Dave at ISM saw this thread and sent me a pretty detailed email to share - so here you go:
After reading through some of the comments I thought I would try and give a quick over view of our performance saddles and you can feel free to pass this information along, cut and paste or totally ignore.
Think of our performance saddles this way if it makes it easier to follow. There are two groups, the performance long family and the performance short family. The Short family consists of the Time Trial, Racing, Road, Typhoon while the long family is the Attack, Podium, Breakaway and Prologue. In the long family you have three saddles that share the exact same shape and those are the Podium, Breakaway and Prologue. The major difference between these three saddles is the level of padding. The Podium is the firmest, the Breakaway is roughly 20% softer than Podium while the Prologue is roughly 50% softer than the Podium. The only other difference is the seat rails on the Podium and Breakaway are titanium alloy while the Prologue uses cr-moly rails. The Attack saddle is also part of the longer family and is the same firmness level of the Podium saddle, uses titanium alloy seat rails but has two differences. The Attack is narrower in the transition from the front arms to the back of the saddle. The front arms will be the same dimensionally (more on this later) but the edges have been narrowed to allow more room for the leg to move through the pedal stroke as well as easier fore/aft movement on the saddle. Also, the area of relief where the front arms meet the body of the saddle is deeper and extends further back than on the other models. All the saddles in the long family use the newer sloped ends to the front arms. The long saddles are optimally matched to the traditional road bike position or to triathletes who like to move around on the saddle more such as for climbing and descending or riding with their hands on the base bar a significant amount of time.
The shorter family of saddles follow a similar hierarchy of firmness levels. The Time Trial and Racing saddles are at the same firmest level of padding like the Attack and Podium. The Road model is the same shape as the Racing but 20% softer in firmness and uses cr-moly seat rails instead of titanium alloy found on the Time Trial and Racing saddles. The Typhoon is even softer than the Road model and has a bit more slope built into the body of the saddle. The only difference between the Racing saddle and the Time Trial is the addition of the newer generation sloped front arms. Generally speaking, the two groups of people who benefit from the Time Trial saddle over the Racing are women who like a firm saddle or athletes (men or women) who can ride a firm saddle and have a greater amount of saddle to handlebar drop. If you do not like a firm saddle than the sloped arms of the Time Trial are not going to benefit you and you need to look at the Road or Typhoon. The short saddles work optimally for triathletes/time trial riders who spend most of their time in the aerobar position and like to stay planted in one position with little moving around on the saddle. Also, riders on road bikes who live in areas that are relatively flat or who generally don’t move around on the saddle will also find lots of comfort on the shorter saddles.
A couple of other points that seemed to stand out. For people that say the “nose” feels too wide that is a clear indication that the saddle is not placed correctly. There is no “nose” to an ISM saddle as it has been removed. The front arms match the pubic rami bone structure and should never extend further than the midpoint of your inseam. If they do than the rider is sitting too far back on the saddle or it is positioned too high and too far forward. Theoretically, if you are positioned perfectly on a traditional saddle and then switch to an ISM saddle your overall seat high will be roughly 5 millimeters lower to account for the bone structure of the body being supported on the top plane of the saddle instead of sinking into the cradle part of a traditional saddle. Since the pubic rami bones are being supported higher on the saddle this contributes to the feeling of width that makes it necessary to lower the overall seat height to keep the leg extension the same. Also, if you were to measure from the nose of a traditional saddle to your handlebar and then from the front of the arms to the handlebar this measurement needs to be 4-5 centimeters longer to keep you in the same spot fore/aft over the bottom bracket. If you install an ISM saddle to the same seat height and keep the front of the saddles even than you have radically altered your position on the bike and will not be using the ISM saddle optimally. Also, regarding zip ties, the use of zip ties will void any warranty and more importantly you do not have your saddle positioned correctly and are not maximizing the health, comfort and performance benefits that the ISM design provides. The arms of an ISM saddle are specifically designed to support the pubic rami bones. While there are differences between petite and large people and men and women obviously the bone structure is more the same than it is different. As the hips rotate forward the bones of the pubic rami narrow ( they also angle in and forward) so the arms of an ISM saddle when positioned correctly allow for the natural rotation of the hips and transference of weight from the ischial tuberosity to the pubic rami instead of the soft tissue of the body that was never intended to support weight. An ISM saddle works for men and women equally because it is a human design. Obviously men and women are different, the ISM is just as effective for men as it is for women because of the support of the rider’s weight on bone structure on the top plane of the saddle. For men, everything that is important to us is positioned in front of the arms of the saddle while for women having the weight supported on the top plane of the saddle and having space between the arms as well as an area of relief in the body itself there is no part of the saddle to compress soft tissue. Again, if the saddle feels “too wide” it is not positioned correctly or is being sat upon too far back. If pressure against the bone structure is an issue after the appropriate break in period than the solution is to choose a saddle with a softer level/more padding. This is completely personal preference and what is soft to someone is firm to someone else hence the need for various levels of padding on saddles.
As far as trying saddles before you purchase one, we make 5 models specifically as demo models. The Attack, Breakaway, Time Trial, Racing, and Road are all available as demo models through our dealers. The reason we produce demo models is so people can try a saddle for an extended period of time to help the body break in, make the necessary small adjustments to the position of the saddle and realize the long term health, comfort and performance benefits that an ISM saddle provides. This is not achieved with a ten minute ride around the parking lot or a few minutes on a trainer. These things are a start but do not tell the complete story. To start your search for a dealer close to you that carries our demo saddles you can always use the dealer locater tool on our website ismseat.com, ask your favorite shop to get you a demo or one of the online retailers who have demo saddle programs who can ship a saddle directly to you.
I hope this information helps but if you have other questions or need more information please feel free to call or email me and it would be my pleasure to further assist you.
If you want his email address or phone number, message me and I can forward it to you.
