Originally Posted by davester

Back in the day when many of us were racing and bought into the old racers' wives' tale that using cleats and pulling up on the backstroke actually increased efficiency, we would tighten down the straps and pull backwards against the cleats. That was definitely painful and I also hated them back then. However, these days there's no reason to tighten the straps down so I don't notice any difference in comfort between toe clips + straps and clipless.