A Quick Guide to Clipless Pedals. Part 1.

A quick video explaining the differences between some of the most popular clipless pedals, including road and mountain bike pedals and a recommendation for new cyclists or for riders wanting to use clipless pedals for the first time. Part 1.

Hi everybody uh welcome back to another video so this is more sort of a bike fit related um video um I’m going to divide up the videos into sort of red captions and blue captions the red captions being things that can be done on the bike in

Terms of like maintenance or DIY and then the blue caption videos will be sort of more bike fit related um issues and videos um so one of the things I often get asked about uh during a bike fit is which is the best Pedal system or which

Pedal system should I go for which shoes and pedal system should I go for so what I’m going to out uh outline here briefly is just various uh different pedal systems um from different manufacturers and um a couple of shoes as well basically Road shoe and mountain bike

Shoe and um the benefits of of them or the pros on them depending on the goals and um ride a Comforts and injuries so um I guess the first one I will start with is your is your mountain bike pedal um so that’s this uh which is typically

It’s made most common you’ll see from Shimano it’s a double Ed pedal so you can click in on either side um and this is the cleat that goes with it and there are different manufacturers uh that make these look um time used to do them uh Crank Brothers

But Shimano are the are the most common and then this is a fairly new Mountain mik shoe quite snazzy actually and it’s seen a bit of use um but that’s the mountain m Cleon just get screwed on there with a a washer and then some counter sunk

Screws and that can move up and down and sideways backwards forwards and sideways like that um the the benefit of course with this is that um it’s easy to click in on both sides cuz it’s double-sided as I measured uh sorry as I said and um the ability to walk without sliding on

Concrete or you know stopping a coffee shop at a coffee shop with wooden floors and you’ve got some nice rubber grip on the shoe so you don’t you don’t slip around um and also another benefit is that the cleat um because it’s um below the tread it doesn’t really get that

Worn now it will you know with rocks walking rocks and gravel drives and that sort of it will get a little bit of wear but these cleats last for ages they’re made out of solid steel so that’s a that’s a good option and I’ll go through through various the reasons but just a

Quick overview um the next one that you most commonly see probably in a bike shop or bike fit studio is the look pedal uh very very common arguably the first if not the first company to make clipless pedals which were took the idea from ski bindings and

Um it’s it’s it’s a great pedal they they come with I don’t know if you can see yep um three different color cleats now I know this isn’t a red look cleat before everyone bites me on YouTube this is from a Garmin pedal I believe it was

But that’s basically what it looks like and they do um a zero floats cleat which is the black one um 4 and 1/ 12° of float and then 9° of float and the float is how much the shoe can move in the pedal once it’s clicked in so once it’s clicked in so

The front goes in first you push down on the back and it clicks in and then the float is how much it can move side to side so 0° 4.5 and 9° then the other most common one I see is a Shimano pedal which is that it

Looks pretty much the same as a look pedal pretty much the same weight I think look may do a slightly lighter one at their higher end um but basically they both both use a three bolt cleat so this is your Shimano cleat this is your look cleat so it’s got three bolts one

Two three and if I show you there those are your three bolts um now with Shimano very similar to look they offer three different cleats so they offer the yellow which is 6° um a blue which is 2° and then they offer a red cleat which is 0 degre float

So it’s sort of opposite to Shimano and um the the one thing with the yellow is it allows for float but it also allows for a little bit of lateral Movement Like That whereas the blue cleats which are these ones um it’s just 2° of float uh no lateral and then the

Red of course is fixed um so that’s your look pedal um then the last one well not the last one that you don’t see that many of is time petals and these guys have been around for ages and different iterations and that uh this is a time um XPR carbon

10 really light pedal if those guys for you guys that are weight weenies time produce some really nice light pedals um their cleat is similar to the others that uses three bolts um and on these ones interesting enough on time and the time um cleats it has free float so what

That means is once you click into the pedal um the the float so the sidewards movement like this is is free um whereas with a a look or Shimano once the cleat is is actually clicked in although like this one is 6° it’s more restrictive in

The float so it’s not free so you have to like physically move your foot like this um whereas this is I don’t want it sound in a bad way it’s almost like on Ice um not quite like that um but yeah it’s it’s free float um the nice thing with the times

Is they’re very easy to get into and out of um really easy to get into is cuz once the foot exits or the cleat exits the pedal the retaining spring stays open so once you click back on it’s super easy to get you just click in and this

Will close the spring will close onto the cleat one downside to the time cleats is that they do wear a little bit quickly they’re made of a bit of a softer plastic but they’re great um and actually these are my my personal shoes um I really like the time um pedals and

How they work and despite what I was saying about free float um if you have Rel relatively good mechanics your foot is is pretty much fixed like that it takes a little bit of getting used to it your foot doesn’t swim around on the on the on the

Pedal um then the last one which is I haven’t really done these in order I would say generally I see the look Peds the most then Shimano close second and then um and then the other pedal system which I’m going to mention is Speed play or Wahoo Speed play um that’s

Discounting the mountain bike which I see quite a bit of as well but you don’t really see time pedals that often well I don’t in my studio anyway um that might might be a marketing thing from time they’ve just been bought by sham not too long ago so maybe that’ll you’ll start

Seeing more of those um but the other one is which unfortunately I don’t have a an example of is a speed play pedal um now I don’t know if you have seen these that’s the Clint and that’s the speed play pedal so the advantage of this is

It’s similar to the mountain bike pedal in that it’s double-sided so nice and easy to click into now they do do the ones for the time trialist and triathletes they do a single-sided which is an aerodynamic pedal and it has sort of a golf ball effect on the underside so it’s single

Um but otherwise um yeah it’s double-sided and the cleat for that so the retention system is not built into the pedal like the others I’ve shown you the retention system is actually built into the cleat so here you can see it um this spring here and here that’s the

Retention system so basically the cleat bites onto the front and the back of the pedal um one advantage of Speed play from a bike fit perspective you could argue that it’s the best bik fit pedal um because it has a lot of lateral movement so sideways left and right also

Has a decent amount of forward off um and you can dial the float from 0° so no float at at all to 15° and it’s very much like the time pedal where it’s free float um and can be good for knees um can also be bad for knees as well um

Depending on the on the person and how they work um um one of the benefits from this I don’t know if waho is still doing it um which is actually shown no it’s not this this cleat but they do an easy release cleat so if it’s a very light

Rider or the rider’s got knee problems or they’re just finding it hard to get in and out of pedals this can be a good option cuz it makes it really easy to get in out in and out of the pedal cuz the spring tension is not very

High um so that’s your speed play pedal and or speed play cleat and and speed play pedal the the since Wahoo’s bought them I I think they’ve actually um improved the design cuz it when sped play when it was owned by Speed play there wasn’t this stainless steel ring here so these

Pedals would R wear really quickly and there’d be a lot of rocking on it um which I had a lot of clients come in with knee pain so we’ll see the longevity of the spring ring but I think that’s a really good move by by wahoo so

Um from a a user perspective if I have a a new cyclist comeing or someone that’s not confident on pedals or they don’t want to use clipless pedals I would often say um get and they but they’re interested in getting them or maybe their riding partner or friends

Wants them to get on to Clippers pedals my general advice is to go and purchase the cheapest um Shimano mountain bike clipless pedals and the reason why I say the cheapest is because the spring tension is the least High the higher you go up on the Range or the more expensive

The range the higher the spring tension gets so you want the cheapest ones when you start off with and they’re super easy to get in and out of um Shimano also do a cleat which is this one the they do another Mount this is What’s called the if you can probably see

That it’s a sh 51 cleat and this allows for the um the cleat and the shoe to disengage um just by clicking in and out like that but now they also do a sh56 cleat which is the one I recommend to beginners um and that the only way

Basically that you can’t click out is straight up otherwise would negate the the feature of the Clippers pedal but you can actually click out at an angle like that so for those that aren’t confident that’s a really good choice um because in an emergency there’s not much

Spring tension and you can just click your foot out almost anywhere except straight out um it’s super super easy you can you can basically uh just um um just push the back plate on one of those pedals if it’s Loosely uh done up with your thumb so really good option

For beginners so that would be cheapest Shimano um mountain bike pedal and a Shimano sh56 cleat um with Shimano this was a very commonly used pedal um great pedal great bearings the one thing you can see is that on this one they would wear it would take

Long time for this to wear and this is a great example of a really worn one and that could cause knee problems um but a great pedal nonetheless but I think they phased this out and what they’ve done now to counter that we they’ve started introducing well

I say starts it’s been on for a long time putting stainless steel plates or steel plates and that stops the we but you can see even on these shiman 105 ones even the middle starts to wear where’s the algr eras have a plate there as well um and also you get some wear

Into here um but otherwise a great solid pedal great bearings um super stable yeah um Shimano I use Shimano and time on my personal bikes and um this is probably my go-to recommendation in a bike fit for a road pedal um look um I do recommend look um but I prefer

The Shimano platform if we’re just talking about the the big two pedal systems I prefer uh the shaman over the look cuz with the look um there’s always generally some play in the bearings from new um and once the shoe is clicked in I’ll actually try and click

E um you you can can sometimes get some rocking left to right these ones aren’t actually too bad but the shoe can actually it can rock instead of just having the play um especially on the lower end ones where shiman you don’t uh really get that it’s just a nice solid

Um engagement um and the the the um the rocking that you get is often the rocking that you get on a Shimano pedal once it was already worn so for that reason um I prefer the Shimano over the look but they’re both good systems and

They both do um pedals for um if you’re starting out that are really easy to get in and out of um yeah um Shimano kind of wish they still did this in a way um they this is one of their earlier clipers P um and the cleat was a

Standard cleat throughout the range but the float was actually built into the pedal I don’t know if you can yeah you can see that so that would be your float and you could tie the float or adjust the float down by this little dial on the back here so you could

Go right across to zero and that won’t move quite a nice little system looks quite robust as well so yeah those are the the different pedals so for a beginner um Rider or um someone that’s just getting into Clippers pedals I’d recommend cheaper Shimano Mountain Mike pedal with the

Sh56 cleat nice and easy to get in and out of um Shimano pedals and look pedals pretty much the same as mentioned three bolt cleat um both easy to get um get in and out of um Speed play best bike fit pedal um and just a good pedal all around you

Just don’t see it that often um and then of course time I really like time um and then the shoes