I don’t know how a guy who shows off the better part of a half meter of seat post comes to the conclusion that his saddle is too low, but that precise thought occupies an enormous amount of time. Ever closer looms the minimum insertion point on my seat pin, yet I am irrevocably bound to explore its limits.
I actually wish my legs were shorter; long legs are only useful for the anorexic models who distort our youth’s self-image and for skipping steps on staircases. At the same time, I’ve spent the majority of my life wondering if my seat post was slipping; has my saddle always felt this low? In previous years, I have known better; the question will claw its way into my mind, usually when I’m struggling on a climb, and I will look at the strip of tape I’ve stuck around my seat pin just above the clamp and note that it has not curled up due to the pin sliding through. The saddle is at the right height.
These days, I’m riding a fizik seat post and fizik seat posts come with this cool little sleeve to mark the height. It works perfectly, apart from the fact that it doesn’t curl up like the lowly electrical tape does; were the seat pin to slide, the sleeve would simply side with it. Which means I have to judge the distance between height demarcations on the post to decide if it’s slipped or not. It used to be higher; I’m climbing this badly because the saddle slipped down a bit.
These are easy lies we tell ourselves; that the lack of performance is borne of a problem in our setup – our position or our equipment. Merckx was famously obsessive about seat height, why shouldn’t I be? I just make a casually deliberate stop at the roadside, swiftly raise the saddle a bit, and stage a Cyclocross Remount – the only way a Cyclist should ever board their bicycle once the ride has begun.
But then I got better at judging the marks on the fizik post, and was sure it wasn’t sliding. But still my power was waning and surely it wasn’t my form because I’ve been riding like a thing that’s been riding a lot. Perhaps my position on the bike is evolving, perhaps I should reconsider my stem length and slide my saddle forward to get more over the bottom bracket. Except that I’ve ridden happily in roughly this position for years – and in roughly the same form.
Then came the rains; they had been lacking this Spring, almost to a fault. It had been several weeks or even a few months since I’d been astride my Nine Bike. I set off, and was struck instantly by how comfortable I was, how fluidly the pedals were spinning, and how easily I gobbled up the climbs. Was I peaking today instead of in the usual Two Months, or was there something more sinister going on? There was no question of longer stems and saddles sliding forward; I had the usual sensation that I was in my element, that I was born to be in this position on two wheels and that walking was a locomotion I was leaving behind in my short-lived evolution as a human being.
Knowing the geometries of the two bikes – #1 and The Nine Bike – are virtually identical, I decided to revisit the measurements on #1. I measured the Nine and checked them against #1; the only difference was that the saddle on the #1 had crept up a whopping 4mm. Four millimeters over a saddle height of of 830. I climbed aboard her and set off, amazed at how good she felt. Immediately the power was back, the inherent comfort of riding a bike returned.
All over a lousy 4mm.
Fellow Velominati: we are all students of La Vie Velominatus. We must look to the future and seek to evolve; to experiment with new positions, new techniques, and with new technology. But we must also look to the past and recognize what worked well, when did change affect how well we ride our bikes or how much we loved it? To recognize the boundary between the evolution within us as athletes and to adapt to what feels good over time and those that erode our capacity as riders can be difficult. Sometimes we need a Sensei to help us recognize the difference, other times it will come to us through solitary meditation.
Embrace change, but also keep it at a distance. We should always be ready to return to the past and rediscover what worked before and apply it to the chance we face in the future. Vive la Vie Velomiantus.
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I've done circa 400 fits now all with happy and quite a few cases people feeling faster and more powerful. Bike fitting is a wonderful thing it can really transform your riding, doing the research to find someone in the know will pay off and expect to stump up between £250-£500 depending on how many parts you require. I do a lot of fitting in relation to having good posture much like how were all told to sit as children, try to rotate the hips and flatten the back, unless your spine has developed a natural curve then that has to be taken into account, I can't straighten a desk bound worker. Noone should try and fit you to a bike it's about getting the bike to fit you in a comfortable yet efficient position. Find someone local and hopefully they will work with you over time to nail your position, hell I get repeat customers every 6 months
@Frank These are sage words indeed, my friend. Saddles, or rather saddle height, angle and setback are my nemesis. Saddle sores have recently become a painful riding companion and I'm never convinced of my position, even though it's been checked and rechecked to be where it should be, to have me back to that comfortable feeling you expressed so well. I may well be over-thinking it, but right now, it's a pain in the proverbial. Time to get right back to basics, maybe.
I have an ISP on my #1 bike - I prefer not to think about this sort of thing...
@Steve G
That's all Retul or similar systems will ever do IMHO. It seems to define fit based on certain parameters, not on a riders individual morphology. I had one done and was being told things such as "we typeically like to see your leg travel between x and y degrees." It smelled of snake oil a bit.
@Puffy could be your left glut medius isn't firing, has gone weak. I've found this to be extremely common in cyclists and runners. (glut med takes leg to side, which as cyclists we don't do much of. It then gets weak and traumatised when surrounding muscles fatigue on a long or hard ride and we ask it to step up and do some work. glut med then goes weak and ITB has to step up causing us itb/ quad pain or knee probs.
Fit is a constant evolution, the fitter I have become over the last four years of training, my position has become higher at the saddle, lower at the front and longer, yes aero is everything, you go faster for the same energy.
Timely article. My seatpost on N1 slips over time, it is tightened to the max 5NM, anyone have a solution that does not risk cracking the frame?
Also still aspiring to this one...
@Deakus Presumably carbon paste is a no-no (if it is carbon). Probably stating the obvious but I guess you have tried getting everything meticulously clean using alcohol wipes - inside the seatpost as well as just the post itself? I had some slippage that was cured with meticulous cleanliness - well so far anyway touch wood.
@Deakus @Teocalli Why would carbon paste be a no-no? If it is carbon then yes Deakus you need some carbon grip paste to help it hold - it's just a gel with little crunchy bits to give it some hold but it doesn't hurt the carbon.
@Frank A measurement scale in millimetres on the seatpost is very useful (but maybe not cool enough for Fizik). I know where mine is (67.5), I know if it slips and I know where to put it when I have to re-assemble the bike after travelling without the need of collars or tape. Failing that you could use a marker pen - I do that with my bars.
In general I am amazed at the importance of a few millimetres.
A few years ago I started getting terrible pain in one knee. I had a week or so off the bike and it went away so I thought it must just be a temporary injury. But as soon as I got back on the bike it came back almost immediately, to the point where I could hardly ride.
The only thing I could think of was the tiny adjustment I had made to my saddle height about two months before. It was an ISP so it was done by adding spacers of a couple of millimetres each up to a max of about 1.5cm. I had added about 2mm and thought no more of it.
I took the spacer out and the pain went away immediately. Amazing that a tiny change could make so much difference.
@Deakus It also helps to clean and then grease the bolt and washer of your seatpost clamp . That way friction in tightening the bolt won't affect the torque reading of your wrench .