An Obsession With Comfort

My obsession with fit began during an age when the tools for proper fit were still relatively rudimentary. I came to cycling with the good fortune to fit reasonably well on stock bikes. However, working in a bike shop exposed me to a great many new bike buyers who needed the help of a professional in order to ride their new bike in comfort.

Several times a week, sometimes several times a day, I would present a bike to a prospective customer and almost immediately I could tell that the reach from the saddle to the bar was too great for the rider. Once the shop I worked at began offering fitting sessions with The Fit Kit, we began to hear from many customers all with the same issue: The reach to the handlebar was too uncomfortable to allow them to ride for long.

These experiences and my resulting perspective occurred during the era of the quill stem, long before the adage “slam that stem” took over as actual fit advice—in other words, in an era when raising and lowering the handlebar could be accomplished with nothing more than a 6mm Allen wrench. As a result, my sense of fit has always been based on rider comfort, rather than rider speed. After all, if you can’t hold a position for very long, it won’t do you much good.

Some 15 or so years ago I was working on my book, “The No-Drop Zone” (a how-to for new roadies, especially those who want to feel comfortable in on group rides, especially in the close quarters of a peloton), and interviewed Scott Holz, who heads up Specialized Bicycle Components University (popularly called in the industry SBCU). Scott arrived at Specialized with as refined a pedigree in fit as anyone I’d met up to that point. He’d spent years working as a fitter and had gone through extensive training with Serotta, which used to lead the industry with regard to training fitters. This oversimplifies Scott’s background, but he’s among the most knowledgeable fitters, and now educators of fitters, I’ve met.

My conversation with Scott helped to crystallize a perspective that I’d long held, but never adequately articulated to myself, or anyone else. Scott spoke of “optimal,” rather than “proper” or “correct,” fit, which is how I’d heard many fitters talk about a cyclist’s relationship to their bike. The problem with defining a fit as “proper” or “correct” is that it sets up the idea that there is just one answer for fit, that it doesn’t fit within a range and can’t be adjusted based on a rider’s style or needs.

Scott’s use of the word “optimal” reflects, both in his explanation and my own recognition, that there isn’t a single workable fit for an individual.

What I appreciate about this approach, especially as I’m about to re-launch my own fit business, is that it allows a rider multiple priorities that may get shuffled based on the kind of riding they are doing. Good fit isn’t just one thing, but you can say it is one approach. I’d sum that approach up as a relationship between the fitter and the client that is responsive; that is, the fit evolves based on the information that fitter receives from the client.

Half of that information is verbal. It encompasses what the rider wishes to do with their bike, what they’ve done in the past, including years of experiences, kinds of riding and even injuries. The other half comes from what the rider’s body tells the fitter. That data set begins with the basics of a rider’s physiology, but goes on to examine their flexibility and any issues that may affect their riding. This includes a broad range of conditions: limb-length asymmetry, tendonitis, scoliosis, joint replacement, arthritis and anything that may limit a rider’s range of motion.

There’s a particular sort of bottom line here: A rider’s bike needs to conform to their needs. No need is more important than the need to ride. And for most riders on the planet, there’s a simple truth: If your bike is comfortable, you’ll ride more.

What I love about finding the right fit for a rider is that when you hit upon an appropriate saddle height, saddle setback, reach to the bar and bar height, the result is not a mystery. The rider will climb onto the saddle, reach for the bars and smile. A good fit just feels right, and too often in our lives, we don’t trust that feedback.