♪ [music] ♪
- [Marc] Oh, my God, this is not a good idea!
♪ [music] ♪
- [Neil] Most people have seen the light nowadays and either run a dropper post
or just manually move their seat up and down, depending on the trail.
A low seat gives you that space to move around, and it makes it much easier
to go faster.
- [Simon] To be fair, though, I think there are still a fair few of us out there
that are hanging on to our old fixed seat positions. I haven't moved that in years
and years, in fact, and I think I still go all right down hills.
- Si, you're living in the '90s, mate. Even the World Cup Cross Country pros
are running dropper seat posts. You got to get with the program.
- Right then, lads. Let's fix this once and for all. Si, you do a run with your
seat down, Marc, let's do a run with our seat up. See how it goes.
- Sounds dangerous.
- All right, has anyone got a tape measure, so I can make sure
it's back in the right place?
- You're going to be throwing your fixed seat post away after this.
You won't even need a tape measure.
- Right. Here goes nothing.
- I'm not sure I like the sound of this.
- Oh, my God!
It's really hard to get your weight back on this particular bit.
The seat keeps getting in the way, banging between my thighs. It's hard to pump
and maneuver the bike.
These rollers are horrible.
Pedally section is coming into its own.
I can stay seated, putting the power down with the least effort possible.
I can't lean the bike over as I'd like.
Jumping with your seat up is so dangerous.
It just wants to smack you in the behind and pitch you over the front.
- Run number one. Seat post in the correct mountain bike position.
Now then. I will admit that on mega-steep stuff, or even slightly steep,
that having your post up kind of does get in the way, but then I just rode all the
way up here on a really nice light bike, and my seat was in the right place,
and now my seat's where I want it to pedal [inaudible 00:02:47],
just like that.
Now a bit of fire road, seat's in the right place.
See, seat in the right place, no stress.
- This is more like it, seat down!
Straightaway, you can be way more aggressive on the bike,
hanging off of the back,
hammering turns.
You can see I can lean the bike over without the seat getting in my way.
Pumping down these holes.
This is going to be so much faster.
I think even Si will be shocked.
I'm sure we've smashed our time with the seat up by at least
10 to 15 seconds.
- Second run. Seat, God knows where it is.
- Down [inaudible 00:03:57], where it should be.
- I'm not going to lie. It instantly feels like significantly faster.
I reckon if I practiced in this position, it would get pretty bloody quick.
Bloody hell, cornering is ridiculously fast.
[inaudible 00:04:29]. Now, that was a lot easier.
Really want to sit down and pedal, but I guess it's not allowed.
I tell you what, I'm out of breath.
- Right then. So four runs later, we've got the results. We haven't seen them yet.
Before we look, predictions, guys?
- Feels much faster to me. You can move your weight around on the bike
a lot better, and especially cornering. It feels like you can get your center
of gravity much lower if your seat's not up.
- I'm going to make a bit of a prediction here. I think that Neil and I
will be considerably faster with our seat down, because it felt so alien
riding with the seat up. You, Si, I think will be...the gap will not
be as big, because you're not used to riding with your seat down.
So it's going to be interesting.
- All right. I think that's a good shout, actually. I think putting your seat
down for the first time in 15 years, you probably won't quite get the
same benefits as you would if you did it more often. But...
- Right. So I was six seconds slower with my seat down. That's a good shout.
Right then, and you guys were...right, hang on, let's do some math.
Seventeen second quicker with your seat down. So in fact, now this
is an interesting one. I was one second slower than you guys with my seat
up compared to you.
- So there we go then.
- Pretty close with seats up, yeah.
- We could do seat-up downhill racing. I might be all right at that.
Anyway, so, there we go then. I think you're right, Marc. I think maybe I do
need to get used to having my seat down, because actually it
did feel quicker. It felt significantly quicker.
Like you said, you can get lower in the turns.
And so I was able to get my body into positions that I can't normally do.
And also, when we actually picked up a few shots after our runs,
I also nearly crashed, and there's no way I could have held it up if I'd have had my
seat up. But I was able to kind of...
- Do you think that the reason that you were faster with your seat up was because
of how efficient your pedaling was, and that was your Achilles heel
on that run?
- Yeah, I think so, actually. The run was one of two halves, wasn't it?
So we had a steep non-pedally bit, and then quite a flat pedally bit
for what? A minute or so, at the bottom? And so I reckon being able to sit
in the saddle...I certainly didn't feel half as pumped when I got to the
bottom with my seat up. So yeah, maybe on a different run it would have been
no contest. But yeah. Anyway. I did... I did think, actually, if I could,
I would get a dropper post, possibly.
- Converted.
- Yeah. You guys make it look good fun.
What do you think? Drop a post. Seat down? seat up?
Let us know in the comments.
- And don't forget to subscribe to GMBN.
- Yeah, that's a good point. Subscribe.
I reckon they could watch some other videos, as well.
If you click over there and up there, explaining some good links.
Click on them.