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FYI --
After a two day retreat at Xantusia with a handful of triathletes -- shop owners & coaches -- all being infused with Dan Empfield's slant on tri bike fit I came away well impressed with his multisport / cycling experience and insight. The breadth of his knowledge is approached only by his generous hospitality, and poignant humor (uh, the "sissy LA" reference WAS supposed to be funny, right?). Dan's efforts are intended to bring triathletes, bike shops and coaches to a more universal appreciation of the bikes, riders and fit concepts we regularly see and / or read about. This common understanding will go a long way in distinguishing triathlon / bike shops from the "Schwinn Lawn Mower and Bike Shops" that on the surface, to the uninititated anyway seem to provide much the same "stuff" as an authentic tri-specific retailer, such as Triathlete Zombies. Experienced and newbie triathletes, their coaches and LBS alike once indoctrinated will all be conversant in the language of "stack & reach" which will logically reduce pervasive confusion and frustration with regard to triathlon bikes and positioning.
The recreation, also part of the Xantusia experience is A plus! All the trails you can run, all the hills you can climb (at altitude) and all the competition you can handle -- between residents Dan, Monty and John -- turn each day into a potential race day. As per recovery: food is plentiful and Monty mixes a mean Marguerita.
I found the FIST workshop highly educational and ejoyable.
Christopher, I know my man Spokesman Steve can bike and run(notice I did not include swim)but how did he handle the margueritas?
Bob Sigerson
F.I.S.T. rules. I had a great time there and I wish I was back there right now. Enjoy your expereince there and pick Dan's brain. There are some interesting insights in there (and probably some weird stuff too...). For those dealers who are at F.I.S.T. right now: I can tell you that you will be on the front line, employing F.I.S.T. techniques operationally the moment you hit the ground in your area of operation. You will sell more bikes and do a better job of it. That has been my expereince since I returned.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
OK, I'll try one more time. No one seems willing to answer a simple question about stack and reach. This has been posted twice and emailed to Dan once. If the answer is confidential and I'll have to pay for a FIST clinic, just tell me so:
For some perverse reason I have a desire to understand this stack and
reach theory. What confuses me is the proposition that seat angle is
irrelevant.
It seems to me that I would need to specify a seat angle first in order to
be fitted using this terminology. If I decide that 77 degrees is best for
me instead of 78 would I not need a shorter "reach" to compensate for my
hips being further back? If I try to keep my saddle the same distance from
the BB at the new angle, it seems that "rotating" my FIST-perfect position
around the BB would also call for a slightly higher "stack".
Your explanation talks about points in space. If I imagine a perfectly
positioned rider without a bike I can fix one point, the feet, relative to
the BB and then rotate the picture to come up with infinite combinations
of stack and reach, all of which would be determined by the seat angle. I
know I'm missing something here, but what?
"It seems to me that I would need to specify a seat angle first in order to be fitted using this terminology."
i'll give you an example. i'm test riding a felt S22 right now. i just finished test riding a QR TiPhoon recently. both those bikes work for me, but both have seat angles too shallow for me. they also both have top tubes too long for me. no problem. in both cases just having zero-setback seat posts with the saddle forward on the rails both steepened and shortened the bikes to my liking. in other words, in one fell swoop, and it was an easy swoop, i fixed both problems.
but let's say that they were shallower than i wanted, but the top tube was about the right size. then by steepening the seat angle i'd end up with a top tube that's too short. alternatively, let's take an old litespeed, for example, the tachyon. it already had a 78-degree seat angle, and also a top tube that was quite long. it's hard to steepen the seat angle too much more than it is, and therefore the bike was just flat out too long for me. only a bike that was both too shallow AND too long would end up working for me. or a bike that was too steep and too short. that would work too. or, of course, a bike the was correct in both seat angle and top tube. in all of these three cases, tho, it is easy to make the bike work properly, because all of these bikes--short and steep, shallow and long, or just right--could conceivably have the same stack and reach.
it's fairly easy to make a seat angle artifically shallower or steeper. what is more difficult is dealing with the absolute length of the bike, which is the horizontal distance between the BB and the head tube. it is also often difficult to get the bike appropriately low (or in some cases high) in front, and the salient measure here is the distance of the top of the head tube above the BB. these are "reach" and "stack" respectively.
you can make any bike fit. but starting out with a bike with a correct (for you) stack an reach makes it easier to fit. yes, it's also best to have the appropriate seat angle, but if the bike doesn't have that it's not hard to deal with that.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
I think I've got it. The BIKE's seat angle is adjustable, and therefore irrelevant within that range. The RIDER's preferred seat angle is one of the factors in determining the proper reach.
So if I know I want my saddle X cm behind my BB to achieve my desired seat angle, it will always be "reach + X" cm from my headtube if the bike fits. Whether the seatpost angles forward or backward to achieve this distance depends on the top tube length but really doesn't matter.
yes, you've got it. one could certainly choose other parameters on which to focus, but i've chosen to fix and focus on the parameters that are the hardest to change, and "float" the parameters, such as seat angle, that are reasonably easily changeable, and which will have the smallest impact on handling/weight displacement.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman