today's episode of bike fit tuesdays top 5 bike setup mistakes
i'm here with james and he's fitted thousands of people over the years there are some problems
with people's bike setups that recur quite often we're going to go over some
of the more common positional blunders that he encounters so without further ado number one
i'll be in my bonnet about saddle height it's always too high people who have had bike fits
have their saddle too high we have physios to thank for this for the most part mostly as a
result of having to open up the hips so is the single most common driver for pain in cycling i'm
talking foot problems knee pain saddle issues neck issues hand issues you name it i can relate it all
to excessive sample height one of the more common drivers for pain is that uh
it almost always results in the right listing off to one side creates an
asymmetrical interaction with the saddle and as a result you get saddle sores or your knee
pain and all this kind of stuff that is generally the number one blunder the the
way of getting your saddle right might be to start a little start low and then work your way up um
but i think a lot of the problems that we see is you know we read in the cycling press or whatever
about you're getting knee pain as a result your saddle being too low uh and as a result so people
got the saddle too high their knee pain so they're raising even higher so it compounds the problem
excessive saddle height is the devil of of all bike fitting blunders may i just end this little
segment with a shameless plug to my own channel and a video we made recently called how to set
your saddle height you had a mustache for that video didn't you yes great just for you number two
the second greatest evil or bite fit blunders is to have the thing way too
long mostly based on the fact that we like all of our stems to resemble a baby's arm
uh most of the time you know the reach has massive ramifications in the saddle quite often what i see
is riders carrying out position what i call positional self-selection it's basically a
way of a rider putting themselves in a place that's comfortable regardless their interaction
with their bike when the reach is too long most riders will sit after believers which
creates a poor interaction with with the front of the bicycle so you aim up with hand issues
um furthermore the car is the brake levers on the other hand at the same time some riders will
do that as well as gravitate towards the nose of the saddle again as a means of
reducing that reach uh what happens if you sit further towards the end of a saddle
you get saddle issues and i think the other thing is that a lot of the time you end up
actually doing a plank and having to ride a bike at the same time which is pretty dysfunctional
there are handling handling ramifications and there are saddle issues associated
with excessive reach if you feel a little bit stretched out you are waste too stretched out
so if it feels a little bit long knock it down 20 30 mil and uh go from there number three
my balls are too wide i can't look ahead it wasn't well the bar's too wide and i think a lot of this
is down to uh most kind of average bikes come average sized bikes come in the bar that's too
wide uh the most common size i sell to men is a 40 centimeter center to center ways to understand
if your bar is too wide the most common con the most common uh symptom is for you to roll the
wrists like this it's a means of trying to align the wrist with the shoulder and again what that
means is you end up with numb hands or hand issues it also tends to resonate up through
the neck and the the neck and the shoulders so you end up with an inability to look ahead difficulty
breathing and uh neck and shoulder discomfort for the most part some people even report elbow
issues uh so yeah an inability to reach brake levers again and operate the controls uh so that
is and and that's tends to be the the most common symptom furthermore riser will also often tend to
uh gravitate after the lever the best way of measuring this is to measure across a chromium
process it's the uh distal point of the uh scapula it's the two it's a kind of uh bony nodule the end
of the shoulder blade basically measure across those two points and that equals handlebar width
you basically don't want there's a reach-around joke here you don't want the handlebar to be
right wider than the rider uh because you end up reaching around the handle while they're getting
the brake levers it's particularly problematic with women uh they usually have a results in their
inability to reach the levers i would almost go as far as to say better too narrow than too wide
it's worth noting that different handlebar manufacturers measure differently some
manufacturers will measure center to center which is what relates to your chromium process and some
will measure outer to outer there are also flared handlebars particularly when you're looking at
gravel bars and that kind of thing so take care when measuring number four shoes are too big
they look kind of normal with the camera it's a size 50. poacher salmon in that okay so really
common blunder in in cycling shoes is to go up a size to accommodate the width of
the foot do not do that especially if uh someone presents you with a shoe because it's too tight
so the problem with going up a size to accommodate with the foot is the cleat ends up too far forward
the best way of actually determining whether a shoe is right for you actually to go somewhere
where they measure your feet every single person that buys a pair of shoes from us and bicycle
is subjected to having their feet measured and assessed and we then present them with the correct
shoe uh if you have wide feet you need a wide fitting shoe if you have slender feet and then
you're buying white shoes that's also probably a problem you don't want your foot washing around
the shoe should fit which sounds like a blindingly obvious statement
uh we want the shoe to envelop the foot it should feel you should put contact all over the foot
uh but it should also be it should be snug not tight number five
so rather frustratingly uh another really common issue and i i have to have this uh conversation
far too often far more often than i would like is when the bike's too big and i would say
one in three people maybe one of four are probably riding a bike that's too big
um and i think the the the cause of the reason for this i think is probably as a result of
um okay bite fitting practices that yield the saddle too high if you think that you know again
kind of going back to the saddle height thing that if uh the most common saddle height reduction i
make is about 20 mil everything that's a bike size and also it's kind of tradition so a lot of people
you walk into a bike shop and some you know someone my height i'm 510
uh the the salesperson goes oh you're a 56. uh i mean i ride a 53. so
and i think the reason for that is that if is that bike shops a lot of the time is selling
bikes like it's 1984 so by that i mean in 1984 a 56 centimeter bike had a 56 centimeter top tube
56 centimetre seat tube an 80 millimeter stem and the handlebars and saddle with the same height
fast forward 35 years and you know you've got 10 centimetres handlebar drop 110 millimeter stem
and a 56 centimeter bike has got more like a 57 centimeter top tube uh so i think you have to
look at and a lot of the time sizing structures are extremely misleading i mean i have i work
with a um a very popular direct consumer brand and uh i keep having out with them about their sizing
structure because it's it's extremely so you know i i would i would write a small in their range
if you think that you know logic dictates i where you know if i buy a t-shirt i buy
a medium i'm a medium-sized human being so logic that would dictate that if i was to buy a medium
if i was to buy a bike i'd buy a medium bike but it's not the case a medium in this particular
brand is huge and actually it's the same in a lot of the brands that we we deal with so that
uh that is i'm finding is extremely common riders coming in with a bike that's you know a size too
big sometimes even two and these are people who have had bike fits and i think you know
what i was about to say is that uh it's all the more reason to have a bike fit first on understand
the ride's knees and limitations and then sell them the bike off the back of that rather than
buying a bike and then going and getting it fitted which is just completely the wrong way around
doing it because it assumes the bike's right in the first place so if people want to avoid this
last one where can people find a good bike fit well i mean you search on youtube and look up bike
for tuesdays you'll find uh links to a fantastic body fitter but furthermore if you're if you're
not willing to travel which a lot of people are these days uh i would i would suggest looking for
somewhere that uses a jig like this you don't really want to fit a writer on their existing
bike because again it assumes the bike's right in the first place uh but you know just having the
equipment is really only like a tenth of the story you need someone that knows what they're doing
uh i would recommend looking at the fight are we going to put a link below for the ibf right
use the use the ibfys find a fitter application that's a that's a pretty good
um uh tool for finding a a good fitter uh and i would have conversations with
fitters you know find out how you know how long they'll be doing it what what's their
what's their ethos and attitude towards bike fitting but you know this whole fit first by later
ethos that i've approached i've um uh taken on is it it makes so much more sense that marks the
end of today's bike fit tuesdays video as usual please put any comments or suggestions for future
videos down in the comment section below please like and subscribe equally if you want to book
a fit with james link down below for that as well thank you for watching and i'll see you guys soon