SADDLE PEDAL CONTACT

 

I was writing about contact points earlier, there's still so much to say about tires, especially with my now gained gut feeling wisdom with riding beautiful supple tires, but for now I wanna focus on the other points of contact, that are very important.

And that is your undercarriage on the saddle in combination with your feet on the pedals.

Every time I'm out riding, I see people that have horribly wrong setups, especially regarding saddle height... and mostly... the saddle setup too high.

This was how I rode back then, saddle nose sloping down, saddle setup way too high for my legs. Compensating with pushing the saddlerails all the way to the front, putting a ton of load onto my wrists. Ouch.

I know, cause I had been there before. It was only when I did dive deep into the whole bike-fitting realm and really started to experiment with different setups. If you ask me, it's not even about wich saddle you choose, as long as it is setup proper fitting onto your body. I'm mainly talking about height and angle of the saddle that is used. The problematic thing, when setting up the saddle height is, that a saddle, that's a little bit too high, does sometimes feel better at first sight, at least, the pedal strokes can feel more powerful compared to a saddle that is setup proper (lower). You will only feel the difference when riding longer distances and/or for a longer time with the right setup. And you could possibly feel it over a longer period of time, if the saddle is too high. It will cause problems in your knees and hips most likely.

hip swinging from side to side - saddle too high

proper aligned vs way too high.

you can tell when your toes are not pointed towards the ground you're on the right path.

this is what you see a lot!

me, riding around tippy toeing. A good example of a wrong fit.

With having all of the knowledge about how the saddle should be aligned and setup, the next problem was, how to find out what is right, when you only know wrong? Good tip I found was: No matter where you start, lower your saddle 2cm and then work your way up from there (I did never go back...)

There's another cue that worked for me. This one's not so easy to percieve but you should give it a try: You take your straight leg (the one where the pedal is near to the ground) and straighten your knee completely, having your calve muscle stretched out fully. When you're at your full range of motion, wich means ankle lowest to the ground possible... your hip bone should still be aligned leveled and not tipped to the side of your straight leg. Maybe you can even push your hip slightly away from the saddle in this position. That's how I know in one second if the saddleheight is right for me.

Important is that the hip stays leveled while fully extending the leg.

Next thing that's important to mention is the angle/ slope of the saddle. You know by now that a lot of pros are riding with the nose sloping down, and if they do, it has to be good. Yikes.... I guess nope. We're talking about simple physics here, you can try this one out with a golf ball. If it's rolling off of the nose, you know exactly what your hip will do while riding... trying to roll off of the nose of the saddle, which means you're fighting against this momentum all of the time bringing a lot of weight to your wrists/ hands (yes, the next contact point). What I did find out is that the sweet spot is when you bring your nose as high as possible without having pressure on your soft tissues (no worries you won't fall off of the tail of your saddle). The further back you sit on your saddle, the longer the distance to your pedal gets... again you need to lower the saddle when bringing your nose up.

golf ball staying in place is a good sign. this is right around exactly where my soft tissues rest.

Another thing that happens when the nose is sloped down is that you're more likely to NOT have your sit bones in the area of the saddle where they are supposed to rest (yes, I'm talking about resting, because setup proper it won't take force to be in this position). It's the widest part of the saddle (surprise!) where your bones should interfer with the saddle. Only when your handlebar is setup lower, you could get further to the front of the saddle (still not on the nose) just because of the shape of your hip wich is seen in the next picture. The more the hip is rolled forward, the narrower the distance between the two touching points.

red dots, higher handlebar. green dots: lower handlebar or in the drops (hip rolled forward).

Pedal and shoe combinations can also have a big impact on the distance between feet and saddle. When changing from spd-pedals to flat pedals with supple barefoot-shoes I had to lower my saddle 2 cm. Proper aligned saddle with the nose sloping slightly upward, another 2 cm, plus another 1 to 2 cm because I had the hip tilting from side to side. This makes for 6 cm lower in total!!! We're not talking about millimeters...

Maybe you already realize that it's a combination of a combination of a combination that leads to failure. There are so many things working together that make or brake your position and at least comfort on your bike. The more comfortable the position, the longer and faster you will be able to push, and most important, the more fun you will have while doing so.

And that brings us to the last contact point: The hands/wrists. More on that in the next letter.

Till then, have fun lowering the saddle while heightening your enjoyment.

xoxo,

Alex