It could just be the pedals & not you!! I replaced my old spd pedals with Shimano PD-R540 and had a terrible time with them. Had them as loose as they could go, and still couldn't clip out w/o a huge effort. In fact, these new pedals caused two pretty bad falls. Two broken ribs later I got new pedals. If your new pedals don't work for you, get different pedals.