Lemond1985

What is the coaching consensus on this? I find myself doing this all the time, with even realizing I'm doing it. From watching race videos, I notice that top Tour de France riders like Armstrong or Indurain seem to never drop their heels, especially during hard efforts.



But try as I might, every time I stop paying attention, I notice my toes are no longer pointed down and my ankle kinda flops around. I suspect it's to give my knees a break, since they don't need to extend as far when the ankle relaxes and the heel drops.

Is there any real downside to heel-dropping, or should I try harder to keep it under control?

Carbonfiberboy 

Just relax your ankle. Then foot angle at the bottom of the stroke is a function of saddle height.

woodcraft

Many would say that it's an individual thing, & there's no "right" way.

At high cadence there's less time for the heel to drop, & at high load there's more force pushing the heel down.

Cleat position, saddle height, cadence, saddle setback, gearing, & fatigue all make a difference, IMO.

Heel down uses the glutes more, so can be used to manage fatigue/endurance.


Don't get your example, since when the heel drops, the knee moves farther as the leg straightens more...

If you want to reduce heel drop, consider moving cleats back.

burnthesheep

In that video, that's a pretty long reach. Notice the difference between the posted first post on the hoods and his elbows, and the girl's.

If the stem isn't to fault, which it doesn't appear to be, then that frameset is a size big or the seat is too far back. It looks like around 7:30 that the saddle is most of the way back on the rails. I'd move that sucker up.

I mention this because this can affect it also. It might look a bit different sitting back on the seat and climbing seated versus getting on the rivet while breaking off the front.

This is all TT examples, but usually you'll be similar style on your roadie also.......

Dennis:

Campenaerts:

Me: based on this, went to a Mistica , am buying some shorter cranks (and meter), and lowered the stack a touch

I'd say if you're not a natural at it and want to stop dropping the heel and your fit isn't causing it.............do some hard intervals on a trainer without much "road feel" to it. Like a fluid. And also get up on the rivet for some of the work. Not sure why I think this, but I feel that a lot of my trainer time has influenced my pedaling style. Also listening to plenty of music in a certain BPM range really honed the cadence being high.

Rides4Beer

I had a Retul fitting, and was told I should try to keep my heels down to keep my feet more level, but I see some pretty fast guys pedaling with their toes pointed down. Is it just a difference in muscle activation?

jadocs

I raise my heels when pulling (pulling in a pace line...not pulling up on the pedal) or pushing hard. I find that my torque effectiveness and pedal smoothness is more efficient that way. My heels are generally level if I'm not working hard.

beermode

When pushed, I'm always toes down. My feet are only level when I'm cruising around with no headwind.

Bah Humbug

For my wife, the heel drops come when she's pedaling at low cadence, high torque, and it's really a result of highly impaired left hip mobility. All the focus on her heel form in the world didn't do as much as working on her left hip. Make sure that it's not the symptom of something else, because if it is, "fixing" it won't accomplish anything.

redlude97

redlude97

thats pretty dated info about proper pedaling mechanics. Pulling up is inefficient

jadocs

Yeah, when I said pulling, I mean pulling in a paceline not pulling up on the pedals.

rubiksoval

Toes pointed down while pushing down? To me that'd suggest the seat is too high. I don't think I've ever seen a good rider pedaling with their toes down. That's not a common thing.

canklecat

Jacques Anquetil was noted for his toe-down style. While many cyclists point their toes somewhat downward through at least part of the stroke, Anquetil consistently pointed his toe dramatically downward throughout his stroke.

As a longtime fan of Anquetil's (hey, he was among the most colorful champions and a true libertine), I was always curious about this. But YouTube finally gave me an opportunity to figure out how he did it.

Best I can figure, based on translations from French cycling articles and comments from Anquetil's coach, mechanics, etc., he experimented a lot with bike fit. He seemed to prefer a frame that was slightly too large so he was more stretched out and aero for his specialty, time trials and long solo breakaways. There wasn't much drop from saddle to handlebars, even by 1960s standards. It appeared that the larger frame and saddle height were designed to accommodate his toe-down pedaling, which means either he had to sit more heavily in the saddle, or had uncommonly powerful calves. He tended to spin faster than 80 rpm with an easy, unlabored style, so I'm betting he sat fairly heavily in the saddle, rather than putting more weight on the legs as many cyclists with slower cadences did.

And his mechanic claimed he tried crank arms ranging from the 160 or 165 up to 180 or longer. In most videos and photos his crank arms do appear a bit long. His pedaling stroke often put his thigh parallel with the top tube on the upstroke, while still maintaining that toe-down style on the downstroke. That would take a fairly long crank arm to accomplish. For his 5'10" height, I'm guessing they probably used around 175 most often. I'm 5'11" and have bikes with crank arms ranging from 170 to 175.

I tried to mimic Anquetil's toe-down style, tweaking my bike several times and videoing the tests. When I managed to emulate his pedal stroke, I was indeed sitting heavily in the saddle. I was able to adapt to that with some adjustments, saddle swaps, shorts with thicker pads, etc. But I couldn't generate any power that way unless I rocked at the hips, with the inevitable resulting lower back/hip pain. That experiment lasted a couple of weeks before I returned the bike to my preferred setup.

Anquetil was a freak of nature.

jadocs

See the animations on this webpage. I didn’t do a good job of explaining above.

Perfect Condition Ltd

woodcraft

I believe those pics are dated & now that pros have climbing gears

they don't need to yank up on the back foot.

Carbonfiberboy 

Here's a fave video of mine. Bike fit combined with action - how it's done by modern champions:


Downstroke, relaxed ankle
Bottom, pull back with heelcup
Backtroke, unweight the pedal by lifting the shoe by its heelcup, again relaxed ankle
Before stroke top, raise the shoe's toe using dorsiflexion, ankle not relaxed
At stroke top, push forward on the pedal with relaxed ankle
The push forward continues into the downstroke

Don't watch the angle of the foot bottom w/r to horizontal. Rather watch the foot bottom/shin angle change. The tri position results in different apparent heel drop compared to road position, the rider being moved forward w.r to BB.

It's a lot to think about, but with practice becomes natural, relaxed, easy, and smooth. Think constant torque on the BB produced by the torque of both cranks added together. You're trying to put as little pressure on the pedals as possible commensurate with the desired power output at the current RPM - i.e. push forward + pull back = push down + pull up, the latter term usually being zero. While doing that, you're using your weak lower leg muscles as little as possible by relaxing the ankle as much as possible.

Note that the foot angles of these pros is exactly what's shown in the animation in Perfect Condition. They aren't "yanking up" on the back pedal, they are simply relaxing their ankle and allowing it to lift the shoe. Unfortunately, Perfect Condition calls this "ankling" but that's not what's now commonly understood by that term, "Ankling" usually refers to flexing the ankle on the downstroke, thus pointing the toe down more at the bottom. Those pros do the opposite.

And obviously, ankle of foot bottom w/r to horizontal is a function of saddle height, since extended knee angle is effectively fixed by human mechanics.

Carbonfiberboy 

One often hears this. However science disagrees: https://www.radlabor.de/fileadmin/PDF...MSS_-_2011.pdf

The problem with pulling up is that the hip flexors are usually relatively small and easily overworked. While it is true that hammering the downstroke can produce more short term power, it's an ineffective technique for long distances.
Riders who unweight on the backstroke can develop quite powerful hip flexors over time. An interesting test is to do bent leg raises to exhaustion on a gym's Roman chair. Start with straight legs, bend and raise the knees to a couple inches higher than the hands, moving the feet up and down in a straight line like pistons, no swinging. If you can do 40 of those, you have good technique.

The reason that unweighting the pedal on the upstroke is more efficient is that this technique requires less downstroke force for the same result. The less force a muscle is required to supply, the more it can rely on slow twitch fibers and less on fast twitch. Muscles like to use as few fibers as possible, thus holding more in reserve.

redlude97

There is a difference between unweighting and pulling up like in the video. While pros do a better job of unweighting, there is still a negative pedal force vector at the top of the stroke in even elites https://www.researchgate.net/publica...nt_competitive

Carbonfiberboy 

Did you read the PDF? Any comments?

Right about the negative vector. That's the point where one flexes the ankle to raise the toe, then pushes right when the pedal goes over the top. The hip flexor gets too short to do much, so the ankle takes over. Gotta do what one can. In that video I posted, one can see that some do, some don't. A lot of it's neuromuscular training, shows up at mile 109.

Personally, I don't pull up. I try to unweight and that's the best I can do. Some people are more talented than others. There's that rather famous case of the guy who tested Powercranks for a summer and found they were no help at all. In fact he could hardly tell he was using them because he already pulled up. That review was much quoted at the time, but for the wrong reason. Cyclists, as a group, are pretty conservative.

woodcraft

Re 'yanking', I was referring not to the animation, but to the climbing photos of the pros,

where you can see the big rings/small cluster & "all hands on deck" pedaling- both legs and arms simultaneously pushing/pulling

like you get going up a hill on a fixed gear.

63rickert

Another way to say the same thing: The foot and leg have to come up on the backstroke. They have to. If not unweighted the only way to get that leg up is to force it up by pushing down on other pedal. Legs are large and heavy. Pushing the weight of a leg up takes a lot of energy. Using the downward pedal to get the other pedal up is monkey motion.

There are various times when power is applied by lifting the pedal. One obvious instance is when climbing out of saddle at low rpm. Many if not most are going to lift the pedal in that case without ever thinking of it.

It is not likely that many, even if trained to do it, are going to apply much power by lifting the back leg on level ground. Simple method to demonstrate this is to go for a ride on a flat pedal bike with no foot retention. Does the foot ever come off the pedal? Try lifting the foot off pedal intentionally. Feels quite odd. Not something you are likely to do except by trying.

Try pedaling with just one foot. Lots of coaches use one-leg drills. Lifting the foot is absolutely required. Try pedaling with one leg on a flat pedal bike. Simple tests like these teach pedal mechanics quickly.

redlude97

I've scanned that PDF in the past, when these discussions have come up in the past. The problem is that the changes are avg over the number of participants which would hide any GE changes for each athlete(IE Fig 5). Also the cycling cadence of 75 rpm would induce fatigue for both groups that would be different than for a modern cyclist that pedals at ~90rpm. The main issue though is that the measure of fatigue is the decrease in Pmax which performed without feedback for both groups which likely results in little to no pulling during the stroke like in the feedback loop prior which obviously would lead to the outcome that the quad dominant Pmax would be higher if more of the load is shifted to the feedback group. That doesn't tell us what happens in terms of GE or fatigue long term if the cyclist continues to use this method of pedalling past the 45 min windows where the hip flexor muscles will inevitably tire out. What that study is helpful in telling us is that being able to change your pedal stroke to shift the muscles in use to reduce burden on certain muscle groups during different periods of riding but thats something we already knew. Doesn't mean it should be implemented all the time. My point being that the video you post above where the coach is telling their athlete to emphasize pulling up for a smooth pedal stroke is outdated. The new way of thinking about it is to simply get the other leg out of the way of the downstroke of the other leg, its been almost a decade that we've known this https://www.stevehoggbikefitting.com...-what-is-best/

Carbonfiberboy 

Agreed.

I've always been a long distance rider and I don't pull up, just try to unweight. But I think pulling is more efficient in the short term, per the study. I've undropped myself a couple times on long hills doing that. The extra impulsion is quite noticeable if your flexors are fresh. Along that line, there's video of Landis ankling like a maniac on the infamous Stage 17. Works great for a little while.

That said, it should be possible to develop the flexors more. I've tried weight training them on the Roman chair, lifting 25 lb. dumbbells with my feet. It wasn't any fun though, so I didn't keep at it.

ncr

Anquetil was no freak. His toes pointed down because he was making maximal use of his lower leg plantar flexor muscles. This meant he could start his powerful semi circular pedalling stroke at 11 o'c ending at 5 o'c, his peak torque was applied around 1.30. The toes had to remain pointing down because his feet had to be ready for a simultaneous switchover of power application from one leg to the other when cranks were in the 11/5 o'c position. He had no dead spot sector in his power application to the chainring as he applied maximal torque at 12 and 1 o'c. He applied that power at 11, 12 and 1 o'c in exactly the same way as indoor tug o' war men apply their power from their shoes to the mat. It is a powerful high gear technique which is ideal for flat time trials.

Carbonfiberboy 

I've done a lot of OLP. Much easier at low RPM than at 85+ as redlude97 pointed out. I think the flexors don't dissipate the waste products quickly.

I used to be really good at hill sprints, pulling up so hard I'd lift the bike off the ground. I had to be careful about weight distribution so I didn't lose either traction or steering.