The Foot Isn’t Neutral Just Because It Gets Ignored
One of the more surprising patterns I've noticed since opening RedEye has been the number of riders arriving after already exhausting the conventional pathways for solving their discomfort.
These aren't riders looking for a quick saddle adjustment or a few millimeters of cockpit refinement. They're often experienced cyclists who have invested significant time, money, and effort trying to understand why riding doesn't feel the way it should.
Many have worked with multiple fitters. Some have seen physical therapists, chiropractors, sports medicine physicians, strength coaches, or movement specialists. They've completed mobility screens, strength assessments, pressure mapping sessions, and extensive treatment plans.
By the time they arrive, they're often carrying a long list of observations:
Functional leg-length discrepancies
Differences in internal/external hip rotation
Recurring knee pain
Left-right differences in strength
Uneven saddle pressure and/or chronic saddle sores
Persistent shifting on the bike
Significant asymmetries in movement quality
Sometimes every one of those observations is valid. The challenge is that observations are not explanations. A rider can spend years collecting labels without ever arriving at a meaningful understanding of why the problem exists. What continues to surprise me is how often this process unfolds with very little attention given to the feet. Not because the feet are the answer to every problem. They're not. But because the feet represent the rider's first point of contact with the bicycle and the one directly responsible for power transfer. They influence stability, force transmission, movement quality, and the behavior of everything above them.
The reality is that the foot is remarkably complex. Recognizing its influence is one thing. Understanding what you're seeing—and knowing what to do with that information—is something else entirely. That challenge, more than anything, is what led me to build this studio.
The Strange Blind Spot
The bicycle has only three meaningful contact points: the hands, the pelvis, and the feet. We obsess over the first two.
Saddle pressure is analyzed in extraordinary detail. Riders spend hundreds of dollars trying different saddles in search of comfort. Handlebar shape, reach, stack height, and hand position are endlessly debated. Yet I regularly encounter riders whose asymmetries have been examined from the neck to the knee without anyone seriously evaluating how their feet interact with the bicycle.
The foot isn't always the answer. But how can it be excluded from the conversation entirely? And if I’m being transparent, while they might not ALWAYS be the answer, a betting-type would be wise to put their money on the feet.
What I struggle to understand is how a rider can be told they have a functional leg-length discrepancy, asymmetrical hip rotation, chronic pelvic instability, left-right differences in force production, and recurring low back pain, yet nobody has asked a simple question: what happens when they deliver power to the pedals?
Years ago, I worked at a shop in the Southeast that had one of the largest Sidi accounts in the eastern United States. As a result, the North American director visited the shop on a couple of occasions. He was exactly what you'd hope for: an impeccably dressed Italian gentleman with strong opinions and very little interest in changing them.
By that point, I was already deep down the rabbit hole of foot correction and cycling biomechanics. During one visit, I made what I thought was a reasonable observation: "These are beautiful shoes, but the stock insoles aren't very good, and there's not enough volume inside the shoe for many riders to use an effective replacement." He listened carefully. Then, in a manner only a European speaking to a young American can achieve, informed me that people don't need insoles in cycling shoes.
The conversation did not progress much beyond that point. I can't say whether my opinion influenced Sidi's future product development, but I can say I never became much of a Sidi salesman after that. And they still don’t leave any room for foot correction.
The Body Doesn't Care About Professional Boundaries
Part of the problem may be how we tend to compartmentalize human movement. Physical therapists often evaluate the body. Most bike fitters only evaluate the bicycle. Strength coaches evaluate performance. Each discipline contributes valuable information, but the body doesn't recognize those professional boundaries.
A collapsing foot can influence tibial rotation. Tibial rotation can influence femoral rotation. Femoral rotation can influence pelvic mechanics. Pelvic mechanics can influence spinal loading. The reverse can also be true.
The point is not that every problem begins at the foot. The point is that movement is rarely isolated to a single joint, muscle, or region. If we're willing to acknowledge that a hip can influence a knee or that a pelvis can influence a spine, it seems inconsistent to dismiss the foot as irrelevant before it's been adequately assessed.
Functional Leg-Length Discrepancies Are Often Clues
One of the most common observations I encounter is the rider who has been told they have a functional leg-length discrepancy. Notice the word functional. Not anatomical or structural…FUNCTIONAL.
What's particularly interesting is that these discrepancies often seem to change. One practitioner finds the right side longer. Another identifies the left side. Six months later the finding reverses. Bones generally don't change length between appointments but movement strategies do. Muscle tone, pelvic orientation, weight distribution and stability maybe changes over time. But if they do, they don’t change overnight. And sometimes foot mechanics change as well, but again, it’s not like it’s a mood-ring - these things don’t change overnight. They develop over months and years, and the body adapts accordingly. What I’m saying is, more than likely, perspective or dogma influences these things more than reality.
This doesn't mean the foot is responsible for every apparent leg-length discrepancy. It simply means that when the body is presenting with dynamic asymmetry, one of its primary interfaces with the ground—or in this case, the pedal—deserves consideration.
Foot Correction Is Neither Magic Nor Heresy
The conversation around foot correction often becomes strangely polarized. Some practitioners seem to place wedges under nearly every rider they see. Others refuse to use them under any circumstance. Neither approach strikes me as particularly scientific. Foot correction isn't a philosophy or a religion. It's not a declaration of belief. It's simply another tool.
Like saddle position, crank length, cleat placement, and handlebar selection.
The question is not whether shims, wedges, posts, and arch correction are good or bad. The question is whether a particular intervention improves stability, comfort, symmetry, or force production for a particular rider. Or more importantly, the signaling to the brain that stability is present.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't - the answer should come from evaluation, and trial and error, not ideology.
Complexity Rarely Has a Single Cause
The longer I work with cyclists, the less interested I become in single-variable explanations. The rider with chronic discomfort rarely has one problem. More often, they have a collection of interacting variables that influence one another. Previous injuries, asymmetrical movement patterns, breathing mechanics, equipment choices, strength deficits, tissue restrictions, training history, and neurological habits all contribute to the final picture.
The foot is rarely the entire story, but neither is the pelvis, the saddle, or internal/external rotation abilities of the hip. The challenge is understanding how all of those pieces interact.
As I've written previously in Why Your Position Can't Be Evaluated in Isolation and Pelvic Asymmetry: The Invisible Problem That Shapes Everything, the body behaves as an integrated system. The more complex the rider, the more important it becomes to evaluate the entire system rather than fixating on a single region.
A More Valuable Question
Perhaps the real question isn't whether a rider needs foot correction - the more valuable question is whether the feet were thoughtfully evaluated before deciding they didn't. When a rider presents with asymmetrical hips, shifting pelvic position, apparent leg-length discrepancies, recurring back pain, and dramatically different left-right movement strategies, I struggle to understand how the feet can be excluded from the conversation altogether.
Maybe foot correction won't help. Maybe it will.
But in a system where the feet represent one of only three contact points with the bicycle, failing to investigate the possibility seems far more controversial than asking the question in the first place.
While I have no interest in telling other fitters how to do their work, or teaching them what’s taken me decades to sort out, I continue to be surprised by how often the feet are excluded from conversations about asymmetry. Perhaps that's one of the reasons riders eventually find their way to RedEye. Not because I have all the answers, but because I'm willing to ask questions that others may have stopped asking, and take the time to find answers. Or, admit that I’m stumped and need time to sort through the challenge at hand.