I wear Five Ten ankle high Impact shoes with the grippy circular shaped knobs on the bottom and I have metal pedals with the small screw in spikes. My feel never slip off but my biggest issue is once I get my foot onto the pedal it is almost impossible to reposition it.
Is there a good grippy pedal that will allow me to reposition my foot once mounted?
You’re asking for a grippy pedal that isn’t grippy? Hmm… this doesn’t make sense.
What you’re looking for is technique, not equipment. You need to practice more one-foot riding.
You can reposition your foot on any type of pedal by lifting it off the pedal, ever so briefly, while riding. If you get good at one-foot riding, this will never be a problem.
As an added benefit, you can start working on one-foot muni. It makes muni twice as fun!
WHen I try to lift my foot off to reposition, I UPD 75% of the time even on pavement. I guess I need to figure out a way to improve these skills!?
I am wondering if I really need such a grippy pedal with all the studs? I am doing mostly trail riding, with some roots and stuff. On my 36er I have old school pedals and I am able to reposition my feet with ease.
practice practice practice.
I had a similar problem with my new uni. I ground the spikes down a little and then smoothed them with a file. It worked pretty good, I can now re-position my feet quickly and they don’t slip when I don’t want them to. Although someday I would like to try plastic pedals without any metal spikes.
Do your pedals have the removable pins in them? You could always try taking some of them out.
I feel your pain, I can move my right foot fairly ‘easy’ (pull it off the pedal quickly and reposition) but can not do it for the life of me on my left foot. I’m working on it, I concentrate on putting as much weight on the saddle and try and pick up my foot as the opposite foot is pushing down. It’s definitely a challenging skill, but VERY useful. …like knoxuni says, practice practice practice and you can do it.
Start on pavement and begin practicing it with different shoes at first, those 5.10s stick to the pedals like friggin glue!
I find I can usually manage to reposition my feet on my Twisted PCs even riding off-road, yet can’t remember ever having my feet slip off accidentally (apart from when totally losing contact whilst hopping - I can’t really blame the pedals for that though). They do seem to have a reputation for not being overly grippy so it is possible to move your feet, though I’ve also managed to reposition on the Nimbus metal pinned pedals which came with my muni. I’ve only been riding a couple of months, so certainly not good enough to ride one footed, but I find a little reduction in pressure on the pedal along with a wiggle is usually enough.
Several ideas:
Practice, but that isn’t an immediate solution.
Some kind of plastic PC type pedals. I find these work really well with the 5 Tens for most riding. Lots of wet and mud are a problem. I run these on my trials uni and my 36.
Something maybe in the middle. The new KH or Nimbus plastic bodied pedals with flat topped pins work well as an intermediate step.
As a side note: the K1 Butterfly pedals are about the most vicious pedals the back of my leg has ever encountered.
Yes, practice makes the master. If you lessen the grip so you can reposition your feet, the grip will be lessened for everything else as well. I use metal pins with 5-10 shoes and I love it. Anything less and I don’t think I would be confident riding fast in high gear on my 36" (otherwise I’d be in constant worry of my foot shifting and hitting the button–and that’s on pavement).
Lifting your whole foot is overkill (and more difficult). Usually I reposition my foot by twisting it side to side. Obviously this alone doesn’t do much with pins on 5-10 shoes, so you also have to tilt your foot a little bit side to side. But you do have to practice this to get comfortable doing it. Do it while going slow, before you really “get going”.
also try doing it in normal shoes first.
+1 for john foss’s foot shuffling method. In my experience, a lot of UDPs when riding muni occur because of a loss in grip between foot and pedal. Don’t go sacrificing overall grip by doing anything drastic until you have given it a go.
Mark
Some types of pedal pins have a poor grip to manuverability ratio. IMO set screws are the worst, small diameter screws are a bit better, fat screws like those on metal JC’s are the best I’ve tried.
Also a pedal w/ more but shorter pins is better than fewer but longer screws.
I need VERY grippy pedals. I replaced all the allen screws on my JC’s w/ the longest ones my hardware store carries (12 mm) for my Muni. I’m looking forward to getting some new low profile pedals w/ a lot more screws (like 10+), so I can use shorter ones. Check out the pedal thread.
JC TrailMix pedals are pretty marginal for grip. I have a pair of Snafu’s with only four pins that have far better grip. If you really want to slide around on your pedals the Crank Brothers 50/50’s are supposed to be fairly slippery (no personal experience).
I run an old pair of Deore XT M737 cage pedals that give me plenty of grip, but let me re-position without lifting my foot off. Thay weren’t quite grippy enough so I took a dremel with a little drum sander to each of the spikes and now they are perfect.
For example set screws like these would be not so good IMO. Another prob w/ set screws if they get damaged or ground down they can be really hard to pull out to replace.
Through screws like these would be ideal, since if grip was lacking you can just use longer ones. Another benefit, you could grind them down all the way to the pedal and still get them out to replace. (These are prob my next pedals. 12 screws per side! :D, or these)
Fire Eye PJ Pedals 2012
I forget what studs like these are called, I haven’t tried one but they are prob better than set screws. The problem is if grip isn’t enough you sometimes can’t get longer pins, also you have to make sure they don’t get ground down too much so you can get them out to replace.
The pins are digging into your shoe as they’re designed, which is good for grip, but bad for foot adjustment.
You can cut the pins down, remove some pins, screw a nut onto the exposed threads to make them broader/blunter, or you can try a different pedal.
I have the same problem at times with my new Electrons, but I can usually slip my foot around by reducing pedal pressure briefly on both feet.
Also, the shoes you’re using tend to get stuck more than others due to the sole and arch design.
I’m with the practice crowd …
It’s actually a good skill to learn and helpful at times to learn to shift your foot on your pedal. I think, even more important to learn to do it with grippy pedals.
It took me a while but I’m glad I learned it. There have been times in Muni riding where I’ve been knocked off my pedal position without UPD-ing. Now that I can shift my foot back without stopping, my rides stay fluid.
Good ideas guys!
I really like the idea of putting nuts on the set screws NURSE BEN, that is a great idea.
I really live my Five ten shoes, but the tread design works almost too well with the spikes