- Good early afternoon, Trainiacs.
Just got back from Boulder yesterday,
and today was an intense bike.
I did four minute sections six times
building up to a max effort.
That got nasty at the end.
Whoa.
So if you followed while I was in Boulder at all,
you will know that Mat Steinmetz is a awesome bike fitter,
one of the best in the world
that a lotta the Tour de France riders go to,
that a lotta the pro triathletes go to.
He has four pillars of bike fitting
that he touched on a little bit,
but we're gonna use my bike fit footage
to show what he changed in relation to those four pillars.
And that's gonna be right after I make myself presentable
and wash the airplane from yesterday off me.
(energetic electronic music)
Okay, so I made it about as far as the couch.
Certainly didn't shower.
I ate a lot, but no, definitely no shower.
Jet lag is for real.
So let's talk about those four pillars
that Mat Steinmetz from 51 Speedshop
has as it relates to bike fitting.
And if you didn't watch any of those videos,
you can listen to the podcast.
It's gonna come out within the next month.
Mat Steinmetz, he is the founder, owner of 51 Speedshop.
He also does bike fitting
out of Colorado Multisport in Boulder,
and he is tremendously well respected in the industry.
He says that his title is bike industry consultant.
He helped Cervelo design the P5x.
He has Tour de France riders coming in
to dial in their fit and get more aerodynamic
before the race.
He had professional triathletes go there
like Mirinda Carfrae.
He's coached Craig Alexander to a win in Kona.
All of these things make Mat one
of the most knowledgeable dudes
as it relates to coaching in triathlon,
bike fitting in triathlon, manufacturing in triathlon,
all kinds of good stuff.
And I did a fit with him.
We're gonna take a look at my old position
in Coeur d'Alene and then the footage
that he shot after he came in.
Okay, so this is me from Half Ironman Coeur d'Alene.
There's a few things that I just want you to take note of.
Number one, there's room in behind the saddle.
Number two, my elbows are just over on the front
of the elbow cups, and there's a fair bit of room
in behind my elbows.
It's almost like they could fall off the front.
The next thing is I want you to look at
the distance between the horizontal line
from my chin to the top of the hands.
That's somewhere I would guess around six inches,
and then I want you to see how much room
is over top of my shoulders to the top of the head.
And what you wanna do basically is
in the triathlon position,
wind is coming at you this way
and you wanna minimize the amount of frontal area
that you've got to be more aerodynamic.
80% of the aerodynamics of you and the bike is actually you,
so the smaller you can make you're frontal plane,
the more aerodynamic you're gonna be,
but you still wanna be comfortable.
Now let's look at the four pillars
that Mat Steinmetz has and how he made those changes
to get this bike position a little bit better.
Alright, so now let's take a look at the footage
that Mat took after he made a few small tweaks on the bike.
Now, his first pillar is that he wants to see saddle
in behind your bum on the seat,
and the reason for that is because what he says is
a lot of triathletes will try to get over the discomfort
when they first get on a bike seat
by rolling their back kinda like that
and trying to get the meaty part of their bum
onto the seat and take the pressure off that way,
but really what you need to be doing
is because your shoulders are folding forward,
you want your pelvis to be folding forward, as well.
So he wants to make sure that there is room
in behind the saddle, which shows that your pelvis
is rolling forward and you're not trying to arch your back,
basically reaching it back,
creating a very big curve of the back like this.
So he wants it a lot more straight
basically like what you have here
where there's an equal amount of body
above and below the midline of your body.
Now, next, his second pillar is that he wants you
to have a really nice, firm plant
into those elbow pads,
and he wants the elbow to basically be taking up
all of the weight of your upper body,
and that's why he's ended up creating the arm cups
that I've got over here on the Ventum.
And these arm cups here have so many holes
that you can flip it around, you can move it in,
you can move it out, you can angle it a lot,
and the reason for all that adjustability
is because he wants such a firm plant in those elbows,
that he doesn't want you to put the cup further forward
into your forearm, which then creates basically a fulcrum
and you have to balance your entire body weight
onto that arm cup.
He wants it right underneath the elbow, bam.
I call it meaty, putting all of your weight into there.
Next thing is that he wants a very nice, relaxed wrist,
and this is why he's created his 51 Speedshop extensions.
A lot of the old thoughts of bar extensions
is that you want to be super low
and have your arm like that,
which then placed a ton of stress
all way on the back of the forearm,
which then comes all the way up into your upper body.
You get out onto the run, and all of a sudden,
you have massive upper body fatigue and strain
because you've been trying to get so super aero
when actually how this works
is that hand being a little bit higher
breaks the wind and starts sending it away from you
instead of being down further, creating a bigger wind scoop.
Then here's the final pillar that Mat uses,
and this is the biggest change they made with me.
It had nothing to do with bike fit.
It was about my position in that cockpit.
If you take a look at the old position that I had
in Coeur d'Alene, my head was a fair bit higher
than my body.
It was basically right up here.
And if you look at all of this area
with that big high head, essentially I'm working
as a wind scoop, and he didn't actually bring down
my arm cup or my head stack and the tube whatsoever.
Basically, what he trained me to do was he walked around me
and he tapped my forearm and then he tapped my shoulders
and then he tapped my bicep
and then he tapped up here,
and he kept saying just be lazy, be lazy,
and he was saying look down at the ground.
Put all of that weight into that arm cup.
Just fall forward and be lazy everywhere.
And then drop your head nice and low
where you've got it right here,
coming as a neutral spine,
and then instead of poking your head up
to look around and see where you are,
you just put your chin slightly up
so that there's no strain on your neck.
And what you can see is that instead of at Coeur d'Alene
where my head was really high,
I'm probably about three to four inches lower,
my chin is basically right in line with my hands,
I've got, I would say, about a six inch smaller wind scoop
in front of my body, and it's not like he's changed anything
in my body position,
so I don't even have to get more flexible.
I just have to be more lazy and settle in
and actually put less stress on my body.
So alright, Trainiacs.
There you go.
A little hint, I am actually coming out
with a triathlon bike fitting free download for ya.
Probably, I think it might actually come out the days
that we are traveling to South Africa.
So if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below,
and if you are subscribed, you are a like a new set
of 51 Speedshop elbow cups, just so comfortable
and just the best thing.