Originally Posted by
hillcrawler
I've been thinking about this while i was riding today. I have a hybrid bike with flat pedals and road bike clipless. As you know, you are applying maybe 4 different types of force with clipless pedals. Pressing, lifting, pushing (forward) and pulling (back). Well but in the same time you are wasting, let's say consuming more energy for your extra efforts. In the end you are getting exhausted quicker. Maybe it sounds bullish but i gave a thought about it. What would you say?
Let's break this down, engineering style.
Unless you've got one of those funny (and pretty damn cool, imo) elliptical crank sets, your crank and drive train in general are radially symmetrical. So really, they don't care which 'direction' you're pulling/pushing, just that energy is going from you to it. (In reality, since it's a polar [radial] system, you are only really pushing in one direction the whole time, you're just using different muscle groups to accomplish it. So, if consider using the exact same amount of energy on platform vs clipless, you just get to spread that energy payment over different muscle groups, which helps to keep you from exhausting yourself too quickly.
Also, it should help you maintain a more consistent power output. Like I said, the crank doesn't really care which "direction" you push, but you're not using the same radial system as it. So when using platform, you can only push down, which only lets you use one quarter(ish) of the crank rotation per arm, or about half the rotation in total. Pulling/pushing in other directions uses - again, assuming the same amount of energy - the same energy spread more consistently over the crank.
As for clipping/unclipping, I still have the occassional trouble unclipping really quickly, but it's a necessary evil IMO.