Would you have a look at my saddle height? We were rolling out for a group ride when an acquaintance made the request. She told me the shop had set her saddle height when she bought her bike, but she’d never been fit on it. I pedaled alongside her and at the bottom of every pedal stroke, her leg straightened.
After more than 30 years of seeing what good fits look like, and correcting bad ones, my eye can spot a fit that needs fixing, much like a crooked painting on a wall. Seeing the skin on the back of her knee pull taut made my eyes hurt the way fingernails on a chalkboard do our ears.
As we pedaled, I looked at her reach to the handlebar. She looked like she was reaching across a table for the salt shaker. I asked if her shoulders hurt. She turned and asked, “How did you know?”
I dropped by her home the next afternoon and within a half hour I had lowered her saddle to an appropriate height and flipped her -6 stem up into the +6 position, decreasing her reach. I sent her around the block and when she returned she observed that she felt more confident in corners, that the bike behaved more predictably.
An appropriate share of your weight on the front wheel will do that.
Many riders struggle to justify spending $300 dollars or more on a fit that may run several hours. People understandably wonder: “I’m pedaling this bike just fine. How much improvement do I really need? How much room is there for improvement? Surely not two hours’ worth?”
And that brings me what I’m going to call Brady’s 80/80/30 Axiom: I can provide 80% of riders with 80% of the improvements that can be made in their fit in just a half hour.
I think it’s possible that the bike industry has done riders a disservice by making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think the cost in both time and money of most fits scares off a great many cyclists who would benefit from a rudimentary, but professionally performed, fitting session.
So the question you may be asking is what I plan to do about this: I’m pleased to announce that beginning in June I’ll be offering half-hour and one-hour fits through the nonprofit community bike shop Bike Works in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood. Riders in the Bay Area can contact me directly.
The proof of a good fit comes in not what I tell the rider, but what they tell me. And often it’s no more complicated than, “Oh yeah. That feels much better.”