Clipless pedals: how to start without falling over at the lights

Everyone who rides clipless has a story about the first fall, and it is always the same one: rolling to a stop at a junction, brain saying "foot out", foot staying attached, a slow sideways topple in front of a queue of cars. It is avoidable, and this post is the method for avoiding it. It also covers the part the stories leave out — that clipless pedals are less about "pulling up" than most riders believe, and that where the cleat sits under your foot matters more for your knees than which brand you buy.

What clipless pedals actually do

The word is a historical accident: they replaced toe-clips and straps, so they are "clip-less", even though you clip into them. What they give you is a fixed, repeatable connection between foot and pedal, so your foot cannot slip forward or off under hard effort or in the wet, and so your position on the pedal is the same on every stroke. That consistency is the real benefit, because it makes the rest of your fit — saddle height, knee tracking — mean something.

What they mostly do not do is make you faster by letting you pull up. Korff and colleagues had trained cyclists deliberately pull up on the pedals and found the technique increased mechanical effectiveness but decreased gross efficiency — more of the force went in a useful direction, but it cost more oxygen to do it. Mornieux's group compared pedal types and a pull-up action and again found that consciously pulling did not improve efficiency. The pedal stroke's power comes from the downstroke; the upstroke is mostly about unweighting the rising leg so it does not fight the falling one. Clipless pedals help with that, quietly, without you having to think about it. Our pedal-stroke post has the detail.

Which system

There are two families, and for a beginner the choice is about walking, not watts.

• Two-bolt, recessed cleats (mountain-bike style). A small metal cleat sits inside the sole, so you can walk normally, and the pedals are usually double-sided so you clip in without looking. Entry is easy, release tension is adjustable, and the cleat lasts for years. This is the right choice for a first set on any bike, including a road bike, and many experienced riders never change.
• Three-bolt, road cleats. A large plastic cleat on the outside of the sole gives a wider, stiffer platform and is what you see in racing. The trade-off is walking like a duck on wet marble, single-sided pedals that need a flick to engage, and cleats that wear out. Worth it later if you race or ride long; not worth it in your first season.

Both families come in versions with adjustable release tension. Set it to the minimum for the first month. You can turn it up later; you cannot un-fall. Our shoes and cleats guide goes through the specific systems.

Set up the cleat before you ride: your knees will thank you

This is the part most riders skip, and it is the part the injury literature is about. A fixed foot-pedal connection means that if the cleat is angled wrong, your knee is forced to track wrong on every one of the five thousand or so revolutions in an hour. Wanich and colleagues' review of lower-limb cycling injuries puts cleat position and float high on the list of causes of anterior knee pain, and Gregor and Wheeler's earlier review of the shoe-pedal interface reached the same conclusion from the biomechanics.

• Fore-aft. The traditional starting point puts the ball of the foot over the pedal axle. Paton's study moved cleats rearward on competitive cyclists and found no loss of performance, and some riders find a slightly rearward cleat more comfortable; either way, start with the ball of the foot over the axle and move it back a few millimetres if your calves complain.
• Rotation and float. Float is the few degrees your heel can swing before the cleat releases. Ruby and Hull measured knee loads with pedals that allowed different degrees of freedom and found that letting the foot rotate reduced the twisting loads at the knee. Buy cleats with float — most come with it — and set the cleat so that your foot sits in its natural angle, heel slightly in or out, in the middle of the float rather than at one end of it.
• Saddle height, again. Clipping in changes the effective leg length compared with trainers on flat pedals, so re-check saddle height once the shoes are on. Bini's review of saddle height and knee injury risk is the reference; Silberman's clinical review of bike fit covers the whole chain from cleat to bar and is worth reading in full if anything hurts. See also bike-fit basics and, if it is already hurting, knee pain from cycling.

Learning to unclip without falling: the method

This is our own drill, refined over many riders and no small number of scraped hips, and it is built on one principle: unclipping has to become a reflex before it is needed at a junction, and reflexes are built by repetition in a place where falling costs nothing.

1. Day one, on the grass or a doorframe. Lean the bike against a wall, or stand in a doorway holding the frame. Clip one foot in, twist the heel out, clip in, twist out. Fifty times each foot. Then the other foot. You want the twisting motion — heel outwards, not up — in your legs, not in your head.
2. Day one, still on the grass. Ride slowly across a field or a quiet park, unclip one foot while rolling, put it back, unclip the other. Then stop with the unclipped foot down. Do it twenty times. Falling on grass is a comedy, not an injury.
3. Choose a foot and always use it. Most riders unclip the same foot every time — usually the left, away from the traffic. Decide now and never vary it. When your brain panics at a junction it will reach for the habit, so the habit had better be there.
4. Unclip early. The fall happens because you unclip at the moment you stop. Unclip when you see the stop coming — a hundred metres out, still rolling — and rest the foot lightly on the pedal. If the light changes you simply clip back in. It is very hard to fall with a foot already out.
5. Shift down before you stop. An easy gear to pull away in means you are not standing on one pedal fighting a big ratio with one foot out, which is the second most common way to topple.
6. Practise the pull-away. Foot down, pedal at two o'clock on the clipped-in side, push off, get rolling, then find the pedal with the free foot. Do not look down for it; the pedal is where it always is.

Give it a week of short rides on quiet roads before you ride in traffic or in a group. Once it is a reflex, it is a reflex for life — and then read group riding skills, where clipping in smoothly at a rolling start is the first thing the group will notice about you.

When it goes wrong anyway

• You fall. It is slow and it is sideways. Keep your hands on the bars and let your hip take it; a hand thrown out to break the fall is how wrists get broken. Check the rear derailleur before riding on — it is the part that hits the ground.
• You cannot get out. Release tension too high, or a new cleat that has not bedded in. Back the tension screw off fully. If it is still stiff, the cleat may be mounted with the wrong plate for the shoe.
• You pull out under a hard effort. Tension too low for you now, or a worn cleat. Turn it up a quarter-turn at a time.
• The pedal will not engage. Mud or grit in the mechanism, or a cleat that has worn to a rounded edge. Clean it, and replace cleats when the release starts feeling vague rather than when they fail.

Is it worth it at all?

Honestly: for commuting and short rides, flat pedals with a grippy sole are fine and nobody should feel obliged to change. For anything longer, or any riding where you are putting real effort through the pedals, a fixed connection is more comfortable, more secure in the wet, and lets your fit be a fit rather than a suggestion. The evidence says it will not make you dramatically more efficient; experience says you will stop noticing them within a month and never want to go back. Start with two-bolt pedals on minimum tension, set the cleats up properly, and spend a Saturday morning on the grass. The junction will take care of itself.