Mywifesirrational
I however am very normal. Trust me.
This is a good questions, that never gets the correct answer.For me I have seen a number of benefits & develpoed my riding since being clipped in, and am wondering if it is worth the effort & time to ditch those and then chase what seems to be the same end effect by adding pinned flats & expensive sticky shoes?
Without going into too much detail, the whole your cheating and using poor technique in clipless pedals and need to use flats to learn ‘proper technique’ is a load of shit, this myth is perpetuated in every MTB forum and from a few self-proclaimed guru / experts who have no knowledge of motor learning. Not having a go at you JT, your a top bloke, but this is the general statement that is pasted to every time someone asks this question.Riding flats develops and maintains bike control, balance and stability. Clipless encourages you to mask core skills with the fact that you are attached to the bike. Bike control/pumping/bunny hops etc are all aided when clipped in, and that makes you lazy and dampens your skills. Body positioning is also compromised as you can get away with situations being clipped in that would otherwise have you arse over tit on flats.
I agree that there are benefits to riding clipless, especially in XC style situations where pedal stroke efficiency is critical and bike control less critical.
When we learn a skill we go through several stages of learning, cognitive, associative and autonomous stages, this is the Fitts and Posner model still the dominate theory in motor learning. To put this into the context on my rant;
The cognitive stage (beginner) dictates that every single time you want to unclip from your pedals you must consciously think to do the movement, the one time (or ten) you forget to release you fall over sideways to the laughter of riding companions.
The Associative stage (intermediate) you have the basic motor pattern worked out at a reasonable level – ie, you can reliably unclip when needed. But you are still refining your technique towards the expert level, as in a steep climb with sudden loss of traction / bike stalling may still result in a fall from not unclipping fast enough.
The autonomous stage (expert) you can unclip without though in any circumstance and you don’t need to think about it, it just occurs when it needs to happen. Many flat riders who dismiss clipless pedals have never gotten to this stage from my observations; most don’t get out of the cognitive stage.
Then we have the principles of general learning and specific learning, general learning is simply learning to ride a bike with flat pedals – I’d consider this to be the most basic pedal. Or specific learning, as in learning to use clipless pedals a specialised piece of equipment. When learning a skill in a general sense, transfer of that skill from a general environment to a specific environment is not 100% or even close, then take into account that both flat and clipless pedals are used in differing ways from a technique point of view to achieve the same goal and the transfer of skill from flats to clipless becomes ever lower. The principle of motor learning requires an individual who want to reach the autonomous stage and therefore develop expertise to train specifically on the equipment that that want to become an expert using.
Telling someone to practice a skill with equipment different to what they are going to use on the trail goes against 100 years of motor learning research and also the techniques that are employed in elite sport that the average punter will never see. Specificity is very, very important if you want to become good at something - look at the WC bike setup, that measures to the mm, at exact angle for brake levers and the like. Using the benefits of clipless pedals to help you bunny hop is not cheating or poor technique, using your pedal in the most efficient manner possible, even if that is pulling up with your feet, is excellent technique. Anyone who says differently…
Practice your skills with the pedal you’re going to be using, if you swap and change regularly for riding, practice with both, but its detrimental to practice with one if you’re going to ride on the other, the skill won’t transfer effectively and you could have spent that same time developing greater expertise with your preferred pedal.