Everyone knows that having a higher saddle means it's going to feel a bit easier to pedal
and having a low saddle means it's going to feel a bit safer off-road. There's a lot more
to setting up your saddle position than you might be aware of. Things like your cranks,
your pedals, the shoes that you ride in, and even the handlebars, all make a significant
difference to how comfortable you are when you're sat in your saddle. Let's take a look
at all of those things so you can get the most comfortable position for you.
[music] Okay. Although, we're going to be focusing
on getting your saddle the correct height, moving it backwards and forwards on the rails,
and looking at the correct angle to suit your riding, we're also going to be looking at
your other contacts points, that means your handlebars, your stem, even your grips, and
also the cranks and the pedals on your bike. The relationship of these three contact areas
on your bike actually plays a huge part in your comfort. Don't worry, it's not that complicated.
It's just so you can pinpoint any issues if you do have them when you're out riding on
the trail. First up, let's get that saddle height nailed.
[music] Okay. The classic method for getting your
saddle the correct height is based around maximum efficiency, getting all of the power
from your legs. You think your legs are just big mechanical levers and they've got joints.
If you're on your saddle too high, you could strain a joint. Likewise, if you go too low,
it could just be a bit hard. The best pedaling angle.
Starting with your shoes first. Now, if you have any cycling shoes, put those on. If not,
put on the shoes that you're likely to ride your bike in. Now, this is quite important
because of the fact that the thickness of the sole ultimately affects how high you're
going to run your saddle. Next up, get yourself a set of Allen keys
or, if your bike's got quick-release, you'll be fine with that. This one's a four millimeter
on here, by the way. Yours might be a four-five or a six. They're the common options available.
Next up, get yourself in a place where you can lean up against something. It could be
the garden, against the fence, it could be against a tree, kitchen worktop, or if you've
got a workbench. Alternatively, get someone else to help you, basically, at this point.
Now, sling a leg over your bike. Now, before you make any adjustments, what we're going
to do is pedal backwards until your favorite foot is at the lowest part of the stroke.
Then, I want you to put your heel on that pedal.
Now, what you're looking for here is to get your leg completely locked out. Now, adjust
the saddle, or adjust your seatpost height, until your leg is locked out. Now, clearly
you're not going to pedal in this position and you don't want your legs to be locked
out when you're pedaling. What this does though is enables your leg to be at the optimum angle
when you actually put the ball of your foot over the pedal axle. The optimum angle is
about 30 degree bend in your leg. Now, that gives you the best use of your leg muscles
and the minimum pressure put for your joints. After all, the bike is supposed to be one
of the most efficient machines. Essentially, that is how you set the correct
saddle height. However, there's more factors involved on a mountain bike. On a road bike,
of course, when you're not changing position so frequently, it's vital to get your saddle
in the perfect position. That's fore and aft as well as up and down and then the pedal
dynamics go into that as well. The reason for that is the fact that you're doing so
many miles in the same position. If you've got any of those elements wrong, it could
put strain on your knees, your ankles, your hips, even your back. There's lots of different
effects you can get. On mountain bikes, though, we change our position
quite a lot. Even when seated, we move forwards and backwards on the saddle a lot, whether
it's climbing a steep face and you need to weight that front-wheel or you're just moving
around on the saddle over bumpy terrain you're pedaling along. For that basis, the next thing
I want you to do is to lower your saddle slightly. [music]
Yes, that's right. Lower it. We're talking between one and three centimeters here. Nothing
too crazy. Now, let's just assume you haven't got a dropper seatpost. If you did, you could
just lower it whenever you need to. If you haven't, when you're riding in an off-road
environment and you've got your saddle at that full efficient height, if you're riding
on chattery, bumpy, rough terrain, you're trying to pedal, it can be really off-putting
and quite hard as saddle is constantly kicking your upper back there as you're trying to
spin those smooth circles to get that power down. If you lower your saddle very slightly,
that's all it's going to take between one or three centimeters, you just lower it to
use the power in your legs as your peddling to just momentarily lift yourself away from
the saddle as you feel those bumps. It's a really good technique to use and you see a
lot of cross country races having that technique. As an upside, another thing it enables you
to do is to make the transition from seated to stood up and back much, much faster and
much smoother. It can be a little bit awkward when you try and get back on a full efficient
higher saddle. Of course, there is one slight downside. You're going to lose a tiny bit
of power. Just experiment with it. Like I said, between one or three centimeters. Any
lower than that, then your legs are going to start working quite a lot harder. Just
take that into account. [music] [music]
Just like getting your saddle at the optimum height, there is also a method for getting
a saddle forwards and backwards on the rails in the most comfortable and the most effective
position for pedaling. Get yourself back in the saddle. Now, sit with your cranks in the
horizontal position, with your right foot forward. Now, what you're looking for here
is a vertical line when you draw an imaginary line, or a plumb line, over the front of your
kneecap and they're running down through the axle of the pedal. You can adjust your saddle
fore and aft on those rails, accordingly, to get to that. Most saddlers do have some
kind of marking system on them for your reference. You can obviously move them two or three millimeters
at a time and that can make quite a big difference. That's going to get you in the best position
for getting powered down. However, on a mountain bike, there are some different factors to
this. Ultimately, as well as getting powered down and making sure your limbs aren't under
any sort of stress, all you're looking for is ultimate performance. That means being
able to weight the rear wheel for traction, also weight the front wheel so you've got
control. It's all about the dynamics of your position on the bike. If you're too far rearwards
when this is correct, then you might actually want to run your saddle slightly forwards
just to help you get the weight back on that front wheel. Likewise, if you're excessively
tall, or perhaps if your bike has a very shallow or a slack seat angle on it, the higher the
seat is, the further away, and the nearer over the rear wheel axle, it's going to get.
Accordingly, you're going to need to move the saddle forward to return to that position.
This is a rule of thumb. It's a great place to start with, and I suggest doing this to
get your saddle in a good base place. Of course, they are going to be different settings, and
different bikes, and different geometry that are going to affect this. Just for example,
if your bike has a very slack seat angle, the higher the saddle is, the further out
it's going to get. You might have to excessively put your saddle forward to get anywhere near
that optimum position. Just use that as a good place to start.
[music] The last major part of your saddle position
is getting the angle correct. This is really important because it can lead to discomfort
if you get it wrong. If you run your saddle nose-down, a lot of the time if you're riding
on the flat, you're not going to get enough weight on that saddle. What happens then is
you end up transferring a large part of your body weight forwards, so your wrists are going
to get that. If you've got sore wrists, it could well be because of the fact your saddle
angle is nose-down. Also, if you run your saddle over nose-up angle in it, that's also
going to create its own different set of problems. It can create pressure on your undercarriage
areas, which, in the short-term, is going to be uncomfortable.
In the long-term, it can lead to numbness and, in extreme cases, it can lead to medical
conditions. Do make sure that you spend the time to get your saddle at a good angle. The
type of riding you're doing as well will also affect how you're going to have your saddle
angle. On a cross-country bike like this one, fairly flat is a good place to start. The
predominant part of your riding will be flat, maybe slightly uphill. You want to compensate
for that by having a saddle, in fact, mine is slightly nose-down, not much, just enough
to make those climbs comfortable and not to take away from the power, I can get it down
on the flatter sections. If you look at my Nukeproof here, you'll see that the saddle
is quite nose-down. Now, the type of riding I tend to do on that
is up much steeper climbs, often technical, where I really need to get forwards on the
bike. I don't tend to ride it around too much, it has to be up and down, whereas a cross-country
bike is up, down, along, and over. Accordingly, this saddle needs to be in a flatter position.
Make sure you do take that into account. [music]
You've got your saddle high and you've got a position dialed in, at least to a good base
setting. There are some other factors that can affect your comfort and it can be quite
tricky to figure out exactly what they are. One of them is the crank length on your bike.
If you're on a road bike, this makes a massive effect because it's all about the body geometry,
but like I was explaining with your saddle position, it's less of an issue on a mountain
bike because you're changing your position so frequently. However, there are still some
anomalies that do make a bit of a difference to your discomfort, or your comfort, more
importantly, on a bike. [music]
Bike manufacturers do a pretty good job of spec'ing
an appropriate length crank for the style and the size of bike. Just for example, this
is a size extra large cross-country bike and it has a 175 millimeter crank. I'm 6 foot
3, so this is actually perfect for me. However, some people have different body geometry of
their own. If you've got shorter legs, you might want to run a 170 millimeter crank.
Also, there's other factors on mountain bikes too because they're not just about spinning
those cranks around. You've actually got to tackle the terrain that we're riding. My Nukeproof
Reactor, for example, has a much lower bottom bracket than this bike. It's designed to be
ridden over quite aggressive terrain by comparison. Accordingly, even though it's the same size
bike in an extra large, it comes with a 170 mil crank. The reason for that is it has a
bit more ground clearance. To be honest, I personally prefer 175, but it does work okay
on that bike. Now, crank length differences can make a difference
to your comfort on a bike, but only really at the extreme end. If you've got shorter
legs, or longer legs, and you're riding over a shorter, or longer crank, it can cause discomfort.
It can be tricky to figure out what it is. If maybe you feel that you're extending your
legs too much, then almost certainly it will be your crank length. Just take that one into
account. [music]
Okay. Going on with the theme of the cranks is your pedals. Now, you get two main types
of pedals. You get clipless pedals and you get flat pedals. Now, let's start with the
flat pedals. The biggest thing you're going to have to contend with here is if the pedal
actually fits your foot. If you have exceptionally large feet and you're running quite a small
pedal, you might find that the edge of your foot actually sits over the edge of the pedal.
You can get cramp in your foot if you're running flat pedal shoes.
Also, this can lead to knee pain. This can be hard to determine that it's coming from
your pedals because of the fact that your saddle is normally the sole suspect for that.
Now, just for example, if I just show you here. You've got two flat pedals. They're
the same model of pedal and one is substantially bigger than the other.
Now, although, they're recommended for different sized feet, it is down to preference. This
is a good example of showing you that a bigger foot might not be suitable for using the smaller
pedal. Of course, if you've got a small feet, why have a massive pedal that does weigh a
bit more and takes up space when you can have one that fits your foot. That is just a small
thing to take into account. Let's take a look at clipless pedals next.
Now, all right, they're not directly involved with your saddle comfort, but because of the
fact you're spending a lot of time pedaling, you're definitely going to feel discomfort
for the saddle if you've not got this right. Earlier on, we told you about moving your
saddle forwards and backwards by using that plumb line that runs around the front of your
knee and down through that pedal axle. You've got to take into account, if you're running
clipless pedals, you got cleats on the bottom your shoes. If you're going to run your cleats
forwards or backwards, you need to correlate that with your saddle position. Whatever adjustments
you make here, you need to compensate for that up top.
Now, something that can give you knee discomfort is if you've not got your cleats quite straight
or if you've got them overly in or outboard. Now, of course, we're all different. We all
have different sized feet. We all have slightly different stances and they all have a different
effects on how you set them up. No one person is the same.
If you've got especially big feet, for example, you might find that you're rubbing your feet
on the crank arms or on the chainstays of your bike. If that's the case, you need to
mount the cleats as far inboard as possible to move your foot away from the crank. If
that's still not enough, you might need to consider axles with a bigger key factor. This
axle here is slightly longer than the one on this side. I can't actually run the shorter
axles because my feet rub on the crank arms. I always have to run the wider ones. Does
make a big difference. Also, by having a foot in a wider stance,
if you've not got all of the other parts of position right, you can be adding strain to
the inside of your knees. [music]
Lastly, but definitely not least, is your cockpit position. That's right. Everything
you do at the front of the bike is directly going to affect your comfort on that saddle.
If you're too stretched out, not only can it put too much pressure on your undercarriage,
but it can also put loads of weight on your wrists, which can be really uncomfortable.
You can also have the opposite effect if you're too cramped up. What I mean by cramped up
is you're sitting upright, which means you can put undue pressure on your sit bones.
What that's going to do is, well, it's just being slightly uncomfortable in the long-term.
It's certainly going to show up if your saddle is not the right one for you. Of course, every
saddle, every anatomy, we're all different. It's really important to get these things
right. Now, Henry has made a video all about cockpit
setup. The link to that is in the description underneath this. Just a few things just for
you to get your head around. If you have a wide bar, it's going to lower you down and
stretch you out. If you have a narrow bar it's going to bring you back up. The same
goes for having a high bar or low bar. With stem length, if you have a longer stem,
you're going to typically be more stretched out. If you have a short stem, you're going
to be quite high up. Just think that everything you're going to do is going to have a slightly
different effect on both your position in front of the bike, but also how it feels when
you're sat in that saddle. It's quite a lot to it than meets the eye.
Well, there you go. That's everything you need to know about getting your saddle set
up for performance and for comfort. Now, if you are struggling with the comfort side of
things a bit, it's possible you're not on the right saddle. If that's the case, you
should geek out, watch the video that's hanging around over there somewhere. It tells you
everything about how saddles are made and why some of us find certain designs more comfortable
than others. As always, if you've got any suggestions for
more videos for us to make for you, let us know. We love your suggestions. See you later.
[00:15:01] [END OF AUDIO]