I'm meant to be filming a bike fit Tuesdays so I haven't got a bazooka. Bazooka fit Tuesdays. I came here to film an episode of Bike Fit Tuesdays but... What are you doing? See look, look it's great. Let's talk about something that doesn't require the room. Footbet. Footbet. Let's talk about footbet. Today's episode, we're going to talk about insoles. We're not just going to talk about any insoles, we're going to talk about this insoles as well. Mostly. Mostly. But this is the insolver I sell the most of. I guess I'd like to start off with one question first. Do you need insoles in your cycling shoes? I've never used insoles before I started cycling so why would I need them now? Archifur and cycling is a relatively simple concept. First and foremost, a complete disclaimer. This isn't my theory, this is Steve Hogg's theory, he's a Bike Fitter in Australia. So, he could us to him. But I believe it, I think it makes a lot of sense to my mind. So, it's basically all about proprioceptive awareness of the foot. Properceptions your body's spatial awareness is what stops us from walking into shit. Your body's covered in millions of proprioceptives, like sensors. Where? They're everywhere, everywhere. Where? There are so many of these proprioceptives that your brain can't monitor them all simultaneously. So, in order for one group of proprioceptives to be noticed, the monitor needs to be stimulated. For example, you're not thinking about your left knee until I don't like that and your brain goes, ah, it's my left knee. Right. When you put your foot into a shoot, any shoot, you have a tendency of losing spatial awareness of the foot. Which has a tendency of potentially destabilizing these the hips and the pelvis. That's essentially what this is intended to do. It's intended to reestablish the connection between the brain and the feet. If I'm completely honest, I don't understand the full science behind it. But what I do know is that I've been able to prove using pressure mapping that I can reduce pressure going to the saddle about to 50%. Just by administering art support. So, you think you're having saddle issues, and you can be something to do with feet. So, when I bought a set of cycling shoes recently, they had insoles in already. What's wrong with those ones? That's an excellent question. Where they belong. Look at this insol, and how supportive it is. There's no support to it whatsoever. So, ski boots is an interesting concept. If you ski with any amount of regularity, you are considered a moron if you don't have art support in your ski boots. And yet, we have scores, thousands, millions of people riding by scores with no art support whatsoever. The footwear is very similar. A ski boot doesn't allow any flexion of foot, neither does a cycling shoe, nor should they. Art support is something that needs to be tailored to the individual. You can't group human feet into three different heights of art support. So, for example, there are certain brands out there that will offer a footbed and it will have high-medium and a low. So, surely a custom footbed is the best option, though. Fully tailored to your own feet with one of those squishy machines where you put your foot in a good shape. I have a number of issues with custom footbeds. First and foremost, they are only as good as the person that makes them. I've made quite a few of them. I've done all the training, I have the tooling. I had the tooling until recently, I sold it because my issue with custom is it's expensive. It's unrepeatable. You can't get exact at the same footbed time and time and time again, which is kind of one of the things I like about this. Thirdly, it's corrective. And I frankly don't like the concept of correcting people's feet for a number of reasons. Firstly, I'm not a dietist. They haven't actually been that many studies surrounding how a human foot interacts and moves inside a recycling shoe. That is kind of fundamentally my stance on them. I'm not saying they're bad. If they're comfortable and they work for you great, there are certain people who are making custom footbeds who do an amazing job. But at the same time, don't think that just because you like a bike shop is going to buy a footbed mollum machine, they necessarily know how to use it or they're going to make your good set of footbeds. You keep pointing over to these. What are these? We're not sponsored by these guys at all. You do sell them at your shop, but you're a big fan of these and I'd like to know why. Well, you and I have both written across countries with these, isn't we? What is it? It looks like Lego. This is a Australian product. It's a G8 2620 modular footbed. Four different sizes of footbed, which are then trimable to fit the size of your shoe. They're relatively wide, so if you've got a wide-fitting shoe, the thing doesn't move around outside of the shoe. They then have five interchangeable arch pieces, five different heights, which are movable in both a four and aft plane, but also a medial lateral plane. Which allows you to get the arch sport right in the place that you want to. It's a relatively soft arch sport, so you can see that. The thing to understand about this is that it relies slightly on the structure of the shoe. If you put these into a shoe that doesn't offer a lot of support, I'm not going to name any names, but there are certain shoes out there using a woven fabric or a sale material. This footbed problem isn't going to work very well in those. It relies slightly upon the structure of the shoe, but it adds a little bit of spring to it. It's got a very thin, full foot, so it doesn't take up a lot of room inside of the shoe. It's got a nice stable hind foot. One of the issues I've found, certainly with the custom footbed, is a lot of the time when they're not finished properly. The back of the footbed, which is back of the foot, which is where a lot of instability tends to stand from, is actually dumped. What I mean is that the back of the footbed essentially is able to rock inside the shoe like this. Frankly, that's just going to create a hell of a lot of instability. This is nice and flat. One of my favourite things about this is that it also has the ability to fit and retrofit a wedge into the heel of it, which pops straight in place. If someone buys a set of these, you get everything in the box. You don't get the heel wedges, but to be honest with you, I feel this is the sort of thing that probably should be prescribed by your bike fitter rather than being a soft prescription. But you get five different arch heights, you get this fun little bag that you and I have never been able to understand really why they do it. Because you're going to do carry all your arch pieces with them. Yeah, at all times. So if I've just bought a set of these, I don't have access to a bike fitter, and I want to try them myself and set them up for the first time. Where do I put what do I start with? I would probably start with a level three, the size from one to five, one being the lowest, five being the highest. It's quite uncommon for anybody to need a five or less than a three. So yeah, I find myself dominant in using the level three and level fours, occasionally with a big foot, you've got really, really high arch level five. But start with, start with a lower arch piece and just build it up. How should they feel when you put them in and they're correct? Subjective expression, but mildly invasive. You should know it's there. I mean, it should almost be uncomfortable when you're walking in it. Going back to the wire, prefer over a custom footbed, is that it's the same as for a piece of board, it just comes out of the mould. I encourage people to come back on a fairly regular basis, you don't treat bike fitting as a process rather than an event. When someone comes back for a follow-up, one of the first things I do is replace your arch support. I've got boxes of spares. You just replenish that, it's easily replenished. It's significantly cheaper than having a brand new pair of footbeds fitted. And away you go. The other thing is that it's a lot easier and quicker to administer. One of the issues with a custom footbed for me is that I've only got three hours with a customer. And if I spend an hour moulding their footbeds, that's an hour I can't spend dealing with everything else in the session. To be honest, a lot of people, they need three hours of actual analysis and engagement. I like the fact that this is very easy to administer. You get the right arch piece, you stick it in the shoe, you get some feedback from the rider, and away you go. There's no fapping around with the thing. I'm not being funny. I would say 95% of the people that leave here leave with a pair of these. Most people that I have worked with prefer these to their custom footbeds. And as I say, having used this footbed, I have been able to prove in certain instances that we can reduce... ...significant reductions in saddle pressure and optimise pack saddle pressure distribution using just this arch support. So it's incredibly important to have arch support. Just to be awake, you can buy these on our online store as well. Perhaps the best way really though of having one of these administered is just coming for bike fit. Again, you're booking for a bike fit if you like. I'm going to put a link down below to the bike. We'll put a link down below to the way you can book a bike fit as well. But we carry a really good stock of these. We tend to fit them in almost every fit.