I'm standing here outside of my favourite local bike shop in Winnipeg, Alter Ego Sports.
We're gonna meet with James, the head fitter and Manager, who's gonna take us through the
basics of setting up your road bike for max power.
And because triathletes bodies are a lot different than pure road cyclists, he's gonna take us
through his five top tips for triathletes to keep in mind as they're setting up a road
bike.
Stick around while we head on in and we're gonna go through all that.
Alright so we're standing here with James from Alter Ego, so James what is your official
fancy pants fitting title?
My fitting title is a Certified Masters Body Geometry Fit Technician.
And start to finish, how long did that take you to get.
The first course I went to do was in 2006, and I've been back probably almost every year
after that for more courses, and then the certification was in 2012 and lots of fits
between then.
So there's a lot of info obviously that people can figure out online about how to set up
a bike.
But knowing what you do why should somebody go into a place like Alter Ego to get their
bike fit professionally?
The biggest thing is you can't do it by yourself or what's put out there on the website.
I haven't been fitted in about three years, and my other fitters here are gonna help me
out this winter, maybe get me fit better.
So you don't even fit yourself?
It's tough to assess yourself with ankling patterns, how flexible am I?
You know, we're looking for our natural limitations and small nuances that can really play effect.
And the biggest thing in BG fit is the Z-plane, so that's the frontal plane, where your knees
are tracking, and that's effected by your feet your saddle, where your bars are in space,
your range of motion, all sorts of little subtle things that you can't measure yourself.
Ok, so before we get into your tips for setting up a bike fit what's the studio that you've
got here at Alter Ego.
Some of the tools that we use here at the Body Geometry fit studio that we have is the
Retul Move, and the Retul Vantage.
So that's two tools that we use to help adjust and also analysis of the body.
So we can watch a three dimensional fit happening in real time with points on the body with
sensors.
We also have a pressure mapping system for the saddle so we can actually see where you're
sitting, left right fore aft, how much pressure are you putting in those nether-regions?
The dirty bits?
The dirty bits, and all these things are just tools, you need to know what you're doing
with the tools to give an end product that's good.
So the Move is the bike and the Vision is the infrared system that's set up all around
here?
Yes.
And they speak together to tell you where people are lined up, what's tracking where,
if your body is functioning properly basically?
Yep.
And we look at the numbers and see if we're within your natural abilities or within norms.
So let's get into giving people some tangible thoughts about what they should be considering
if they're going into a shop ummm and why they should be thinking about getting a proper
fit.
Big picture, what is say your overall philosophy of why people should be doing a fit in a studio
with a professional as opposed to themselves?
The biggest thing is, where does it hurt?
You know?
If you've got discomfort on the bike let's address it.
What's causing that discomfort?
Is it the saddle?
Is it the reach?
Is it the handlebars?
Is it your feet?
Are your knees hurting?
And hurting is not normal is what you said to me before that you shouldn't be hurting
- that's correct - and even if you are and you've got issues in your body that are causing
that hurt you can compensate for that on the bike with a proper fit.
Most of the time.
Sometimes we have to work with physiotherapists and doctors to work in conjunction to get
the end product of a healthy comfortable rider.
Another tip is do you ever use the drops on your handle bars?
I didn't, this is interesting, I never did and apparently that's wrong.
Yeah, why don't we just cut them off because if you didn't use them why do you have them?
You should be able to use it because the brakes are more powerful with one finger down here
than all four up top.
So you should be able to, what you said, is ride in the drops for almost your entire ride?
Anytime, all the time, that's what they're there for.
I couldn't do that until a couple weeks ago.
That would hurt.
Ok so for the second tip road cyclists are guilt of this but triathletes are I think
more guilty of this than anyone.
There's a big push towards wanting to be as low and as aero as possible.
What's your take on that?
Lower isn't always better, cause you might be beyond your natural flexibility, once again
if the drops are too low if the front end of the bike is too low you might be pinching
things here or sacrificing or straining things like your hamstring, you know, things like
that.
Sometimes in a lot of fits that I've done I've brought people up, and their upper body
has actually gotten lower and more aerodynamic because they're not straining for that position,
they're in a more natural comfortable position.
As there some sort of a tradeoff between your comfort in the aero position and how you actually
perform over say ironman and half ironman distances?
Yep.
The biggest thing is, depending on your distance spring triathlons we usually go almost at
your limit of hip flexion and hamstring mobility, and triathlon as the longer it goes into ironman
we bring it up so we have a percentage window on the hip flexibility.
Because if you're out in an ironman you could be out there for how many hours, five, six,
seven, eight i think, ten?
You can't sit at your limit, then get up and run, now that's gonna hurt.
So let's open you up and you're gonna be more susceptible to run easier and better out of
your transition.
So you maybe give up a little bit but in the aerodynamics but in the long run you gain
- faster more powerful - more powerful, more comfortable, fresher for the run?
Correct.
Ok so triathletes are obviously adding on a couple of extra sports with the swimming
and the running that pure road cyclists won't have.
Those additional sports are obviously going to change our body, what are the common issues
that triathletes will have more often than road cyclists will have to you have to work
within.
We get a lot of run injuries, so IT bands and things like that.
So when you're dealing with tight IT bands, things like plantar fascia like really running
common injuries what are some of the ways that you've gotta think about dealing with
that as you'e setting up a road bike.
Just making sure we're within natural limits, making sure the Z-plane is aligned properly,
so that's knee tracking in out, what's happenings at the foot, making sure that the foot is
aligned properly and having a proper support for the whole foot for a cycling gait, not
a running gait.
IN cycling we are forefoot driven and flattening that arch at 3 o'clock you tend to lose power
and stability in the knee and the ankle.
So are you're pushing down the foot is flattening out.
So we do a lot of arch support, stability, and comfort, it can help stabilize everything
in that area.
Ok and then for the IT band it's largely making sure that your knees aren't wobbly?
Once again, stabilization from the saddle and the feet.
Keeping that whole chain from hip to foot stable.
So there are a lot of beginner triathletes that are trying to set up a road bike as their
tri bike strapping on a set of aerobars.
What are the differences between setting up that road bike for triathlon vs just setting
it up purely for road biking?
The big difference is saddle position, fore aft, so we go a little bit further forward
to open up the hips, and shorten the distance to the tri bars.
So sometimes we'll put a shorter stem on there, so we open up the hips and not limit your
hamstring flexibility and compromise your hip flexion.
So if you're saddle's too far back?
It's gonna close those hips up.
And then if you've got to reach, it's the same sort of thing, it's close up the hips?
Yep, so straining the hamstrings and compressing and contracting your hip flexion.
If you're if you're not set up properly you're burning out your hamstrings, hopping off the
bike, start running, pain?
That's gonna hurt.
Frankenstein walk.
Yep.
If someone's looking to get that road bike that they can also use for triathlon there's
obviously some aero road bikes out there, are there some specific brands makes that
fit a little bit easier as both?
Most road bikes will do both, the biggest thing is making sure that we have a seat post
and we can adjust it, or we replace with a 20mm offset seatpost to a zero offset seatpost.
Again to bring that seat foreward?
That's the biggest thing?
That is one of the bigger things.
Ok so for the fifth and final tip one thing that you mentioned to me was that the fit
process isn't just that two three hours that we spend in the studio that is happens for
a fair bit after, so what are you monitoring as you go forward after the fit happens?
Well in a fit we sometimes make some minor changes or some major changes, and your body
takes two to three weeks to adapt to these changes so we want to make sure you're comfortable,
and if there's problems we want to get you back in and address those problems.
And is that anything from just minor tweaks that your body can't adjust to, or just isn't
taking well to?
If there's major things we can always adjust them and go back a little bit and go in small
increments and just see how it adapts over time.
And your fit changes from now, March, to August.
You know we all get fitter we all get stronger, we might be stretching more, we might be going
through physio.
Sometimes I get customers that get fits three to six months at a time, I even ride my stem
higher in the winter than in the middle of the summer.
No, I ride in my drops but only in August.
Well August is drop month.
Look at your bar tape, if you got white bar tape where is it dirty, if it's dirty up top
and perfectly clean on the bottom you need a bike fit.
I had very clean drops, untouched.
I gave you an extra tip there.
That was good that was six tips, five, five a three quarters maybe?
Alright, so thanks James that's obviously going to help a lot of the triathletes and
even the road cyclists in the crowd.
We are going to be following this up with a pure triathlon bike fit, yep.
And that'll be a whole other video.
So if you don't want to miss that make sure you hit the subscribe button over here up
top.
And if you live in Winnipeg or if you're visiting the city make sure you come down and say hi
to James at Alter Ego.
It's my favourite bike shop in the city, these guys know their stuff and I guarantee that
if you come in here there isn't a single person in the shop that can't help you out with any
bike issue that you got, you got good people here.
If you want to see some of the other triathlon videos I think there's one over on that side
of James probably, you don't know it but it's over there.
I can see it, and then there's one over here.
It's a good one.
So thank you everyone, and you have to say "Kill your next A-Race" "Kill Your Next A-Race".
That sounded really good, we got to get you in on every video for that.