I am not interested in riding harder but I am interested in riding easier. I am wondering if anyone has any information about how much efficency you gain by using clipless system. Just to make sure that we are in agreement about what efficiency is. To me efficency is defined as my body putting out 150 watts and 140 watts going to the rear wheel of the bike as opposed to me putting out 150 watts and 100 watts going to the rear wheel of the bike.

If clipless systems will allow me to increase my bodys output from 150 watts to 170 watts because I can pull up on the pedals and therefore get more power out of each pedal stroke, then this is not the kind of efficency I am looking for.

If anyone has any links to information about this please give them to me.

I am hoping that with the clipless system some of the muscles, that are having to work to stabilize the legs on a platform pedal, can be relaxed and therfore save energy and increase efficiency. But I sure would like to see some scientific data about how clipless pedals save energy while riding.

If this has already been answered in previous post, I apologize for asking it again. I did search for it and came up empty or really with so many hits that I could not sort through all the information. Maybe I need to know how to use the search function better. So any help on the search system would be appreciated also.