cyclenutnz wrote:
Videos are meaningless without data. Some people will never have a 'good looking' position, even when they are comfortable and their numbers stack up.
brother, you know the high regard in which i hold you. i've been thinking about this post of yours in the week since you wrote it, and i'm going to gently push back a little.
i think if i put a half-dozen videos of fits done by a fitter in front of you, and maybe a dozen is a better number, you'd at some point begin to get a sense for how that fitter fits. for example, when we first got aerobars, in 1987, my sense of how to use them was: place the pads even in elevation with the saddle. this was the only way they made sense to me. gradually, tho, the urge to move forward overcame my prior view, and with that an urge to move the bars down. and to tighten the cockpit. this process took about a year to complete. within a year of getting the bars, we had the position established. then i set about designing a bike that accommodated that position. (voila.)
there are still plenty of fitters who fit pretty much like i fit myself and others in 1987. it's pretty evident by looking at the positions. i don't really need to see the data. i can see it with my eyes.
i'm not the only one. you, me, any of us here can see a cyclist riding down the street and without knowing his included knee angle know that he's probably riding with a saddle too high or low (if it's sufficiently too high or low).
therefore, we include in our fitters database a place for your portfolio. there is no data in those videos (if a youtube channel, for example, is where you house your portfolio.) i don't think it's unreasonable for a consumer to look at videos of the fits to see whether that fitter ascribes to a pads-high, saddle-back methodology, or whether the end results of his or her fits look relatively orthodox, or whether they routinely end up with a stretched cockpit and an obtuse shoulder angle, or what.
yes, nothing trumps the whole package: video + data + action items based on the data. but i don't agree that video
alone is without its use as a consumer tool.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman