welcome to a brand new episode of bike fit tuesdays today's episode
five tips for bigger riders we need some help for this one i need a big rider
you do you're pretty big that's good please everybody welcome back i'll be vincent to the
vlog today we're going to be using him uh because we're doing five bike tips for big riders it looks
bigger next to you because you is tight we are the same height you can't you can't see what you
always say you're a mouse is it possible for big guys to get comfortable on a bike yeah absolutely
i i don't see any reason why bigger riders can't can't be served by cycling i think that the you've
got to understand though that a lot of bikes are poorly designed for the end user i mean consider
that most high-end road bikes are designed around you know 60 kilo pro athletes you then got 110
kilo bodybuilder in front of you this is not the same morphology it's not the same uh shaped body
there are different needs and limitations for for someone with obs build uh what we've done today is
to we've made really big gains in increasing the stars bringing the feet further apart
bicycles over the years have become increasingly narrower to aid in pedaling through the bottom
of the stroke uh when cornering but the reality is that most consumers don't really need that
which brings us on to you know what the first point of you know considering a wider
stance you've got to look at the individual in front of you if it's a broad individual then
quite likely need a wide stance so and you can do that by adjusting the cleats you can do it when
we've done all three of these you can adjust the cleat uh to push it inboard to move the
foot away from the bicycle you can use washers and you can also use a long axle pedal system
if you're a bigger rider i would strongly encourage you to consider the the shimano spd sle
which is a long axle version of the shimano's um pedal system mostly to get that to get the
feet further apart get the foot underneath the knee underneath it this is probably a good point
in the video to point out that we actually did a full video on stance with a few weeks ago so
i'm going to put a link down below to that if you want to look into this further point number two
we've fitted a uh a 44 centimetre handlebar to irby's bike on the grounds that he's a
very broad individual as we've measured chris here he's only 36 centimeters i've
measured them before uh 33 centimeters um so with with obi we found that there was uh
quite dramatic reduction pressure on your hands when we when we increase the bar width
which to be honest with you is relatively uncommon and actually i have to say that uh the amount of
44s i've fitted uh i can count on one hand in the last four or five years so it's it's uncommon for
someone to uh to need a 44 but in this in this instance it it yielded really real improvements
in uh in the pressure on the hands uh you're also a lot more comfortable on those on those hoods
right we also and this is the reason we've got chris here is to uh give you an understanding how
to measure it so we i measure across the chromium process which is the digital part of the scapula
uh basically across those two points typically equals your handle bar width on the ground that
you you don't really want a handlebar that's wider than you are uh and as i say in obi's case it's
actually a relatively uncommon scenario where i've gone wider on the handlebar than i have narrower
um i'm quite big advocates of narrow not narrow handlebars but was matched to a
rider's shoulder width and uh most men i tend to find measure between 39 and 41 centimeters which
means that the 40 tends to fit most people but you know we're not talking about most people
we're talking about bigger individuals today so so yeah we've gone with the 44 centimeter bar
today what sort of difference did you notice when we put you on a 44 centimeter bar you can imagine
a smaller one i was like this basically i was hanging off like that and there's a lot of
pressure on my hands whereby with a wider one as you can see shoulder width as you mentioned and i
couldn't actually reach the gears in the brakes i was here so it's just such a nice difference
in contrast to everything we just talked about with the stance width and the handlebar with
going wider and wider and wider uh the complete opposite is has happened with the saddle so this
is uh this is quite fast becoming one of my favorite saddles to to fit because i
keep introducing the providers and they all like them this is the new cell italia slr
boost it's actually one of the more narrow sellers on the market 135 millimeters and i'm riding one
you're riding one as well uh i've got two of them actually now and i i really rate it and
interestingly and i think we have uh big american bike manufacturers to thank for this in the um
saddle design has been inherent seemingly driven by uh the measuring of sit bones and the way
that my understanding or at least my opinion of this is that it's really made to make the
sale of saddles feel a bit more sciencey so what you do is you measure the sit bones uh usually
by sitting on some piece of apparatus in a bike shop it measures the distance between the issue
or tuberosities and that equals x width saddle now there's a problem with this they measure you
sat like this but you don't sit on a bike like that which and what i'm coming to find is that
with uh saddles that are too wide it tends to result in the riders need to gravitate towards the
nose because they're trying to clear the width of the uh of the wings of the saddle so in obi's case
and actually we we kind of gravitated towards this cell because it's got you know really big
muscular legs we wanted a saddle that had quite a low profile nose to clear to clear his legs
i'm finding increasingly common that we need uh actually slightly narrower than wider all three
of us we're on the same saddle yeah same width yeah that says something doesn't it
something that we find ourselves doing quite often with bigger riders is to uh
optimize their the right center of mass by taking the saddle further back it usually
needs to be done in combination with reducing the route to the front end essentially what
you're doing is you're moving them backwards over the bottom bracket what it does is it
uh loads with the pelvis more and offloads the the front of the bike more this is the
we're talking about the ever-present force that is gravity and uh obviously with bigger
riders you've got more bulk that needs to be offloaded so again talking about um
how a lot of racing bikes are designed to have the solid wi-fi forward to make it aero and to off and
you're they're always re they're usually ridden by rides that have very little upper body mass
when you translate that to an individual who has a lot of proper body mass things to consider in your
morphology are the size of your head the amount of muscle you've got the amount of overall bulk
that you have in your upper body whether down ladies will also need to consider this as well
uh i find actually you also tend to need to have uh less handlebar drop as well or to offload all
of this weight so uh just just to reiterate what we're talking about is taking the whole
the whole rider further back behind the bottom bracket it usually needs to be carried out as
a combination of take the saddle back lower it slightly and the same with and with the front
end bring it further back and raise it slightly it's all about taking it from coming a little bit
more like this so you'll see yeah you sat a little more upright and you're loading through the pelvis
probably the best pedal system for most larger riders is going to be a shimano spd sl or in this
case an spd sle which is a long axled version of the spd sl uh on the grounds that it's it's super
stable it's extremely durable i think it's worth noting that speedplay offers uh different axle
lengths however we've come to find problems with speed players and bigger riders on the grounds
that it just it isn't quite stable it develops rock quite quickly um and the the shimano tends
to be a lot more stable and a lot more durable uh it's worth noting the look will also work
relatively well again it doesn't really have quite the same level of stability as the shimano does
it does have the facility to run more washers behind it uh but there is no long axle version
in lux range unfortunately so my preference would definitely be shimano sp sla which is
i don't know how to explain it actually the perfect example is you know when you have your
shoes on you have a there's a pebble in your shoe and you're just walking around all kinds annoying
you know after a while take your shoes off take it it falls out you put your shoes back and it feels
really comfortable exactly what that's probably the best way i can explain it
so being on the bike was just it was fine but there was always something not
right and now coming on here and having all these adjustments and it just feels
like wow okay i didn't have to be slightly uncomfortable it wasn't it wasn't that oh you
need to kind of embrace the suck as they always say so when i do like crossfit workouts it's like
yeah it's supposed to feel uncomfortable but like james said it it shouldn't like
you should still feel comfort um yes you're doing 50k you're just trying to go for speed
but it shouldn't feel there's a difference right there's a difference with something not quite
right with pain and when you're putting effort into your bipods so yeah i mean it's it's just
nice to finally be able to know that when i do get a new bike it should feel like this
look forward to seeing this position out on the road because we've got to do a ride together won't
we yes yeah you said 100k would it say 100 miles oh was it 100 miles that marks the end of today's
episode of bike fit tuesdays i'm going to put a link down below to james's shop and obi's channel
if you have any questions please put them in the comment section down below and me and james will
do our best to answer them as always thank you so much for watching and i'll see you guys soon