Part 2 - If the Ankle Is the Pivot, Everything About Cleat Position Changes

In Part One, I proposed a question that challenged one of the most established conventions in bike fitting: if the foot behaves as a rigid lever once it's enclosed in a cycling shoe, why are we still using the metatarsophalangeal (MPJ) joints to determine fore-aft cleat position?

I don't expect every fitter to accept that premise, nor should they (without questioning). Good ideas deserve healthy skepticism. But once I began looking at cleat position through the lens of lever mechanics instead of anatomical landmarks, a number of observations from two decades of fitting riders suddenly became much easier to explain.

More importantly, they became much easier to predict.

Every Lever Has a Purpose

The purpose of a lever isn't simply to move something. It is to influence force, velocity, and mechanical advantage. We intuitively understand this in almost every other aspect of cycling.

We recognize that changing crank length can alter leverage. We understand that stem length influences steering behavior. We appreciate that different cassette ratios influence the balance between cadence and torque. We appreciate that torso angle can affect glute recruitment, and so on.

Yet when discussing cleat position, we've traditionally focused on aligning a pedal spindle beneath a particular anatomical landmark rather than asking a more fundamental question:

What lever are we actually trying to optimize?

If the shoe has become the lever and the ankle has become the primary articulation, then fore-aft cleat position isn't really about the forefoot at all. It's about managing the relationship between the pedal and the ankle, which influences muscle recruitment strategies of the leg.

In my opinion, graduate research, and fitting experience, that subtle shift is a game changer.

Total Foot Length Becomes Mechanically Relevant

Let's return to the thought experiment from Part One. Five riders, identical size cycling shoes, different foot anatomies. Traditional fitting methods would likely produce five different cleat positions because each rider's metatarsal heads occupy a slightly different location. Mechanically, however, each rider is standing on essentially the same rigid platform.

The effective lever isn't determined by where the metatarsal heads happen to sit inside the shoe. It's determined by the distance from the pedal spindle to the ankle joint through the rigid structure connecting them.

Suddenly, total foot length becomes a much more meaningful variable than individual bone lengths within the foot.

That doesn't eliminate anatomical differences. It simply changes which anatomical relationships matter most.

Why Rearward Cleats So Often Work

This also helps explain something many experienced fitters have observed for years. Moving the cleat rearward frequently improves comfort, stability, and efficiency.

My own graduate research explored how rearward cleat positions influence muscular recruitment, ultimately demonstrating decreased eccentric and isometric demand on the gastrocnemius and soleus and quadriceps, while enhancing the contribution of the larger proximal extensor musculature (hamstrings and glutes).

As that lever shortens, the ankle's mechanical demands decrease. The rider relies less on controlling a long distal lever and more on the larger muscles surrounding the hip and knee. The pedal stroke often becomes quieter, smoother, and more stable—not because the rider suddenly became stronger, but because the system has become mechanically more favorable.

We also know these trends to be true from non-cycling research focused on what is known as “inverse dynamics”, where we can follow force development through a kinetic chain to understand how the body is using muscle to promote or resist movement. We can literally quantify this, which is pretty cool. We know that when squatting on our toes, for instance, the force then tracks anteriorly through the quadriceps, and we can feel that in the anterior knee. Whereas, if we squat with the whole foot, the force is balanced through the posterior chain, and the sensation of excessive knee force drops off - subsequently, the glutes and hamstrings have gotten involved..

This is one reason I believe discussions surrounding rearward cleat position have often focused on the right outcome while explaining it with incomplete reasoning.

Balancing the Anterior and Posterior Chains

The implications extend well beyond the ankle. Every change in lever length influences how force is distributed throughout the kinetic chain.

A longer effective foot lever generally increases the demands placed on the anterior structures (quadriceps in the power phase, tibialis anterior in the recovery phase) controlling the ankle and foot while simultaneously increasing the work required from the plantarflexors to maintain stability. As fatigue accumulates, those demands don't simply disappear—they're transferred elsewhere in the system.

By shortening that lever, we often observe something entirely different. The rider begins relying more heavily on the larger muscles surrounding the hip. Moments of opposition throughout the pedal stroke decrease (thus, pedaling effectiveness improves). The transition between force production and recovery becomes smoother. Force transfer feels less interrupted because fewer muscles are competing to stabilize the distal segments before power can be transmitted through the crank.

This is one reason I spend so much time thinking about balance rather than isolated muscles.

Cycling is not simply about producing force. It's about producing force effectively and efficiently (minimizing unnecessary opposition).

It Also Explains Why Some Riders Never Feel Stable

One of the most common complaints I hear, and see, from riders isn't pain. It's instability. They describe feeling disconnected from the pedals. They struggle to maintain consistent pressure throughout the pedal stroke. They report constantly searching for foot position despite changing shoes, pedals, and cleats. They talk about unbalanced left/right power.

Traditional bike fitting often approaches this as an equipment problem. Digressing a bit, it can almost always be improved with foot correction, if the fitter is knowledgeable about the feet.

If the effective lever is simply too long for that rider's neuromuscular strategy, stability becomes expensive. Every pedal stroke requires additional effort simply to control the ankle before meaningful force can be delivered to the crank. They aren’t relying on rhythmic patterns from the central pattern generator in the spine, they’re processing at higher levels which is energy demanding.

That's a remarkably inefficient way to ride a bicycle for several hours. Sadly, this outcome isn’t about people, riders, or mechanics at all, it’s a result of shoe manufacturers not really wanting to address this in their shoe molds. They’re scared. They’re scared to be the first. They’re scared to be seen as crazy. And I know this first hand from working with them… It took Specialized 12 years to adopt a last that looks like a foot - something I was preaching in 2012 (like a damn fool). Of course, I was trying to convince them of all this too…at the same time….against some serious headwinds. Heretic.

I do applaud Specialized for their recent shoes with forefoot space. It’s a little frustrating, but hey, it’s good for riders.

Why This Fits With Everything Else I've Learned

One of the themes running throughout this website is that the body behaves as an integrated system.

We've explored why pelvic asymmetry changes movement throughout the entire kinetic chain. We've discussed why hip function influences the spine, why breathing affects the neck and shoulders, and why pain is often the final expression of a much larger problem.

Cleat position belongs in that same conversation. I no longer think of it as simply locating the foot on the pedal. I think of it as influencing the entire system's preferred movement strategy.

When viewed that way, it makes perfect sense that a few millimeters beneath the foot can influence muscles much farther upstream.

A Different Starting Point

None of this suggests that every rider should immediately move their cleats rearward. Nor does it suggest that anatomical landmarks should be ignored entirely. Instead, I believe we should reconsider the order in which we ask our questions.

Rather than beginning with the location of the metatarsal heads, perhaps we should begin by understanding the effective lever created by the shoe, the relationship between the pedal and the ankle, and the movement strategy the rider is trying to accomplish. Measure the entire foot length. Simple.

Only then should individual anatomy, injury history, flexibility, and performance goals refine the final position.

That's a very different process from simply measuring bones.

Progress Begins With Better Questions

Bike fitting has (slowly) evolved by questioning assumptions. We questioned plumb bobs, good. We questioned knee-over-pedal-spindle, ugh, finally. We questioned cranks, finally. Perhaps it's time to question whether we've been referencing the correct anatomy when establishing fore-aft cleat position.

I don't pretend this article is the final answer. In fact, I hope it isn't. The best ideas invite better questions, better experiments, and better conversations. But if there's one idea I'd encourage every fitter to carry forward, it's this: Once the foot becomes a rigid lever, the mechanical significance of the metatarsophalangeal joints changes dramatically.

Perhaps the real question has never been:

"Where is the ball of the foot?"

Perhaps it has always been:

"How long is the lever?"

And yes, there is a relationship to optimal cleat location and total foot length. It’s only taken me about 15 years to sort out. Swing by the studio if that seems intriguing…