Originally Posted by
alanbikehouston
If you think your feet "lift" the pedals, instead of the pedal lifting your foot, yes, you have a vivid imagination.
Take a bike out on a track for an hour with your feet "clipped in". Find the fastest cadence you can maintain for an hour. Put high quality BMX pedals on that same bike. Guess what? If you can maintain a 90 RPM cadence for an hour clipped in, you can maintain an 90 RPM cadence for an hour with BMX pedals.
This is not something you need to guess, or speculate, or imagine. It takes five minutes to swap out a pair of pedals. An hour later, you will know the truth: being clipped in is a wonderful scam...if you are one of the people selling $200 pedals and $200 shoes.
I agree clipless pedals are definitely not for everyone, and a lot who do have them definitely don't need them. In that sense yes they can be a scam by a shop as many shops im sure push the accessories (shoes and pedals) to people who want to cycle that are just looking to get the lead out and not nessicarily race or anything.
That said your theories here about not lifting and no advantage, you are absolutely on crack. I did a little real world test. Last week all I had were pedals and toe straps and my size 10 nikes. Whatever I could do the best cadence I could hold up for any sort of distance was 105 (for about a mile or so) and a burst at 110, I averaged about 89 (around about 30 miles, and this was common for most of my rides over the past few months). This week, same bike, new pedals and Shimano tri shoes. My average for my whole ride was 95 (about 25 miles) and I was able to burst and hold 120.
Unless I grew some new muscles in a week, Or I traded places with Lance himself. I think the shoes did the trick... But thats just me and testing your theory.