I spent Friday evening in a lecture hall on a local college campus, listening to two leaders in bicycle fit science talk about what is known about bike fit. Dr. Andy Pruitt and Dr. Roger Minkow of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine were the presenters, and you knew it was going to be an interesting evening when Minkow said he was here to “change the world one penis at a time.”

Minkow is the man behind the Specialized Body Geometry Romin saddle (Romin is a contraction of the first syllables of his names). He regaled the crowd with tales of measuring cyclists’ private parts to get the best handle on saddle design.
We’ve all heard that you sit on your sit bones. That they’re supposed to hit the wide part of the saddle, and that will make for a comfortable ride. But Minkow said that’s not really the case. He said we sit on the bottom of the pelvic bones, and it’s really more like a rocking chair. So the Romin saddle has a center channel and flares out toward the back. The “rockers” of the pelvic bone sit on the flares just outside the channel.
The process they went through to develop the saddle was the most interesting part of the evening, and drew the most crowd response in the form of giggles and guffaws. Back when they started testing blood flow (down there), Minkow said 50 percent flow was considered a good number. He developed a ring that fastens to the penis and can measure blood flow. Testers put on the contraption, and rode bikes in a lab. Minkow said as they modified their saddle design, they were able to get blood flow up to 75-80 percent in most testers.
“Austin is cool,” he said. “Austin was the first city where we got people to volunteer to do the blood flow test.”
It was one matter to design a saddle that would fit men’s anatomies, but when it came to women, Minkow ran into a problem.
“Where is the vagina?” he asked. The crowd gasped, then giggled.
“Well, yeah, we men know where it is in order to use it,” he added. But in terms of measurement, women aren’t as easy to decipher as men. And they can’t be tested for blood flow. Luckily, there’s a big difference in women and men.
“Ladies can draw a diagram and show every point of pain,” Minkow said. “Men don’t have a clue. They could be at zero blood flow and not be aware of it.”
So a pressure map was created to show where pressure on women — and men — is greatest.
“There is no mid-line pressure on Body Geometry saddles,” Minkow said.
That’s important, because erectile dysfunction can be a reality if you ride improperly or if the bike isn’t set up correctly.
“Bike fit,” said Pruitt, “is about making the bike look like you.”
He compared fitting a bike to buying a suit of clothes. You can go to a store and pick a suit off the rack, and eventually find one your size. But if you were to take that same suit to a tailor, he could make the suit fit you perfectly, rather than acceptably.
Specialized has developed a bike fitting regimen for Specialized based on x,y, and z axes — x and y are the two dimensions visible from the side, but Pruitt says the z axis — viewing the bike from the front — is the difference between the Specialized system and others. Pro cyclists who have been fitted according to that system show notable improvements in power output and time trial times.
The crowd for this event, which was sponsored by Bicycle Sports Shop — one of the biggest bike shops in Austin — was overwhelmingly made up of experienced cyclists. People who appeared to be racers and triathletes sat near me. Some of the questions thrown at Minkow and Pruitt were highly technical, and they did their best to field them in terms everyone could understand.
Both Minkow and Pruitt are on retainer from Specialized, so the evening had the feeling of a commercial for that brand, but overall, the discussion of bike fit and saddle design was worth attending. If the two make an appearance in your area, it’s worth a couple hours of your time.