knee more than 1.5cm ahead of the pedal axle hurts watts might be a over simplification and probably not right. I’m sure that smart guys like Andy Coggan or Jim Martin have run many test on forward positions and power verses road positions. I think you can easily go to the race results and see that somebody is making pretty good power while sitting forward on their bikes. Just because your positioned forward does not mean your more aero, that’s what people credit the faster speed to quite often, not thinking that it might be a more powerfull position, we see riders with their knee 2.5 -3 cm ahead of the pedal axle all the time. Don’t overlook an extreme rear position either, with the knee 2.5-3 cm behind the pedal combined with a very rearward seat angle. This allows a higher cadance and takes big pressure off the hamstrings. Cleat positioning to allow for hip displacements or being bowlegged is very important and unless your specifically using Speedplays then getting the cleat rotation position right will be much more critical than the fore/aft. Generating IT soreness from missaligned cleats can take weeks to get over so pay a lot of attention to that. Good luck!

8

“Sure would like to hear from Tom or Slowman on this.”

cleat position: it’s often taught that the pedal axle should be placed just underneath the forward protrusion of the first metatarsal, as that’s the point through which force is delivered during plantar flexion. paul levine preaches the second metatarsal, because that’s more precisely where the force is applied.

i have a much simpler method, seems to always work, and even the people who ascribe to one of the views above and scoff at my method are struck more/less dumb when i ask them to measure their own shoe’s cleat placement according to my bullshit theory, explained here:

http://www.slowtwitch.com/mainheadings/techctr/maintenance/cleat_mount.html

knee over pedal spindle (KOPS) might make more sense in road than in tri, because road saddle positions have a narrower band of ranges than do tri positions. therefore, in my theory of tri positioning, where your body retains a fixed angularity relative to itself and simply rotates “earlier” or “later” around the clock based on any variety of factors (most notably comfort) how can you apply KOPS, which is captive to gravity, to FIST?

but, even with a road position, KOPS when? where? I ride closer to the nose when riding harder on the flats, rearward when climbing. my saddle is 28cm long, about average. if i ride on the middle 14cm (from 7cm behind the nose to 7cm in front of the rear), and if 3cm = 2 degrees of seat angle, my seat angle changes almost 10 degrees just by moving fore and aft on the saddle. when is my knee supposed to be over the pedal axle? when sitting up and back, or forward and down for riding on the flats?

for me, btw, it’s when i’m forward, pelvis rotated forward, and riding faster on the flats. when i’m sitting up on my road bike my knee is somewhat in arrears of my pedal axle. when i’m on my tri bike my knee is in front of the bb axle.

9

Hi,

At the end of your post, you mention cleat alignment and IT band soreness. If I am have IT band problems do the cleats need to rotated in or out? Thanks.

10

Usually you will need to move the cleat so that your heels are rotated in toward the bike more.

11

Cleat position should not be made to be complicated. And then again it should not be oversimplified with a formula based on shoe sole size (even though Dan’s formula has a degree of accuracy that is disputable) Taking one’s shoe sole length as the baseline for figuring one’s cleat placement is inherently flawed. It is my experience that the majority of athletes are in the wrong size shoes. Hence their shoe sole length and cleat slots are not appropriately correct for the foot inside the shoe. This phenomenon is caused because athletes or bike shop personnel size by overall foot length versus arch length. Arch length is the more accurate measurement necessary for proper cleat placement within the cleat slot adjustment range.

As for changing cleat position relative to heal strike pattern and running times, I would need to understand the relationship between the three. I have many athletes in my camp who are excellent cyclist and couldn’t run down my grandmother off the bike. This is due to the fact that they come from a cyclist’s background and are just getting into Tri. In addition, heal strike is not relevant in the cycling motion. That is one of the reasons why a running orthotic is not always applicable for cycling; we are dealing with different forces.

When evaluating forces during locomotor activities the force of gravity acting on the body is critical. A ground force is exerted on the foot that is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to the force that the body applies to the floor through the foot. During walking, hopping, jumping and running the ground force actually act on many points on the foot but the center of pressure is the point at which the forces are considered to act just as the center of gravity of the body is designated as the point where the force of gravity is considered to act.

To extrapolate this information and apply it to the skill of cycling we can look at the phase of the gait that most resembles the downward power stroke in pedaling (12-5). This would relate to the toe off phase of the gait in the terminal stance. At this point the center of pressure is over the second metatarsal.

The second metatarsal is also the point of rotation along the transverse axis of the metatarsal heads. Rotation or push –off around the transverse axis supplies the calf muscles with a longer lever arm which allows for greater more efficient acceleration of the pedal.

The bottom line is that if an athlete is to generate power in to the pedals through his feet he should be properly aligned with his center of gravity/force over his second metatarsal.

I would love to get in to KOP’s but my time is limited. The principles of understanding gravity, biomechanics and a four bar linkage (crank arm, foot, tibia, femur) apply here. Maybe Dan will invite me back to FIST and we can debate over some beer and burritos.

Paul Levine

12

Cleat positioning to allow for hip displacements or being bowlegged is very important and unless your specifically using Speedplays then getting the cleat rotation position right will be much more critical than the fore/aft<<

How does one address being bowlegged, would the cleats be angled in/out?

Speed plays are more comfortable knee pain wise but I’m noticing scuffs in the paint on my chainstays now.

Bowlegged & severe over pronator

Thx

Steve

13

Thanks for your help!

15

Lennard Zinn did some testing a few years ago on pedaling with the cleats way back toward your heels. he built some shoes that way and he liked the way it worked. I couldn’t find the articles but they are out on the net somewhere I’m sure. I have had some injured racers that I’ve moved their cleats almost under their heels and they were able to race pretty well but it seems like you loose some range of effeciency doing that.

16

Paul,

Now is it really fair of you to use things such as reasoning and biomechanics when addressing this question? I thought conjecture and speculation would have been better …

In all seriousness, having sat through Dr. Wilson’s class on biomechanics several times (though not as many as you - I guess I must learn faster), and having discussed this in depth with both you and she, the answer to this question seems pretty straight forward and you’ve hit the nail on the head with the second met head.

I’m especially curious as to the effects of removing the foot from the equation (as in sliding the cleat all the way back under the heel). Given that the foot is the only first class lever arm in the system driving the pedals, it seems that the mechanical losses would be significant. Furthemore, given that it is through proper dorsiflexion and plantar flexion of the foot that an athlete is able to push as close to 90 degrees on the crankarm as possible at varying points in the pedal stroke (the angle at which force on a lever arm has the most effect), I’d be interested in seeing the force vectors and torque profiles produced in such a set-up.

I hope John can find those studies for us.