Cleat positioning help please

over-the-hill

Just moved over to road shoes and cleats with Keo pedals. Please could I have some advice on the best way to position the cleats. It all seems a bit hit and miss especially the side to side adjustment.

anguish68

Posed the same question more or less and someone kindly posted this a few months back, hope it helps :

Pinched from Chainreaction site:-
Proper cleat placement is important, even though the new floating-cleat designs have made it far less critical. There are basically two things to set up- approximate cleat angle and fore/aft positioning.
For the angle, we generally set up the cleats so that, when the shoe is moved inwards, your ankle won't quite hit the crank. With this position, all the pedal systems we offer allow a significant outward angle from neutral (in line with the bike), meaning that your foot can go just about anyplace it wants to. The only reason for changing the cleat position so it allows less outward movement is for those who have difficulty moving their heels out far enough to exit the pedals.
For fore/aft, we start by positioning the cleat so the ball of your foot is centred over the pedal. This position generally results in high energy transfer from foot-to-pedal without undue stress on the knee. However, for those who've experienced knee problems, the first thing that should be tried is to move the cleat towards the back of the shoe, dramatically reducing the amount of leverage that the pedal can exert against your foot and knee.

iggs

Here's a post on a blog regarding quite an extreme rearward cleat position

http://www2.trainingbible.com/joesblog/ ... ition.html

And then other info from here

http://www.cyclingnews.com/fitness/?id= ... 7-26#Cleat

Here is the sizing info you requested for cleat positioning. Shoe size 36 - 38: centre of ball of foot 7mm in front of pedal axle; 39 - 41: 8mm; 42 - 43: 9mm; 44 - 45: 10mm; 46 - 47: 11mm 48 - 50: 12mm. There are a number of qualifiers that I will attach to those recommendations. 1. This info is for road and mtb riders. For general track riding, I would reduce the amount of foot over the pedal by a mm or 2 depending on shoe size and event. For sprinters and kilo riders, I would halve the recommended amount of foot over the pedal. 2. If positioning someone in person, I might vary the above a mm or so either way depending on other factors. 3. For riders with an exceptional heel dropping pedalling style, I would increase the amount of foot over the pedal slightly. The converse is true for the exceptional toe down style pedallers. For both groups I'm talking about technique under moderately severe load, not cruising in a small gear pedalling fast. 4. For riders with a lot of heel lift in their shoe last, I would increase the amount of foot over the pedal slightly. 5. For riders with flexible soled shoe, I would increase the recommendation slightly as with this type of shoe the heel deflects downwards more under load.[\quote]

alan_sherman

How anyone can identify the 'ball' of the foot to an accuracy of one mm is something i would like to know.

over-the-hill

alan sherman wrote:

How anyone can identify the 'ball' of the foot to an accuracy of one mm is something i would like to know.

Absolutely