With many types of shoes available, it is important to pick the right kind for you. Learn how to choose proper cycling shoes in this video.
Consider cycling purpose
Select comfortable shoes
Consider bottom tread
Kevin Livingston is a former professional cyclist who successfully rode and completed six Tour de France races as a teammate of Lance Armstrong. Kevin now focuses on Training and Coaching through his company, Pedal Hard Training Services in Austin,TX.
KEVIN LIVINGSTON: Hi I'm Kevin Livingston here at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop in Austin, Texas. Let's talk about picking a cycling shoe, choosing the proper shoe. To start, it really depends on what your goal is or what you're doing with your cycling. We have a couple of different examples and brands here. Here is an example of a woman's mountain bike or even it could be a touring shoe because the cleat is recessed in the bottom of the shoe. So this--you could actually walk on this, pretty comfortable, you won't have the loud, clacking of the cleat on the ground because it's recessed in the shoe. Typically mountain bike pedals are pedals--is the system that you'll see used on spin bikes in a lot of gyms. So you can have pedals on your bike at home using this shoe and take these shoes to the gym and be able to spin at the gym too without bringing your own pedals. So that's a pretty--it's a pretty good shoe for general, for fitness, and kind of the crossover in convenience, a big convenience factor. Moving up, then we have a mountain bike type shoe. It's just a little bit stiffer, a little bit more high performance than a touring shoe. Again the cleat is recessed. The shoe is a little bit heavy or sturdier than a road shoe. Also when you get mud or sort of when it gets dirty, these shoes can handle that. You're not going to miss clipping in of your pedal because this system is made especially for that, to handle all that dirt and grime. A road shoe is going to be more, a little bit slicker and leaner built construction. You're going to have a carbon sole or a pretty aggressive sole that's very stiff. It's not a great shoe to walk in. You have some points put on to help walking. But in time these wear down pretty quick and it can damage the shoe. And the cleat is not recessed, the cleat is exposed so you can wear down the cleats if you're doing a lot of walking. They do make covers for cleats to help you try to extend the life of those cleats if you are doing some walking. Let's look at one other type maybe more of--even more so--this is more of like I mentioned the women's mountain bike shoe. This is more of maybe a touring type shoe. Little more flexed, a lot more comfortable for walking, you can even ride this shoe without clip-less pedals. You could just have standard pedals without clips. And that's you know to get started, if you don't feel comfortable clipping in, this will be a great shoe. Lot of different brands, you've got your different disciplines the shoes go with. Get someone at your shop. Get a professional to help you. Make sure it's the right fit and the right shoe for you.
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