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Finding the right saddle
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Total newbie here. I've done a handful of sprints, an oly, and one 70.3. I would say my weakest discipline is probably the bike, and part of that is that I've never really been able to find a saddle that is comfortable. Usually when I get into a groove on the ride, I start to get intense pain and numbness down there, sometimes even numbness in my toes. This causes me to switch positions around until I find a comfortable one which throws off my position on the bike.

I'm a big guy - 6'1" 215, I currently have the ISM PS1.0, had the Fizik Mistica, which was much much worse.

I'm on a very tight budget and don't have any wiggle room to try several different saddles and get fitted multiple times. Is there a way to dial in which saddle is best easily and cheaply?

Also, I'm not sure how much discomfort is common and I should just get used to. If I need to just suck it up and get over it, I can. Lol

Thanks for any tips and advice!
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Re: Finding the right saddle [mdisciple] [ In reply to ]
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I've been riding for over 20 years and I'm still searching for the perfect saddle.
On my road/gravel bikes a brooks b17 is as close to perfect for long rides even if it weighs 4x more than my posh saddles.
One guess is that you may need to move your saddle (ism) back a bit. Most of us are used to sitting "in" the saddle but noseless saddles require you to sit on the front of the saddle.
As for your numb foot another guess would be that you have your saddle too high or one leg is longer than the other. Cleat shims are pretty cheap. Diagnosing leg length is tricky and full of misinformation.
Or you need nice shorts.
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Re: Finding the right saddle [mdisciple] [ In reply to ]
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mdisciple wrote:
I'm on a very tight budget and don't have any wiggle room to try several different saddles and get fitted multiple times. Is there a way to dial in which saddle is best easily and cheaply?

Also, I'm not sure how much discomfort is common and I should just get used to. If I need to just suck it up and get over it, I can. Lol
The answer to your second question is no. You should not just suck it up and get over it. You should fix the problem. Many of us have saddles we can ride for 8hrs at a time without significant discomfort. The key is to get the weight onto the bones. There might be a little tenderness if you haven't ridden in months, but you quickly adapt and it goes away. There should be no numbness.

As for cheaply, many saddle companies and shops have demo programs. ISM (what you have) is an example (see https://ismseat.com/demo-saddles/). If you have them mail it to you it's $20 but I think if you go through a local dealer it's free. They typically let you have it for 30 days. (FWIW I love the ISM PL1.0 - can ride it all day no issues.)

I find you can't really tell until you've done at least a couple weeks of rides. You need time to find the sweet spot where you want to sit on it, then adjust the saddle placement to put it in the right spot. Don't just ride it once and pull the trigger.

One more thing: you may also need to change your front end - it's possible you're weighting the saddle wrong to reach the front end.
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Re: Finding the right saddle [mdisciple] [ In reply to ]
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No, you cannot toughen up to get over numbness and pain. I picked mine by demo-ing a few saddles at my local bike shop. I used to have a lot of numbness if I stayed in aero, but an ISM saddle fixed that. A bike fit can also go a long way -- it could be position and not saddle type, especially if you've got symptoms in your toes.


<The Dew Abides>
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Re: Finding the right saddle [mdisciple] [ In reply to ]
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Agree with the others that you shouldn't "suck it up".

After 10yrs of bike fitting, the #1 reason for Uncomfortable Saddle Syndrome is saddle height. Anecdotal perhaps, but even with previously uncomfortabe saddle, things improve if foot to crotch height is solved.

Corollary to this is the front end is too low.

Thirdly, if you are having numbness down the to the toes, you may also have an issue L5 or sural nerve. Depends on which toes go first.

USS can be a combination of all three of the above, and it can be millimeters or it could be centimeters of being 'off'.

Anne Barnes
ABBikefit, Ltd
FIST/SICI/FIST DOWN DEEP
X/Y Coordinator
abbikefit@gmail.com
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Re: Finding the right saddle [mdisciple] [ In reply to ]
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I can't say this enough.. Selle SMP saddles are the best designed on the market.
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Re: Finding the right saddle [mdisciple] [ In reply to ]
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mdisciple wrote:
Total newbie here. I've done a handful of sprints, an oly, and one 70.3. I would say my weakest discipline is probably the bike, and part of that is that I've never really been able to find a saddle that is comfortable. Usually when I get into a groove on the ride, I start to get intense pain and numbness down there, sometimes even numbness in my toes. This causes me to switch positions around until I find a comfortable one which throws off my position on the bike.

I'm a big guy - 6'1" 215, I currently have the ISM PS1.0, had the Fizik Mistica, which was much much worse.

I'm on a very tight budget and don't have any wiggle room to try several different saddles and get fitted multiple times. Is there a way to dial in which saddle is best easily and cheaply?

Also, I'm not sure how much discomfort is common and I should just get used to. If I need to just suck it up and get over it, I can. Lol

Thanks for any tips and advice!

The fitters on here know a lot more than me. But 1 thing I can confirm - it's not your size. I'm not too dissimilar (just over 6 ft, and vary between 190 on a good day / after months of good solid training for an IM, and 210 when not. And I can ride 6 or 7 hours comfortably on the TT bike with no numbness or pain 'down there' (Not gone over 7 hours on it).
Longer still tho if on the road bike.

I'm on a Adamo Prologue (current version is a PL1.1) on the TT bike, and Cobb Flow Max on the road bike.

Best wishes for getting comfy.
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Re: Finding the right saddle [lanierb] [ In reply to ]
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lanierb wrote:
mdisciple wrote:

I'm on a very tight budget and don't have any wiggle room to try several different saddles and get fitted multiple times. Is there a way to dial in which saddle is best easily and cheaply?

Also, I'm not sure how much discomfort is common and I should just get used to. If I need to just suck it up and get over it, I can. Lol

The answer to your second question is no. You should not just suck it up and get over it. You should fix the problem. Many of us have saddles we can ride for 8hrs at a time without significant discomfort. The key is to get the weight onto the bones. There might be a little tenderness if you haven't ridden in months, but you quickly adapt and it goes away. There should be no numbness.

As for cheaply, many saddle companies and shops have demo programs. ISM (what you have) is an example (see https://ismseat.com/demo-saddles/). If you have them mail it to you it's $20 but I think if you go through a local dealer it's free. They typically let you have it for 30 days. (FWIW I love the ISM PL1.0 - can ride it all day no issues.)

I find you can't really tell until you've done at least a couple weeks of rides. You need time to find the sweet spot where you want to sit on it, then adjust the saddle placement to put it in the right spot. Don't just ride it once and pull the trigger.

One more thing: you may also need to change your front end - it's possible you're weighting the saddle wrong to reach the front end.

All of this above. I have an ISM on my tri and road bike. For the tri bike when I am in the bars it is good, but when I sit up not so good. For this bike that is perfect. For my road bike, it is interesting (and was in the original instructional video when I got the saddle), but I DO need to twist it a little off center to find the best spot. As everyone said, don't suffer.



I miss you "Sports Night"
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Re: Finding the right saddle [mdisciple] [ In reply to ]
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A couple of observations...

1) When people say 'X' is the best saddle or design, be skeptical. They may be great saddles, but fit is a personal thing and everyone is a little different (or maybe a lot in some cases). If someone were to claim brand X is the best-fitting shoes or pants, you wouldn't just blindly assume that holds true for everyone no matter how awesome they might appear before you actually try them on for yourself; same thing w/ saddles even if it might not seem quite as obvious. In some cases, more padding is not necessarily better as it can deflect the load across more area which may include soft tissues that really can't tolerate the pressure, instead of focusing more of the load on the sit bones. Here, width can be super critical ~ same basic design, construction, & materials, but the spacing between people's sit bones vary just like your pelvis might be wider or narrower than mine. Why wouldn't you size saddles at least a little bit like shoes or other articles of fit like clothes?

2) Just like there's no one set of wheels or tires that are idea for every application, so too are there different saddles for different jobs. Sure, you can ride just one for everything and anything just like you *could* ride your $3K Zipps while pulling the kid trailer on the bike path or race a TT in your 40mm gravel crushers, but neither is optimized for those particular sets of trade-offs. What I like for a fairly upright position on my touring bike is quite different from normal road racing or fast training, which in turn is still different than what I choose for riding way more forward & low for TTing in aerobars, etc. If you only have 1 bike that needs to do everything (for now) then you'll have to accept the trade-offs but in that case again refer to point #1.
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