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A Bike Fitting – The Best Thing You Can Do For Your Biking

04.11.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 14 Comments

For some now, I’ve realized that I needed a real professional bike fitting. I’ve been getting sore on my bike after about an hour in the saddle. So finally, I made an appointment to have one done — at Nelo’s Cycles in Austin, Texas.

Nelo Breda is the owner of the shop. He’s a former pro bike racer himself, and then coached the Brazilian national cycling team. His shop sells high-end bikes: Wilier, Kuota, Guru, etc. — but he caters to all walks of cyclist.

I got there a little before the scheduled appointment time. Nelo was wrapping up in his shop, and an assistant put my bike next to a trainer and offered water, a soft drink, or beer — and cookies. I took the cookies. It turns out they read Bike Noob in the shop. The assistant remarked that the kinds of things we talk about here are the same kinds of things they hear from people bitten by the biking bug, who are looking to upgrade after some time on their entry-level bikes.

Then Nelo walked in. He’s a slightly built man, who talks fast in a thick Brazilian Portugese accent. I listened closely as he explained the process.

Nelo looks over the bike before the fitting.

The bike fitting is 65 percent below the waist, and 35 percent above, he said. First, he adjusts seat height, then seat fore and aft. Once that’s done, he looks at the reach to the cockpit. If you’re not fitted correctly for seat position, the rest won’t matter. “We gotta get you in a comf’ posish,” he said.

He had me pedal a bit, then I stopped and he looked at the angle of my knee bend. He had me clip out of the pedals and relax my legs so they fell straight down. He put the pedal directly under my heel. There was a gap about the thickness of a finger between the heel and the pedal.

Well, I’ll be. The seat was too high. Nelo had me step off the seat, and he adjusted the height.

Nelo adjusting the height of the seat.

Then, he did the plumb bob test, to determine if the knee is directly over the pedal axle. Not mine. I was about a half-inch behind it. “Most people who come in here think their seat needs to be farther back,” he said. “But they really need to go more forward.” Count me in that bunch.

I sat on the bike again, and got into the drops. He had me lean farther and farther forward, until my chin almost touched the headset. I put my hands on top of the bar, then on the brake hoods.

“Looks pretty good,” he said. “We don’t gotta make any changes here.”

I sat still while he drew a tape measure across my upper back. “Whadya do to work out?” he asked. “You got real broad shoulders. They’re 48 centimeters wide.”

He measured the handlebars from the center of one brake hood to the other. They were 42 cm wide.

“You don’t have to change these right away,” he said. “Maybe next time you change your bar tape, you get a new bar. Should be 46 cm, at least 44.”

Then he surprised me again. “Your crank arms are 175 millimeters” he said. “You need 172.5. Again, don’t worry about it now. But you should try them.”

He said the combination of the lower seat and shorter crank arms would help me climb hills. I liked the sound of that.

With that, we were done. The whole process took about a half hour. Nelo usually charges $75 for a fitting, but because he made so few changes, he cut the price to $50.

I couldn’t wait to get out for a ride. I put in 22 miles in the neighborhood, including some fast laps on the Veloway and some repeats on a moderately challenging hill. Despite the small changes Nelo made, I could feel the difference. I sat a little more forward on my saddle. I was a lot more comfortable going up the hill.

Saturday was the acid test. Pat and I did a training ride with Hill Country Ride for AIDS, 29 miles for her and 45 for me. The southeast wind was blowing hard, and it was right at us for the second half of the ride. The improvements I noted Friday were still there. Plus, I noticed that in my new riding position, my elbows were naturally bent, compared to the previous setting where I had to consciously relax my shoulders and bend my elbows. It was a better riding position.

I’ve been having some trouble with saddle sores lately. No longer. The lowered seat position ended the rubbing that caused them.

Sunday morning, I had planned a long ride preparatory to next weekend’s MS 150. The morning broke overcast and misty. Normally, I would go back to bed, but I decided to ride anyway.

I cut my mileage in half from my planned ride, but again noticed how much more comfortable I felt on the bike.

One problem, though. My butt still hurt after an hour or so. Nelo had suggested I consider a new saddle, but I figured a proper fitting would take care of that issue. I do sit a little more forward on the saddle now, which I understand is where you want to sit on a narrow racing style saddle like mine. I’ll ride this saddle through the MS 150, and if the soreness persists, I’ll start trying out new ones.

If you haven’t had a full-blown pro bike fitting yet, you really need to treat yourself to one. It’ll be the best bike money you’ve ever spent, after your bike, of course. And if you buy your bike from Nelo, he’ll insist on fitting you first. Then he’ll show you some bikes.

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Categories // Equipment Tags // bike fitting

Watch Your Posture!

01.07.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

Those “Don’t slouch!” orders we got from our parents were important, and most of us have passed them on to our own kids. But guest poster Don Blount reminds us that even grownups have to pay attention.

Ouch, I did it again.

I strained the muscles in my left hip and lower back riding my bike. I’m sore enough that I missed a day of riding or working out in the gym.

The issue wasn’t my bike. My bike fit is fine, I check my bike measurements regularly to ensure that they correspond to my bike fitting. The culprit, as it has been the other two times I’ve done this was me, or more specifically my improper riding posture.

Instead of riding with my back straight like “a bridge,” I allowed it to bow downward so my pelvis pointed downward and the stress fell on the muscles of my lower back.

How did this happen?

I suppose that in attempting to stay low to work through a steady wind, I rode with poor posture that resulted in a painful reminder to ride with proper posture.

I didn’t begin hurting until near the end of the 18-mile ride. Later in the day I was a little sore at work. It was later that night and the next morning that I really felt the effects.

When I stumble into mistakes such this I refer to Joe Friel and some of his writings about proper riding posture.

Friel writes that proper riding posture requires the hips to be positioned as if spilling water out of a bowl. Riding in that manner surely would have kept me from bowing my back and straining those muscles.

I recently came across this site, which also provides some useful information on riding posture.

Fortunately, I don’t make this mistake often, so I don’t consider it a chronic problem. Missing a day of exercise and having an ice bag plastered to me is more than enough punishment.

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Categories // Technique Tags // bike fitting, posture

Bike fit

10.13.2009 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

Now that I’ve had my bike about a year and a half, I’m trying to figure out how to tweak it a little bit more to get a little bit more out of it. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is bike fit.

Like most of us, I had a cursory bike fitting when I bought my bike. Saddle height, leg angle, seat postion were all calculated in a short time, and I was sent on my way. It’s worked out well for the most part, although I have fiddled with fore-and-aft position of the seat and seat height a bit.

Jeff Hemmel’s guest post over the summer about the Retul bike fitting system got me thinking. I’m not ready to drop a couple hundred on a fitting session where I’m all wired up to electronic machines, but I want something that will give me a better idea of how to set all the variables on the bike. A couple of sites have come to my attention recently.

A friend pointed me to the Park Tools website. It’s a place I visit from time to time anyway, because of their excellent tutorials on bike repairs of all types. But they also have a page dedicated to fitting your road bike (and a separate page dedicated to fitting your mountain bike, if you are of that persuasion). Park suggests 17 different measurements to take, from bottom bracket to seat, saddle to handlebars, handlebar angle, etc.

Picture-4The Park Tool Road Positioning Chart.

Park says the chart is most useful as a record of your various measurements, and if any change in performance results from a change in the bike’s setup. It gives details instructions on how to take the measurements, but makes no suggestions about the ideal range.

A second site is for the Accufit bike fitting system. This one involves purchase of a product, the Accufit system itself. It’s a Windows-compatible program that promises the best fit by “computer modeling your measurements and establishing the correct relationships between you and your bike.” The program costs $29.95 and can be purchased online.

Accufit

A screenshot from the Accufit web site. Bill Boston Cycles. (http://www.billbostoncycles.com/)

Accufit is geared toward bike shops and offers them a way to fit their customers. It claims to work on people of all sizes, not just adults within certain height parameters. But for $30, some of us might consider buying a copy for our personal use.

What other options are available out there? Have you ever made use of either of these sites? Have you had a proper fitting done at your local bike shop, and if so, what system did they use? Finally, did the bike fitting make a difference in the way you ride your bike?

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Categories // Bikes Tags // bike fitting

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