The Story Behind Pedaling Innovations’ Unique Platform Pedal Design

One day I was on the trail upset at my shoes. More specifically, I was struggling to find a comfortable spot for my right foot and I was upset at the support I was getting from the soles of my shoes. As a flat pedal rider I often dealt with the trade-offs that came without a super stiff soled riding shoe and that day seemed to highlight a lot of my frustrations.
As I sat there cursing my shoes and pedals a thought crossed my mind - why don't I need stiff soled shoes to squat or deadlift in the gym? As a strength coach I often advised people to lift barefoot when strength training and I had seen people lift hundreds and hundreds of pounds either barefoot or with shoes that had thin, pliable soles.
So why was it that the same foot that can deadlift hundreds of pounds off of the bike without stiff soled shoes suddenly needs them on the bike?
Then the answer struck me...because the ground supports both ends of the arch of your foot.
The arch is one of the strongest forms in nature but only if it is supported on both ends. If you don't support one end you destabilize the whole arch, which means you destabilize the foot. And this is why you need a stiff soled shoe on a pedal - the pedal body itself is only designed to support one end of the arch (the ball of the foot) which means the other end is unsupported, requiring the sole of the shoe to do its best to support the other end.
So if you want both ends of your arch supported, then why don't any pedals on the market do that? Because, my friend, every pedal on the market before now has had one fatal design flaw - they were all designed with the assumption that you need to push through the ball of your foot.
But this outdated view of the pedal stroke is flat out wrong.
We've known for a while now that you only push through the ball of the foot when your foot needs to break contact with the ground, like when you run or jump. However, your foot acts much differently if it doesn't come off the ground, like when deadlifting in the gym or picking up a bike to put it on the bike rack.
When your foot stays in contact with the ground it needs to remain balanced between the ball of the foot and the heel so that the ground can support the arch on both ends. Plus this more balanced position allows for better recruitment of the hips, which are the strongest muscles in the body.
This is why fitness trainers are always getting on to people not to come up on their toes when lifting weights - pushing through the ball of the foot in the gym puts extra stress on the knees and makes it harder to recruit the hips. Since your foot doesn't come off of the pedal during the pedal stroke then it is more like doing a bunch of single leg deadlifts than trying to jump over a car speeding at you or landing from a jump...which means you need to keep your foot balanced and drive through the middle/ arch of the foot.
I realized that when you look at how the human body optimally moves and then apply that knowledge to the bike you come up with a different design for the pedal. What you want isn't a tiny, unstable platform that makes you balance on your toes, you want one that acts like the ground and supports both ends of the arch. And that is where the idea for the Catalyst Pedal was born.
So I set out to test this idea. I'd tried "oversized" flats before and while they provided a bit more support I couldn't tell a huge difference. This made me think that there was a "critical mass" you had to reach with the length of the pedal in order to better support the arch of the foot. I was curious how big they had to be in order to do that and so I went home, measured how wide the arch of my foot was and sketched out some ideas .

   

I wasn't sure what to call them yet so I referred to them as the FPR Pedals, FPR being short for Flat Pedal Revolution. Designed with a completely different starting point for the pedal stroke (pushing through the mid-foot vs. pushing through the heel) I had some up with a design that I hoped would become a new standard for pedals everywhere, making current flat pedal designs obsolete. If that wasn't the ambitions for a revolution I don't know what is.
My first idea was to get one 3D printed, just so I could test the idea in a parking lot without having to invest a lot of money. I mean, maybe it didn't really make much of a difference or maybe they would have to be ridiculously big. Either way, I wasn't going to start wasting time and money on something that may not work.
So I found a guy to make me a 3D printed pair of pedals. They weren't much to look at but they gave me the critical 5 inches of contact space I figured I needed to get both ends of my arch on the pedal. I got one of them outfitted with an axle and jumped on it to see how it felt, not really knowing what to expect.
Right away a huge smile hit my face - this was IT. Sure, it was a pair of plastic pedals and they looked like a bock with with pins in it but my feet could tell right away that this was much better. I got to where I could feel that my heel had some support and instantly my foot felt more balanced and stable.
When I went to pedal I  could drive with my heel - a critical part of recruiting the big muscles in the hips - and I could feel an instant power transfer into the cranks. There was no flex from my foot or my ankle, plus my foot was balanced and more comfortable. It didn't take to many trips around the parking lot checking out how it felt to decide that I needed to get an aluminium version made so I could get them out on the trail. Parking lot tests are great but if they hit a bunch of rocks or caused some other problems it didn't matter how great they felt.
 
 
 
 
By providing a platform that lets you support both ends of the arch of your foot, the Catalyst Pedal supports your foot the same way the ground would, allowing for a more balanced, stable foot position and increased power transfer into the drivetrain.