casper3043 wrote:
i've read countless articles about bike fits including ones here. not all, but a fair share. this is the reason i got a bike fit in the first place.
i made 2 really obvious mistakes during my fit process:
1) not getting a video, or even pictures for that matter. I suppose I can follow-up with the fitter, but to be honest, based on the numbers I shared and the confusement it caused, I don't even want to ask or follow-up on the millions of questions that have come up, which would all point to a re-fit and I have lost trust at this point.
2) i assumed that getting a recommended fitter from this forum that has all the certifications that would qualify a person to do their job right, was just an assumption. the reason i paid someone to fit me on a bike is to make sure i get a proper fit - simple. i shouldn't have to be responsible for them doing their job correctly. what i took away from the fit was a sheet with numbers that don't add up. people familiar with these numbers, coordinates, angles can spot this easily, i assumed if there was anything "abnormal" about my fit, it would've been brought up.
what i am thankful for, is the honest feedback from the community about my fit sheet. instead of assuming that my numbers make sense, I would've pulled the trigger on a bike/frame that might not be right for me. Not that I know what is the right bike/frame, but I can at least approach this cautiously.
there are several themes i pound, over and over, in article after article, ad nauseum. the reason i keep berating our readers with the same stuff is that it just doesn't sink in. so - and i'm sorry, but this is a bit at your expense - here we go...
1. orthodoxy. if you don't know what i mean by this, in the context of bike fit, let's talk about it. this is key. key. key. you need to ask, before the fit, "is orthodoxy driver when you fit? and what do you consider an orthodox position? know how to measure or plot orthodoxy. i'm happy to explain this further.
2. get a GD video! get an MFing video!
3. understand what the minimum tooling requirements are for a bike fitter. ask your bike fitter, what fit tools are you going to use?
so, those are the 3 things i guess i'd say. what are the fitters drivers? what is he trying to achieve? what is an input that he receives that causes him to make a change, and why? secondly, is he using up to date fit tools? third, are you taking a video away?
now, 4th, are you walking with fit metrics that you can use. and you are. whether the metrics represent a good fit, i don't know. but your fitter did a good job on giving you the metrics. i'm not prepared to say your fitter didn't give you a good fit. i don't know. but i promise you a thread's going to pop up sometime in august saying, hey, i just got fit, did the fitter do a good job? and i'm going to write all this same stuff again. and then we're going to see another thread in sept. and so on.
but what you want is an answer to your fit, not the september guy's fit. what you COULD do is go back and ask your fitter to explain your position through the prism of orthodoxy. and see what he says.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman