hello welcome to today's video today is five tips for smaller riders we have helena here with us
and you and me you are a smaller rider and this is the first time
so first example of uh bike fit tips for smaller riders is this
the handlebars and actually probably the best thing to do is to measure she's about
32 33 centimeters for effect we've got a 44 centimeter handlebar on here which is
10 centimeters wider than you are the problems associated with a ball that's too wide are an
inability to reach the brake levers particularly on the drops generally lots of neck and shoulder
tension and what we'll possibly see as anime gets increasingly less comfortable is probably
a gravitation towards the off of the levers and typically a rolling of the wrist as a means of
vehicle as a means of trying this is what i'm talking about as a means of trying to align
the wrists with sharp light over the shoulder so i can get this the only hat bike where i
don't naturally go to that bed is my single speed because i have 32 inch junior bars 32 centimeter
junior balls yeah that are like yuck which are very difficult to come by they're sold as kits
yeah specialized used to make a 36 centimeter handlebar that measured as a 34
and then the idiots that are in charge of making money got involved and made it
36 again this is a 36 which unfortunately is probably still a little bit too wide right now
and this is something we're going to touch on later about how smaller individuals not just
long as women but generally women are massively failed by the bike industry as a whole so there
we have it no longer the need to roll the wrist to align with the shoulder this bar is arguably
still a little bit too wide we don't have anything smaller and uh yeah exactly easiest break levers
now and on the drops trying to match the handlebar width to the shoulder width we're measuring across
the acromion process which is the distal path the scapula we're talking about these two points
here so it's the the widest part of the shoulder blade essentially uh so measure between those two
points and go with the handlebar is a similar width most women tend to measure between 34
and 38 centimeters men tend to be between 39-41 but in some cases in certain cases particularly
individuals outside of the you know average bell curve tend to as hell as is the case with helena
measure less than that 3 32 centuries so something else that's usually overlooked by manufacturers is
the is optimum crank length so the the smallest or shortest commercially available crank length
typically speaking is 165 millimeters and we find that on smaller bikes held this canyon here has
got 165 mil crank on it i did a fit for helena a couple of years ago now and we actually ended up
on one five fives which are available but they're just a little harder to come by on the grounds
that it just it keeps everything a little bit more relative i mean i think you're riding 650b wheels
here as well aren't you so the problem with again with smaller riders male or female is that they're
outside of the the kind of law of averages the sort of 52 54 56 centimeter size range the size
of the components don't tend to really work that well and and with someone whose helmet's
height which is five two five one even at 165 millimeter is just a bit too long to to spin up
so it's you know because it ends up impending the hips and all this kind of stuff so i've actually
got again to make it a bit more unfair i've got 175 millimeter crank on the zig at the moment
the new shimano group sets actually come or have 160 millimeter offerings so things aren't getting
better try that for me we've come to find that uh excessive crank length has ramifications in the
saddle it'll impinge the hips it'll impact your power delivery and it'll also impact
things like your knees and what have you so it's you know pretty crucial do we get it right
generally speaking a stock bike like us you know a bike from well almost any back bike brand the
smaller ones will still come with a minimum of 165 millimeters some of them depends on the brand will
come with 170s which is what i write you know uh so someone who is i'm 510 someone who's five one
right in the same length crank doesn't really make a huge amount of sense uh and actually i
see it at the opposite end of the spectrum with tall riders needing like 180s and you know beyond
175 which is what you'd commercially which is what you would normally find on a bike on a larger bike
right so the next one is reach adjustment brake lever reach adjustment now if you're having
difficulty reaching the brake levers you're going to make bigger gains by reaching the
handlebar width because and there's a reach around joke here if the handlebar is wider than you are
you're reaching around the handlebar to get at the brake lever however most brake levers do have some
level of adjustment from where the brake lever sits in relation to the rest of the handlebar
on this clarist lever we have the ability to wind it right in so that little hands
can reach it more easily if trying to figure out how to adjust the brake lever adjustment
on your particular transmission you need to just google search leave a reach adjustment for
shimano claris or surround force or whatever it might be and you'll probably get a technical
document citing how you go about doing it sometimes it's at the top here sometimes it's
underneath the lever sometimes it's you know it's in a few different places depending on the brand
with myth saddle width myths saddle width saddle with myths she's falling apart in the background
smaller bike this and that doesn't that's their head to that smaller thought there so smaller
bike doesn't necessarily mean smaller saddle uh all saddles are specific to the rider and
in some cases we have wider sit bones in some cases we have narrow sip bones typically the
general consensus is that a smaller rider needs has smaller pelvis thus smaller narrower sit
bones thus narrower sample uh ultimately it's about the specific needs of an individual so
it's not always a narrow saddle usually i tend to recommend a traditional shaped saddle actually
typically with women i tend to recommend um cells from the likes of ergon
make really great women's saddle with a reasonable pressure relief channel car in the middle of it
the final piece of the puzzle is pillars now there are some pedal manufacturers that uh i tend
to recommend for smaller riders a smaller rider doesn't necessarily equate to weaker rider but
small riders typically don't have quite as much power as you know a big 100 kilo man uh
for a road system i tend to prefer look keos for women on the grounds that they are typically a
little bit easy to get in and out off it's worth noting that both speedplay and shimano do have
light action systems the the speedplay system uses a a light action cleat whereas the shimano
system uses a an r540 uh pedal which is an entry level pedal which to be honest with you is not a
great quality pedal i would soon have i would soon have a keo as far as speeds are concerned
they're pretty easy to get in and out of any way so from a from a mountain biking sound
or and gravel standpoint uh i probably wouldn't deviate much from that it's also worth noting
that there is tension adjustment in most pedals uh you can back it all the way off and and you know
just to make it easy to get in and out of i think that there's a there's a mild correlation between
excessive tension in the pedals and potentially knee issues with smaller riders so it's worth just
kind of tuning in your your tension your release tension on your pedals if you're if you are a
smaller rider uh it's pretty self-explanatory there's on most pedals there is a little allen
key in the back of them turn it one way to make it looser turn it the other way to make it tighten
right to tiny lifted lucy the biggest thing i want to get across on this video is that women
and smaller individuals in general are extremely polycated for by the bicycle industry because
they don't ride bikes right no women ride bikes no yeah that is the general attitude of the industry
and this is the problem and to a certain extent it's a self-fulfilling prophecy but
because historically there haven't been as many women riding bikes it means that there haven't
been as many sales historically and so as a result there's a legacy element of they don't make enough
product so as a result not enough women ride bikes which means they don't make enough products so
like i said it's this self-perpetuating problem equally there just isn't enough choice so beyond
as i as i sort of alluded to earlier beyond the the law of averages outside 52 54 56
there aren't enough options there aren't enough options in frame sizing there aren't enough
options in crank lengths handlebar widths even shoe sizes you know a lot of a lot of
shoe manufacturers stop at a size 40. what is the point in that it's not going to encourage women to
start cycling i actually feel that frame design is very poor uh for for us for smaller women so for
example if you consider that the bottom bracket height so the bottom bracket height refers to
how far off the ground the bottom bracket is the bottom bracket height on a 44 centimeter
little women's road bike is the same height it is on a 63 centimeter road bike which is
designed for somebody who's six foot four which doesn't make any sense the idea of the concept
of bottom bracket height is to enable people to pedal through corners without grounding the pedals
however typically a smaller rider will have a shorter crank thus the bottom bracket height
becomes a bit of a moot point so why aren't we running why aren't we designing bikes with
lower bottom brackets to make it easier for i mean so a big a big problem for women in a lot
of cases is just high speed stability because the bottom bracket height directly influences
how your center of mass and how far it is off the ground if bracket height is lower
you have a better center of mass you have better half better stability to tell you a story about my
partner she's five foot three if her saddle height is correct she can't touch the floor with the feet
and all of that is down to the bottom bracket height and if you
you can dramatically influence overall stability of bicycle by dropping the bracket by as little
as five mil we were discussing this on off camera earlier but my suggestion would be to
drop it even further than that if you can if we if we were to assume that somebody held on
his height five foot one five foot two even smaller perhaps needs 155 millimeter crank
and why can't we assume the bottom bracket height can be 20 ml lower almost probably not 20 more low
but lower lower certainly uh there's also problems with things like wheel sizes and what have you
uh so that's my rant bike industry get your [ __ ] together start thinking about people who
aren't just average height and aren't men and uh we'll get more women riding bikes that marks the
end of today's episode of bite fit tuesdays if you've got any questions for james please put
them in the comment section down below and he'll do his best to answer them if you want to book a
fit with james or if you want to check out the shop that we're in now i'll put a link in the
description as well thank you as always watching please like subscribe and i'll see you soon
so first example of uh what's the name of this video again