Started using them 3 rides ago and am seeing the advantage in certain areas, others not so hot!

For example i (when using clips) could do jumps and drops with some confidence (albeit smallish) but when on flats bottled a 1ft drop off 😳

I just acnnot see how to "grip" the pedals when working against gravity i.e trying to pick up the back end of the bike.

What do i need to do? Pedals are 50/50s and shoes are 661 with super taki soles

It's all about rotation of your feet about your ankle.

To pick the back of the bike up point your toes down and kinda scoop backwards and upwards if you know what I mean.

This is often a consequence of riding in clipless, you don't kearn how to jump a bike properly by changing the angles of your feet, you just yank upwards on the pedals.

The combo is good, so you'll get it eventually. Try having a day on a 4x or BMX track and just practise jumping and drops. Soon 3ft as a drop becomes quite easy with a good run-out/transition.

How many pins in the 50:50s and how long are they? 50:50s aren't the most concave pedal out there, I find just 7 long pins (or grubscrews if you have them) per side (3 front, 3 rear, 1 outside) works very well and feels very secure.

more than that – will have a play

ROFL – can sympathise as made the same switch as you a few months ago. Persevere – am now doing all the drops I was doing on spd's – 4-5' drops, 8' doubles etc.
50:50's aren't supposed to be the grippiest of pedals – try something like straitlines or easton flatboys.
If you were doing jumps by pulling up on spds, then you were doing it wrong, as I was told by a v good guide in the Alps recently! A quick tug on the bars should do it at speed, or pushing forward through the pedals and throwing weight back should pop the front up nicely if doing something slower.
Stick with it – I'm now more confident on jumps and drops on flats then spds, and have been surprised how quickly it came.

go on you tube and watch some of bmx instruction video, then practice.

SPDs let you cheat, learn with flats… Hard to describe what you need to do, but kind of push your feet down and back in a j shape.

ewan – that IS what i am doing dude – trying to learn properly

a lot of people with spds hop by pulling up on bars and feet at the same time. its a lot easier on flats to pull the bars up first then push them out and away from you, scooping the pedals as you do so. once you get the hang of these you will be able to work on getting the back up quicker for those situations where you need to do so, but TBH i find getting the front up first much more useful,hoik it roughly to the height you need and then just bring the back up to match. works well when jumping stuff at speed too.

enjoy practising!

just keep riding on them and it'll soon come

practice makes perfect …. yadda yadda yadda

Yep 50/50s are not the grippiest (sadly), especially when combined with not super grippy shoes.

have ridden flats for years v8's,but still cannot bunnyhop.(or wheelie for that matter. 😳 have watched plenty of videos on youtube,but have not really practiced.

Can't bunny hop,wheelie or anything apart from pedal. I still get round ok.

To grip flat pedals, the best way I've heard it described is to angle the pedals towards each other and then think of your legs as a pair of scisssors; by opening the scissors your feet stick to the pedals. The rear foot is the most important; to hop the back end, imagine you are using it to 'scoop' the back end into the air.

While practising back end lifts, you can safely ignore the front. Ride around on level ground and learn to lift the back. Once you've got that, it's simple to add in lifting the front.

As a note of caution, be aware that if your feet do slip when using grippy pedals, it can hurt – a lot.

I think it also has a lot to do with frame size – smaller the better, and having a lowered saddle – too high saddle and you have no room to get your butt down low enough to then spring up. This is the only reason why snivelling kids on bmx's and dirt bikes can hop better than me 😉

Rob – i use fiddies, (as you know) i have found the opposite to just about all above this post. They are like glue with both 5/10 and AM40's.

Are you lifting off drops? you dont need too… you are trying to land not take off. Tuition might help with this. My biggest error was trying to add height to a drop by lifting off it. Just fly off and you wont need to pull up.

Jumps, its the bars and head and torso that get you up. Watch Dan Atherton and Jared Graves etc on 4x, they push their legs into the upslope and then lift with momentum with the torso. The feet will naturally follow fine.

And i keep saying it… the big guys keep using them and winning on them so they must be sticky 🙂

i use 9 screws per side, just the ones out of the box. although saying that a lot have been bashed etc. They just kinda work,

Hiya, I use flats as well, Easton Flatboys, good pedals but I've never had decent shoes. Just got a pair of 510 Karvers and the difference is night nad day. Super grip, I was able to get up step-ups that I wasn't able to do previously, the 510s shoe pretty much stuck to the pedal like spds (I ride clipped in on my commuter). Jumps & dropoffs will come, like anything else on a bike it just takes time.

But I've never been able to bunnyhop, the shame.

I'm going flats Wellgo MG1 and hardtail for winter. Hopefully i'll master those drops i find easy on Spuds by the time its over!

shin pads stop the shin pulverising

also, know the difference between "speed hop" and "bunny hop"

and get brian lopes book

I suspect its a lot easier to go from flats to SPDs, but I'll never know, because I'd rather spoon my own eyes out with a dirty pedal spanner than ride clipped in.

To 'pull back' on flats imagine the action of trying to scrape dog shite off your shoes on the edge of a kerb 😉

also I find your foot needs to be a bit further forward on flats than spds, enough so that you can just start to curl your toes over the front of the pedal (yes I know it doesn't actually help to grip the pedal with the toes, but the action of toe-curling arches the foot and helps to keep it pointing downwards)

Another vote for doing as hazeii says and practising lifting the back wheel while riding on the flat, without worrying about the front wheel. I found that using my MTB for my short road commute for a while really helped me – I practised when rolling toward every junction.

Practice is the key (although B54 pedals and 5:10 shoes help!)

I couldn't even jump off an ant hill without loosing my feet off the pedals when I first changed over. Took a lot of perseverance and sheer-bloody-mindedness not to change back to Spuds.

Been worth it though 🙂

You need to go back to your youth and learn on a B.M.X its second nature then.