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Cycling shoes are key to getting comfortable on a road bike or gravel bike and are an important part of any bike fit. To help make your next cycling shoe purchase as comfortable as possible we contacted a professional bike fitter to see what tips they had to find the right cycling shoes for you.
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These are my new cycling shoes and I'm very pleased with them, but that shouldn't come as much of a surprise because I was meticulous in my shoe buying decision making
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However, new shoe day isn't quite such a slipper-like experience for many people, and so we thought we'd share some of the buying mistakes that we've made when it comes to cycling shoes
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and get some expert advice from a professional bike fitter here at Synergy Performance
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Let's get into it. So Luke, whilst you set up my cleats, why is getting the right shoe important
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To keep it simple and straightforward. Effectively, what you've got to imagine, we've got a set of scales
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the front of the bike, on the saddle and down at your feet. And what I'm trying to do is stabilise you on the bike by passing weight through your feet
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and by passing this weight down through your feet and stabilizing your foot you can have a happy
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comfortable foot that's going to deliver power better and yeah maybe a few extra ones
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so point number one buying a shoe we like the look of rather than actually how it fits your foot
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i bet that happens quite a lot i see that a lot so i bet you see it all the time i do and
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this brand of device really effective way of understanding the size of your foot
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and most importantly the width of your foot to understand what may be a good direction of cycling
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shoe to go in. What we see a loss of is an industry driven by Italian design when actually
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the British person's foot is not shaped like that. So having a little look at the shape of your foot
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the shape of your toes, are you maybe an arrow pointed foot, are you maybe more of a box or
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square like foot and this width is a really key metric to understand where what direction do i go
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in with the shape of the shoe and that's the important thing to start with is the shape of
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the shoe before you go down the route of oh this one's on discount and i like the look of that i'm
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gonna buy this one so what what what are my feet like so it's important to understand your foot
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shape when you're standing up so oh okay if you stand up for me yeah see how your foot spread out
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and gain the width and size. And this is how you yze your foot
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So not when you're sitting down. Now, pretty simple metric, 42 and a half
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pretty standard, first mat tarsal location. So you're pushing out in a D in width
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So you got a little bit of forefoot width to your foot shape The second thing to discuss about is how not all 42 shoes fit the same Now not everyone has access
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to a brand of device at home. A simple way to understand is your foot the correct length for
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your shoe is to take the insole out of your shoe and place your foot onto the insole and stand up
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and this is a good indication of how your foot wants to connect to this shoe
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So how much should you have at the top? What I would like to see is no kind of excess fabric or insole towards the head of the toes
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and I ideally don't want to see your foot overhanging the edge. So what we can see here is you fit this insole quite nice
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If I was seeing lots of this overhang at the front, probably an insight into that the size shoe you're in is not the correct size
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It's worth pointing out that as soon as you fit a cleat to it, you can't send them back
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100%. So do that first. 100%. A big thanks to FLR Shoes who've sponsored this video and made it possible
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The shoes that I went for and have been using are the FNT 9 Knit
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That's a World Tour level shoe. They've won two stages of World Tour Espana. I believe it's the US National Champs as well at some point
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They've got three layers of woven yarn and that makes them really breathable
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which is something that I really want because I've been riding in lots of hot conditions. I get to go and ride my bike in lots of very nice places
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So that's something well up my shoe buying list. FLR though make a whole range of shoes to suit a whole range of foot shapes and budgets
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So you can check out their whole range from mountain bike shoes, road shoes, downhill shoes
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every kind of shoe you can check them out on the FLR website and we'll pop a link down in the
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description below. Whilst I've got you here make sure you subscribe to the channel and now back to
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do some shoe fitting. Point number three sizing up to accommodate a wide foot. I see it all the time
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where people maybe wear a size 42, 43 trainer and they assume that that's the size of their foot
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whereas actually they may be a smaller foot but they need more width than the shoe. I mean I can
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quite see how that would be a problem but what are the consequences of buying a shoe that's the wrong size
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Inherently this is a very poor lever. My job as a bike fitter is to reduce how much of a poor lever this is
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to stabilize your feet What I see a lot of the time is if you doing this thing of inherently sizing up to accommodate a wider foot quite simple these cleats are going to be too far forward And the consequence of these cleats being too far forward foot numbness hot spots on feet
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and most importantly that people don't really understand is an inability to stabilize your foot
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is then going to pass weights elsewhere on the bike. Hand numbness, knee pain, saddle sores, asymmetry on the bike
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All from the wrong sides of the shoe. Potentially. point number four the most overlooked part of buying a new shoe what goes on inside of this
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and in particular art support so this thin piece of foam that comes inside of your shoe
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ideally what i wish the cycling industry would do as a whole sell you this shoe with nothing
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inside of it so you then have to go oh maybe i should go and get something made designed for my
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I would find that a little bit weird, but I do get your point. Do any brands do that
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No brands do that. One industry does it really well and that's the ski boot industry
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You go and buy a set of ski boots, you have to have a ski boot fitting. Why do I need arch support
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So, let's give your arches a little measure. You're pushing around about 25mm of arch height. Not uncommon, I see that a lot
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anywhere from sort of 20 to 25 mil is really quite common. Now here's a pretty simple representation
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of what your foot is doing inside of this shoe. Your foot is basically not touching all of this
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space here. Now this stiff carbon sole this is not going to mold up to your foot. Your foot this is
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rigid it's my job to get your foot to touch the bottom of this. One we can get more of your foot
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touching the bottom of this, delivering power and stabilising your foot is going to be far easier
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Why tend to save people if they've got a budget of £300 to spend on a shoe
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It's better to put £200 into the shoe and £100 into a custom insoles
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And that's why insoles is simply the best bang for buck upgrade on your bike
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Right, so I've got my new shoes. I'm ready to go? Definitely not yet
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you can still mess it up. So this next point we're going to be talking about cleat setup and a little
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bit about something called foot correction. Generally if I'm going to give any kind of advice
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it would be to trial moving your cleats all the way backwards. Why might I want to do that
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Covering the things we've talked about where people are sizing up to accommodate a wide foot
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potentially these three holes being drilled a little bit too far forward for my liking
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mainly driven by quite old school methodology around the centre of the pedal aligning with the ball of your foot Now manufacturers are getting better with making these holes further back and
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what we are aiming for when we're setting your pleats is to reduce the tension and pressure
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that's going through the forefoot. So first metatarsal is this big bone in your foot
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Really simple way at home of measuring this is place a little bit of tape over the ball of this
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foot and on a shimano pleat they've got a little bit of plastic here that denotes the center of the
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pedal quite easy pop another bit bit of tape there measure how far that is behind and what we want to
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see is at least 1.5 centimeters now that's a starting position you can go anywhere beyond that
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to try and improve the stability of someone's foot and that's sort of the base point to start with
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What you may find is that's not far enough. Okay, so that's the fore-aft positioning done
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Anything else to consider? There are a few more things to take into consideration
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How this, basically, the shift in this cleat inwards and outward is going to affect how far away your foot is from the pedal
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Now, a really, really simple method at home, you can understand this
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is just let your foot dangle over maybe the surface of the sofa or a table
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table and just look at how your foot falls okay so if i sit on like a high counter yeah for sure
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yeah and if your foot naturally falls quite heel in or your foot kind of splays outwards it may be
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a good indication that this is how we're going to want to set your pleats up now this is not a how
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to set your pleats video i would generally i would definitely recommend people to go see a local bike
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fitter because this is definitely something that takes a little bit more detail on what we're
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discussing here. So basically to bring this back to shoe buying advice obviously when you buy a new
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set of shoes they don't come with any cleats on so take your time to carefully position those
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cleats otherwise you bugger it. Definitely I would strongly suggest either using your current cleats
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and the way they're set up on a shoe as a guide go see a bike fitter go see someone in your local
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shop they'll definitely be able to help. So to conclude what we kind of covered your feet are the most important connection point
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with the bike so it's definitely worth investing a little bit of money but a little bit of
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time in making sure you are in the right shoe. Well it is absolutely beautiful weather outside so I'm going to go and use my new shoes and
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enjoy the weather. Happy days. We'll be back soon for another video, so keep your eyes out for that one
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See you then
#sports