Slowman wrote:
crujones#33 wrote:
So without getting too graphic, I have always wondered if there is a way to measure or assess our perineum down there (privately of course) and use that information to help pick out an appropriate saddle based on length, width, etc.
pressure mapping is a thing. the most notable brand associated with this is gebiomized. my problem, issue, concern, hesitation, with pressure mapping is what it always is with any prescriptive system. what is the metric that causes you to change or determine your behavior? i look at saddles like i look at dating. how will you choose your spouse? by a questionnaire? or by going out on a bunch of dates?
years ago we sponsored the slowtwitch saddle tour. we sent a piece of tech around the country, to a bunch of shops and bike fitters. it was a quick-change saddle device you could put on your fit bike, and you could change a saddle in 10 seconds, without the rider even having to get off the bike. you could do a pretty good demo of 4 or 5 saddles over a period of 20 minutes.
of course you couldn't know what saddle would work, for sure, over the long haul, but - just like dating - you could pretty well figure out which prospects would not work pretty quickly. as in, after 30 seconds. often it came down to "finalists", as in, it's either this saddle or that. and then the shop had its policies for how you settled that issue.
there is a new saddle changing device now entering the market, which will now make 2 of them on the market, and i think testing - "dating" - various saddles is surest way to determined your "behavior," which is in this case how you choose a saddle.
i have been to a lot of bike shops, bike studios, fitter's studios, and the way things have been - what i've seen - is unfortunately that the choice of saddles is thin in the places i've visited. i have probably 70 or 80 saddles in my workshop. i've got to shops with expensive fit studios and the choice of aerobars is, maybe, 2, and the choice of saddles not more than 3 or 4. finding the right saddle is not that hard, but experience, tooling, selection, matters.
I'm relieved to hear this answer... the dating analogy is a good one, it's binary, and on which I'd like to expand.
Sometimes I think people get wrapped around the axle about being different. Yes, we're all different, but we're all the same kind of different. Your analogy hits the nail on the head in that the operative difference between people/athletes is not the map of their body parts but whether or not they like this saddle or that saddle, whether they'd want a second date. Thus from *there* the process begins, which is trying as many saddles as possible, guided by a person who knows how each saddle should or was intended to be sat on. Even though they can map our eyes, the eye doctor still does the old "better or worse" back and forth like when we were kids. Eventually the right saddle, sat on the right way, will match with the right position for your sport and your goals and cycling gets way more fun.
Another thing I'd like to touch on is "purpose" and comparative decision making. If the purpose of the athlete is to conform to the bike, in other words to work for the saddle, you're going to get a much different purpose and saddle decision making and comparing framework as a bike fitter or saddle maker than if the purpose of the saddle is to conform to the rider... in other words the saddle works for us. You approach and go about the issue in wildly different directions when you frame it as "it works for us" rather than "we work for it".
It all boils down to "are we doing things right" vs. "are we doing the right things". Pressure mapping, in my opinion, is a "doing things right" sort of thing, degrees or orders of magnitude more specific than the old way we used to measure that sort of stuff. Trying all the saddles with a competent fitter is a "doing the right things" sort of exercise, where before we even think about if we're doing "it" right we think about what we're trying to accomplish in the first place.
Eric
Eric Reid
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