Mountain biking shoes are the most important gear in the sport. If you don’t wear these special shoes, your chances of injuries and poor performance may escalate. Surely you can wear other sports shoes if you want to, but you must know that they can provide proper protection for your feet.
Now that you get the brief picture, here is a guide to buying the best pair.
Match the Shoes with Your Bike’s Pedals
Bike pedals, in general, come in two types: flat (also called as platforms) and clipless pedals (also called as clip-ins). And as you may have guessed, flat mountain biking shoes are for the flat pedals, while the clipless shoes are for the clipless pedals.
However, note that road bikes use clip-ins as well, but they are slightly different from the ones on mountain bikes. The first uses three bolts, while the latter only has two bolts. You need to know this so that you won’t end up buying the wrong shoes.
Get the Right Outsole’s Grooves
The outsoles of your shoes determine the strength of your feet’s grip on the pedals. Even the clipless shoes have this feature as well because all bikes work with the same mechanical principles. Therefore, you must make sure that your shoes’ outsoles have the right grooves that can stick to your bike’s pedals firmly. What you must note here is that some rubber can look like it can provide enough traction for a while, but after some time, it loses all of its quality. To avoid such an undesirable outcome, always buy a genuine pair of mountain biking shoes, not the bootlegs.
Examine the Fabric’s Stiffness
The shoes’ stiffness is a personal preference. The physics is that the stiffer the shoes are, the more efficient the energy transfer is, but the less convenient it is to be worn in a long time. Besides, only the pricy stiff shoes have an adequate air circulation system in them. The cheaper ones tend to accumulate sweat, which is a condition that can lead to nasty consequences.
Therefore, if you are an occasional biker, it is okay to pick a pair that feels most comfortable on your feet. But if you are competitive, pick the high-end ones. As an additional note, almost all clipless shoes come with stiff fabric. Hence, your consideration will be how good the material is in handling sweaty feet.
Pick a Pair with Anti-Microbial Materials
As hinted above, mountain biking can result in heavy sweating on the feet. If the shoes’ materials are not anti-microbial, the airborne dirt and the sweat will be the perfect place for skin-disease bacteria to grow. You certainly don’t want to end up with skin rash, do you?