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Welcome to SPD Pedals where you can find all the information you need to help you find the right pedals for you.

About Clipless Pedals

Firstly why should you spend your hard earned money on new pedals and shoes when the ones you have will do nicely?

Pedalling Efficiency

Using a traditional flat pedal each leg is only working for part of the rotation. You can only apply force to the pedal from when it passes the 12 O’Clock position until you get to 4 or 5 O’Clock. At best that is about 40% of the time. The rest of the time your leg is just hitching a ride on the effort of your other leg.  It doesn’t sound very efficient does it?

Once upon a time this problem was solved by using cages or toe clips on pedals but these were difficult to use as they could be difficult to get your feet out when you needed to as your feet were strapped in.

Clipless pedals physically attach your shoe and therefore your leg to the pedal. This allows you to use your legs to pull the pedal up as well as push down thereby doubling the opportunity to apply force to the pedals.

You can obviously see that this makes for a tremendous increase in efficiency as well as utilising a whole new group of leg muscles. The upshot of all this is that once your legs get used to the extra work you will go faster.

How Clipless pedals work

There are a number of different styles of pedal with different methods of attachment but they all basically work in the same way.

The pedal has a system which allows a compatible adapter known as a cleat to clip into the pedal. This cleat is screwed to the sole of a specially made shoe which effectively connects your legs directly to the pedals.

Despite being securely fitted to the pedal it is relatively easy to detach the shoe when needed by twisting the foot as if stamping out a cigarette. Re-attaching is simply a matter of putting the shoe in the right place and applying pressure clip it back on.

SPD Pedals or SPD-SL Pedals?

There re a number of popular systems but we are concentrating on two of the most popular styles namely Shimano’s SPD and SPD-SL pedals.

The SPD pedals are more commonly used by mountain bike riders as the cleats are recessed into the shoe. This means that you can actually walk in the shoes when you are not attached to the bike. Many riders choose to use SPD pedals on road bikes too and for most riders they will be good enough.

SPD Pedal

If you take you road riding more seriously or plan to do any competitive riding then you should really be considering SPD-SL pedals. The cleats for SPD-SL pedals are larger than the SPD cleats and sit proud of the shoe. This makes walking practically impossible in a SPD-SL shoe.

SPD-SL Shoes are generally stiff and light often with carbon fibre soles to allow the maximum power transmission whilst being as light as possible.

SPD-SL Pedal

In summary if you ride a MTB then you want SPD pedals and if you ride a road bike then you should be leaning towards SPD-SL pedals.  If you have both and want to use the same system for all your bikes then SPD pedals are the way to go but don’t expect to get any flash carbon road shoes.