I’ve wondered for years if the cleat range on my shimano and time shoes have a limited range for the ball of my foot. It seems that I always feel like I am “toeing” and not really over the ball of my foot. When I head out on my mountainbike for fun trail rides with my 7 year old son wearing just running shoes, I find a naturally gravitate to be “furthur over the pedal axle”. I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a drill to my shimano SPD-R Carbon Fibre soles and trying to ride with the cleat another 5 mm back (foot 5 mm furthur over the axle).
Anyone tried this ? Do the manufacturers provide enough range for the cleat adjustment ? If I go further forward, will it be easier to crank out high power at lower RPM, but will it be harder to spin quickly. Finally, I suppose that I will also need to move my seat forward 5 mm to compensate for being furthur over the axle.
Sorry - no experience with drilling new holes in the soles of cycling shoes but here is an alternate sugestion that may help you avoid replacing your shoes prematurely! You might want to try a different pedal system like Speedplay Zero’s (or X series just dont walk in the grass without cleat covers) as the mounting system for these pedals allows for a little more fore/aft positioning than a standard look/time style or SPD/SPD-R/SPD-SL!
I heard a good explanation of what proper cleat position should be made by the Serotta rep at a lecture at IMLP one year. You might want to contact them to advise you on cleat position if you are concerned about it.
Thanks guys. Rip, thanks for you suggestoin, but with the SPD-R or Time Cleat, you can’t really enlarge the holes in the metal cleats effectively :-(.
I think I am having to use my hamstrings more because my cleat to too far forward (foot too far back over the pedal axle). If the foot was a bit furthur over the axle, I might be able to recruit the quads more and jam down harder with them. Picture this…walk up stairs with your entire foot over the stair. Now climb up with only your toes making contact with the stairs. The latter seems a lot harder, and puts a lot more stress on the lower leg and calves. This is what I hope to avoid by sliding the cleats back.
Unfortunately there is no ‘proper’ cleat position. Chris Carmichael suggest starting with the pedal centered fore/aft on the third metatarsel. According to Mr. Carmichael this generally results in a cleat position slightly back of the conventional centering over the 1st metatarsel. Hopefully I havent murdered the names of the bones in the foot and I’m not trying to say that Serotta won’t have something to say about it. Just stating that cleat position is more personal preference (and possibly related to injury history) than anything else.
I have an old pair of Carbon Fibre Shimano R210 SPD-R shoes that are gathering dust. Perhap’s I’ll drill the old pair first and see how the “prototype” holds out before wrecking the new pair !
Simply put if you stand on a 1/2 inch bar the point where you can balance is the proper location of the pedal axle. See pic below illustrating what I mean…
First thing you want to look at is if your shoes are the right size. A foot is measured by its arch length and not the actual length of the foot. So for example if your foot is a 45 and your arch length is a 46 buy the 46. Then you need to locate the cleat under the 2nd metatarsul. Which is just behind what most of us call the ball of our foot. The 2nd medhead is where we do all of our jumping, pivoting and other motions. We can not perfectly locate the cleat because you would need X-ray machines to do that. But we do know it is very close. This position almost always puts the cleat all the way to the front of the shoes holes. Once that is done the Tibual Tuberosity(the boney protrusion just below the knee cap) must line up over the pedal spindle axle(plum bob). This is where you will create power biomechanical. We still have to continue moving up the body for the rest of the fit but I don’t have all day to sit in front of my computer. Maybe some other time.
Thanks eveyone for their input. I ended up drilling the SPR-R holes back by 5 mm on my Shimano shoes. Started with a 3/32 drill bit 5 mm back from the furthest point on the existing slots and then moved up to 1/8, 1/4 to get the hole to the width of the slot. Then I slid the cleat back 5 mm, moved the seat forward by 5 mm and then went for a 20 min spin on the rollers. Seems to feel more natural. I’ll have to do a couple of hour ride this week in the hills and I’ll report on if this is better or worse than my previous cleat postion.
For those worried, there is no issue. The Carbon fibre Shimano SPR-R soles are just as bomb proof as they were before.
Unfortunately there is no ‘proper’ cleat position. Chris Carmichael suggest starting with the pedal centered fore/aft on the third metatarsel. According to Mr. Carmichael this generally results in a cleat position slightly back of the conventional centering over the 1st metatarsel. Hopefully I havent murdered the names of the bones in the foot and I’m not trying to say that Serotta won’t have something to say about it. Just stating that cleat position is more personal preference (and possibly related to injury history) than anything else.
See next post.
My question is WHERE along the first, second or third metatarsal are you talking about. The metatarsal bones, run from the ankle bones to the base of the toes. They are those long spindly things that you can feel along the top of your foot, and they make up most of the foot, from just in front of the ankle to the toes.
Are you talking about the tip of the metatarsal where it meets the bones of the toe (the metatarsal-phalangeal joint–MTP joint)??? The “ball” of the foot is the tip of the metatarsal bones, at the MTP joint, where they meet the toes.
I assume that you are talking about that joint. Is this correct???
My good friend Tim Williams (whose webpage on pedalling has been posted and discussed on one of Frank Day’s threads), who is always a very thoughtful analyst of cycling technique, pointed out the following. The correct cleat placement will depend on whether you are naturally a toes-up or toes-down pedaller. eg, consider you are a toes-down pedaller - you want to move the cleat slightly forwards, otherwise the pedalling force is directed in front of the pedal axle, not into the pedal axle. i.e. because the sole of your foot does not coincide with the pedal axle, as the foot rotates around the pedal from horizontal to the toes-down position, the cleat position must be moved slightly from the ‘ideal’ position - whether that is under the ball of the foot, the second or third metatarsel or whatever - to keep the force directed through that ‘ideal’ point on the sole of your foot. I think this theory coincides with Devashish Paul’s problems.
It seems like none of the manufacturers realize there are substantially more people with long toes than no toes. When I first started using clipless pedals (the first Look models) all shoes had to be drilled. It works but can cause hot spots where the T-nuts are. If your shoes have removable insoles it works much better, but I wouldn’t do it on carbon soled shoes.
The shoes I am using now have Time soles but I am using speedplay cleats/pedals and that combination seems to get the furthest back of any standard drillings. The speedplay adapters for look soles also allow more fore-aft adjustment than most.
There is always custom if you can’t get there any other way.
Thanks for your input. Yesterday I “drilled” and rode with the cleats positioned 5 mm back. Having spent the last 16 years (since I started using clipless pedals), with my cleats “forward”, being furthur over the axle seemed a bit “awkward”, so I moved the cleats forward 2.5 mm durning a 30 min roller ride today. Tomorrow, I’ll go for a 60 K road test and see how it feels. Perhaps I just need to adapt to a new pressure point.
