The saddle looks low.

Yes, you should sit more forward.

Probably drop the arm pads down too.

I guess you see that because the foot is horizontal?

I'm surprised to hear that the saddle is too low, but I've never had a properly fit bike before so I probably just don't know what "normal" should feel like.

From what I've read on knee angle, 150 degrees is at the higher end of what might be considered acceptable. Did I measure it correctly in the picture above, and if so isn't raising the saddle going to put me out of range?

Or should my toes point down at the bottom of the stroke, limiting the knee extension? Is pointing your toes something you have to train yourself to do, or should it occur naturally when the saddle and cleats are positioned properly?

I'm going to try to make some adjustments, so it helps to understand exactly what I should be measuring and trying to optimize. Thanks.

Are you comfortable?

Are you noticing knee, quad, hamstring pain?

If you raise your seat too high or lower your bars too far, you risk upper back and neck pain from looking up too much. Your toes should not be pointed if your leg is at full extension, and your heel shouldn't drop below horizontal either. If your quads burn after a short ride, raise your seat. If your hamstrings are tight, lower it a tad. Just be patient and test it out.

Numbers are numbers at the end of the day, and how you feel is the most important factor. Sure, you can suffer through a Sprint or Oly, but anything longer would be cruel!

good luck!

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~ Marcus
"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"

I don't think your anatomical points are accurate.
The anchor point on the malleolus is off, the knee point is too high, and the hip is off.
therefore your angle measurement is not accurate.

Place sticky dots on 'you' prior to photo, to help plot with cursor. The tibial plateau can be palpated as an indent on the side of the leg lateral to the patella. The greater trochanter can be more easily felt with the middle finger while pedaling - push in on whatever fleshy bits you got to find the head of the femur.

also, please consider upgrading your shoe/pedal interface. it appears you are wearing very flexy mtb shoes, plus spd is a very small and unstable platform. you deserve a firmer/lighter/more stable platform to go faster/easier.

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Anne Barnes
ABBikefit, Ltd
FIST/SICI/FIST DOWN DEEP
X/Y Coordinator
abbikefit@gmail.com

 I'm not a fitter, so I'll leave that to others, but I just wanted to comment on the technical considerations when trying to measure angles from a photograph. Ideally, you want a "flat" image perfectly square to the subject with as little perspective distortion as possible. This means using a "normal" or telephoto (zoom) lens with the camera placed as far away as possible. At the other extreme, a wide angle lens placed close to the subject will distort objects near the edge of the image field, and create a close perspective that changes across the image making it nearly impossible to determine what is truly square.

Your image is pretty good-- a lot better than most of these I see-- but if you look at the trainer axle on the left, it appears to point to the bottom left corner of the image. Conversely, the front axle points to the bottom right. This tells me that your camera is set up pretty close to you, and there is really only one point near the middle of the image that is truly square. Everything else is distorted slightly the farther you deviate from center. Thankfully, your leg is pretty close to centered in the frame to minimize the impact. This is perhaps a bigger consideration for measuring frame geometry, but I'm sure it's having some small impact on your measured leg angles too.

So, just a general suggestion for those submitting (or requesting) photos for fit assessment-- get those cameras as far away as possible and avoid using wide angle lenses.

Marcus - thanks for your comments. To be honest the articles and forum posts on bike fitting are making my head spin, so perhaps I'd be better off with a more holistic approach and just keep tweaking until it feels right. I'm not particularly comfortable, but most of the pain (or rather, numbness) is in the saddle so I was trying to focus on height and setback. Legs feel okay after about 1.5 hrs on the trainer, and my back is also pretty good. I know my pad drop is not very aggressive, but I'm training for a 70.3 in June and I want to be comfortable for that race.

Anne - thanks for pointing out my errors. I'll have to spend some time googling those anatomical terms, but I'm going to give it a try because I'm curious to know how far off I was. So thanks for the tips. Also, I'm impressed with your eye for detail... you caught me using MTB pedals! When I got this bike all I had were my (very old) MTB pedals, so I threw them so I could start working out on my trainer. I didn't think anyone would notice :) But I'm going to get new pedals and shoes soon.

Thanks,
Mark

I'm not a big fan of SPD, but is there any science behind "stable" platforms and stiff shoes? Or is this like stiff frames where it just "feels fast?"

Do you normally dorsiflex that much not matter how high the saddle is? Knee angle looks good (not really paying attention to your measurement but just looking at the knee bend itself), but if you extended your ankle just a little bit, then your knee would likely be a little too slack.

I don't think I've got enough data to answer your question effectively, unfortunately. In a fit, I would raise the saddle and see what happens. If you're protecting your ankle and your knee extended more, I'd likely leave you where you are (height-wise).

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)

Mtb cleats/pedals by nature of design have the least amount of surface area, and most lack any lateral support.

The tread of the shoe is supposed to rest on the spindle, but not every shoe tread does. Worse yet, if you use a road shoe with a mtb cleat there is no lateral support whatsoever. Thousands of foot rotations, much ankle eversion.

It's not so much about how stiff the shoe is, as it is how well the cleat fits the pedal itself. A stiffer shoe (especially a higher end xc shoe) will mask the slop and play in the mtb cleat/pedal connection, but after 2-3hrs of continuous riding that is a lot of ineffeciency. The OP's shoe, for example, is an inexpensive 'casual' mtb shoe, designed to be more flexible for walking. You can actually see the heel of the shoe flexing downward, even with the small effort he may be doing.

Note how crappy a Look cleat fits without that little rubber oval in the center? The rubber bit helps snug the engagement area of the cleat up into the pedal. The older style Shimano SPD-SL pedals with the 'batwings' across the center also had a similar function; if the batwing is too worn down, new cleats fit sloppy and may disengage far too easily even with spring tension all the way tight.

Consider the surface area of the cleat and the engagement areas; any road system will be a much larger area. Without any shoe on, would you rather stand on the head of a pin, or a drink coaster? I bet my analogy sounds pretty crazy but you get my drift.

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Anne Barnes
ABBikefit, Ltd
FIST/SICI/FIST DOWN DEEP
X/Y Coordinator
abbikefit@gmail.com

I guess it's that presumption of inefficiency that I wonder about. Has anyone put numbers to it?

I've ridden RAGBRAI (400-500 mile weeks) for several years in soft, flexy sport sandals. I use big wide bmx platform pedals for comfort, but it never occurred to me that it would be more efficient as well. Meanwhile I notice more slop with worn cleats in SPD, Eggbeater, and Speedplay systems, but it's never bothered me at all. If it's that inefficient it must be measurable, right? Because it certainly isn't uncomfortable...

Is rotational float inefficient too?

trentnix wrote:

I don't think I've got enough data to answer your question effectively, unfortunately. In a fit, I would raise the saddle and see what happens. If you're protecting your ankle and your knee extended more, I'd likely leave you where you are (height-wise).

I tried raising the saddle to see how my ankle and knee would respond. Below is a pic showing a comparison of the lower saddle position (left) and upper position (right). The difference in saddle height is 1", which might be a bit extreme.

With the higher saddle position my heel is definitely raised, which seems to be more typical based on other pictures I've seen. However, my knee angle also appears to have opened up by a few degrees. Is my knee too extended here, or is it still within an acceptable range? When I was pedaling I wasn't rocking side-to-side, so I don't *think* I was reaching too far.




Thanks,
Mark

It's definitely too high on the right, and the ankle is still in a similar position. Your original saddle height is better.

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)