You don’t get more leverage from a shorter lever, you get more leverage from a longer lever. Sprinters use the balls of their feet, road cyclists use the balls of their feet, horses run on their toenails. Longer lever=more power. Simple physics. In martial arts, to achieve the greatest impact from a kick, you use the ball of your foot to impact your target, not your arch or your heel.
Good grief, I was just saying my experience. And seeing as I’m not falling on my head on the time, but I am using the balls of my toes all the time…there’s a significant difference. I’m not trying to wind people up.
I always ride with the pedal towards the front of my arch but when I go to flip I move my foot back so the pedal is on the ball of my foot as this helps to flip the cranks faster.
Levers 101
Beetle
Longer lever more speed shorter lever more power. Think of it this way:
If you stick your arm out and hang weights from it you would be able to hang much more weight from your elbow than from your hand or the tip of your finger before your arm collapses. However if you swing your arm in an arc then the tip of your finger is moving much farther and faster than your elbow moves.
Yes, if you are trying to move a rock then you want the handle of the lever (Part of the lever between the pivot point and your hands.) to be longer. You also want that rock that you are trying to move to be as close to the pivot as possible. That means shorter. With a human leg unicycling the pivot point would be the hip therefore the closer the resistance to the hip the more power you will be able to exert. Bicycalist with their gears usually don’t have a power problem they need speed therefore they would use the balls of thier feet because they are farther away from the point of pivot.
Unicorn
I guess what we are actually talking about here is torque, not leverage. Your example of the weight hanging from the fingers vs. the elbow is correct but not because of leverage. The principle is torque at the pivot point (the sholder). A lever uses a fulcrum to create mechanical advantage (the stick moving the rock). I still think you can create more force at at the ball of your foot (cyclists do want to use the most efficient use of their energy regardless of the use of gears, they are racing to win). Try to jump into the air from your heels, then try to jump into the air using the balls of your foot. You can jump significantly higher using the foot as an additional lever.
If we are talking about preventing injury to the ankle, then you should use the arch of your foot (because the torque is reduced at the pivot point from having a shorter lever, force is applied upward from the petal to the foot and creates torque at the ankle).
If this theory holds true, then the placement of the foot should depend on what you are doing. If you want to ride for distance or speed, then use the balls of the feet. If you are doing drops, jumps, and other stunts where the risk of ankle injury is greater, then use the arches of your feet.
Does this make sense?
Beetle
no you were argueing your experience, theirs a significant difference, and considering almost everyone (unless someone cares to contradict me with evidence) uses their arches over their balls, probably means you are wrong about balls being better.
john right though
when someone tells you you are wrong, whatever
when everyone tells you you are wrong, then most likely you are wrong
Then things get complicated…
Well, I use my arches for everything, ive done 3ft drops on the balls of my feet, that hurt my ankles for a week or two. Hurt a lot. Also, if your riding arches it doesnt matter as long as your using good shoes. I use some converse like skate shoes. Good thick souls. Dont use hightops, you can ever feel the spikes in your pedal from that
i have rolled my ankle 3 or 4 times how do i prevent it from happining again?
move to your arches if you arent already their.
if you are and are repeatedly doing it, then take a break (couple of days) so your ankle has a chance to heal itself before doing more dropd. also focus on keeping you ankles from bending
most people will roll their ankles every now and then anyways no matter how good they are
As a lifelong biker, it always feels odd for me to have anything but the balls of my feet on the pedal axle. But when I muni, I mostly follow Kevin’s advice, and move my foot around as conditions warrant. However, I would say that most of the time, my foot when muniing is slightly more toward the arches than toward the balls. This is due to experience–even on smaller drops (I don’t do many big drops) I’ve tweaked my ankles when my feet are on the balls.
I must say I’m impressed by the fact that this thread has been, so far, free of double entendres. It’s been a bit of a wrench for me not to make some sort of off-color remark!
This.
Thanks ill try that
Dude the ball is at the front of your foot. Right? I am like 99.9 percent sure.
Also do abc’s. Lay down, or sit down (laying down is comfortable, and probably better) and extend your leg out, and keep your ankle up, not loose and hanging there. Then, just use you toes to fully draw out the letters of the alphabet. For most people, this gets your ankles/foot burning by the time they get to Z.
Its a good exercise, and keeps your ankle nice and strong, but still limber.
Yep, the ball is at the front, and im sure he knows that too, but just worded his sentence. I too move to the balls of my feet before I do a crankflip, but I land on my arches.
yea it is I think
For flips I move my foot back so that the pedal is further forward in comparison to my foot because it makes it easer to flip the cranks faster.
Torque and Levers
Hi Beetle,
What you write makes sense. You grasp the matter. The amount of torque generated depends on the length of the lever.
Unicorn
About the physics:
with feets at 90° from the legs, the distance knee-ball is a bit more than the one knee-arch (that’s a bit more than knee-toe, of course).
But the lever exerting the power is the thigh (hip-knee). What’s below is just transmission. If you had 1m shins, but the same thighs, a higher seat etc. would have other problems, but would need to apply the same force on the same slopes.
Obviously, the ankle is not rigid: the pros are more muscles involved possibly adding power (as in bicycle), and fine control. An extensible transmission, so to speak. The cons are a certain frailty of this juncture, so that it could be useful to take back the feet to the arches to avoid injuries.
Personally, I’m not going into any kind of drops (above some inches, doing mild muni). But I feel more comfortable with arches when doing steep uphill on trails: with a strong hold on the handle and arches on pedals I feel more “one with the uni”, I sense more traction and get on better. Maybe it’s lack of technique or strenght in the lower muscles that lead to this.
Know your own strength. Get calves of steel.
Also when you’re ready or prepared for the jump,drop etc; do the toes if you like toes… But if your not ready or it doesn’t go as planned, the arches are probably safer.