Rubber suspenion pedals?

Do you guys think that pedals with rubber anti-shock inserts would be good? I’m thinking of a metal platform and then a layer of tough rubber sanwiched together by screws or somthing.

Good idea?

You’d need some sort of collapsable honey-comb type structure to get enough deflection for it to be worthwhile, a flat sheet or rubber is fairly stiff. I guess you’d lose some control but I don’t know if it would significant.

hmmmm, does anybody have those gel insole shoes and lossed control on them?

edit: like the honeycome construction idea

Maybe padded thick sole shoes

would be better ? This way you avoid adding weight and bulk to the uni. There is also much more room in the shoe to spread the load, then on a pedal top.
I wonder what kind of super shoe those parkor, run and jump off a building guys use.

Funny i always wondered that, surely the risk of wrecking your ankles is enormous, do those guys wear special shoes or just rely on their skill to remain uninjured? All the groups i’ve seen running in london and oxford appear to just be wearing normal trainers.

Hydraulic pedals

They wouldn’t be cheap. Pedals that had a centering spring could be oil damped with a miniaturized application of motorcycle shock techniques. :wink:
Basically, 3 " thick pedals would feel rigid until landing a big jump would pressurize oil, to open a valve, causing the pedal to damp down an inch.
It could be done, if there was enough people willing to pay 1000$ or so for a heavy pedal with a so so life span.

just regular running shoes or basketball shoes if you want more support

alot of them use skate shoes too.

They need better shoes

To much Nike this celebrity that. I’d want some serious don’t bust my foot even if the market dynamics don’t support the demographic profit curve thing.
Seriously, would you jump out of a second story window without it?

FiveTen, a climbing shoe company makes freerunning shoes. They have super grippy rubber on them, but they are otherwise basically running shoes. FiveTen also makes the Impact shoe, which is an incredible muni shoe.

idk i’ve always used crapy tenis shoes…they seems to work good if i land right…

what does the impact shoe use to cussion drops?

The amount of impact absorption that you’d get from that type of pedal would be insignficant compared to what bending at the knees and waist does for you. It would be like adding 1% of impact absorption, i’m thinking. Don’t waste your time.

Impact is based on the force of your body weight when it hits the ground. To limit this, we attempt to minimize that force by quickly decelerating our body weight from the time you touch the ground to the time you stop moving downward. When you bend at the knees and waist, you can add maybe a second or 2 of deceleration before you bottom out and impact the ground. How much time do you think that fancy rubber would give you? I’d guess about nothing. And then factor in the instability of landing and the wasted energy when jumping (trying to accelerate upward), and it sounds like a huge waste of time and effort on your part. I could be wrong, though.

I was thinking more for riding rough ground than absorbing drops, where I agree the effects would be negligible. I think it’s more about absorbing small amplitude vibration than large peak forces. The existance of things like suspension handle bar stems suggests that maybe it would be of use.