Originally Posted by
cooker
People think this, but it's not the case. It's true you need to use muscular effort to lift your left leg. However you can either use the muscles on your left leg to pull it up, or use the muscles on your right leg to push it up. As long as the left leg isn't actively pushing down, there's no reason to claim one way is more efficient than the other.
Not true. As long as your foot is even touching the pedal, there is some pressure on it. Of course pulling up is impossible with platforms, and that's why clipless is better in this regard.
It takes some practice to get good at timing the "pulling up" part, and I think I'm getting better at it, though it's probably nearly impossible to quantify while I'm riding. It was sort of an epiphany when I realized that pedaling in clipless pedals is really quite a different thing than pedaling on platforms.