Has anyone here used the Fit Kit System on a Tri Bike? That is what the local bike shop uses but I have never heard of it and there is very little information online.
it is for road (and perhaps MTB). it is not for tri, unless you believe that triathletes should have a road fit, and just slap the tri bars on (a protocol a few still do believe in).
Slowman gave you the Reader’s Digest version. I’ll add to that the following:
N.E.C.A., New England Cycling Academy, was really the first widely available, performance (at the time) oriented fit “system” widely marketed to bike shops. Schwinn, interestingly enough, had fit “systems” prior to this going back to the early '70’s. The early Schwinn system consisted of a poster type affair with a device you pulled up between your legs to take an inseam measurement. Based on where the contraption stopped, you either bought a 15", 17" or 19" Schwinn. It was a rudimentary approach to bike “fitting”- more a technique for selecting the appropriate frame sizer of the older Schwinn road bikes- Varsity, LeTour, etc.
Fit Kit became available about the same time Greg LeMond and Kent Gordis authored *Greg LeMond’s Complete Book of Cycling. *There is a full chapter on bike fit in that book, among the first on the subject published in English. LeMond was winning, road cycling was in, and the concept of “bike fitting” was attracting interest.
Meanwhile, some fellow in California was inspired by the beauty of a Mexican province called Quintana Roo and invented a way to take better advantage of the just-invented “Downhill” style handlebar being distributed by Scott, invented by Boone Lennon and used by Greg LeMond to resounding success in the final time trail of the 1989 Tour de France. That fellow is the guy who initially responded to your post- Slowman.
The aerobar had been validated. Some multisport fellows had long since proven its worth at the Desert Princess duathlon, but now the mainstream cycling world took notice.
NECA and Fit Kit had already been around for a while and, truth be told, it was never a great “system”. The tools were OK, they gave you reliable, repeatable inseam and torso measurements, but the protocols for selecting actual frame dimensions and rider positions was, at best, not very good. It was utterly useless for the new aerodynamic handlebar position.
Fit Kit did provide the basic tools for taking rider measurements, a rudimentary software to store and file them and an interesting “positon simulator” that they attempted (unsuccessfully) to adapt to aerobar use. For the aero position, they were way behinf the curve and have never caught up.
The man who invented or popularized the aero position, Dan Empfield (Slowman), went on to develop an industry standard of equalizing fit coordinates, a “Rosetta Stone” for bike fitters- and consumers- that enables them to make meaningful comparisons between bike sizes, geometries and brands called “stack and reach”. You find this resource here:
http://www.slowtwitch.com/stackreach.html
The new paradigm in fitting specific to aerobar/triathlon use is using some technique, a fit bike, body measurements, etc. to deduce the appropriate geometry for a given torso to leg length ratio, riding style and other rider characteristics then taking those dimensions to the stack and reach database to find the best match. Once the best match is built, the rider goes on it and you position them optimally using one of the new motion capture systems that enables a fitter or rider to examine their riding posture in detail and make relevant comparisons of body angles against accepted norms, adapted for each individual. We use a system called Innovision Motion Capture and the output (it’s video and dynamic, this is a still capture) looks like this:
More information than you wanted, and also for the benefit of others who may stumble upon that post, but that is the background as I see it.
Fitkit is both a set of tools and bike fit training. So if the shop says they do fitkit fitting, they might mean they took some classes from fitkit or they might mean they use fitkit tools to get your measurements. I’d figure that out first.
The level 2 and 3 fitting classes for fitkit do cover triathlon fitting, slowman is overstating when he says that the fitkit method of tri bike fitting is to slap on your aerobars and go. What they do is get your measurements, use some rules of thumb for sizing to get you in the neighborhood and adjust from there based on how you feel in the position. The starting point for a tri fit given a set of measurements is probably more road like than slowman would pick given the same measurements. But the end result may be exactly the same depending on how good the fitter is at making the fine adjustments once you get “in the neighborhood.”
Like any certification it is no guarantee, it only shows that the person cared enough about it to take a class and try to learn something. Along with that you’d probbaly want some assurance from people that the guys at the shop get people into comfortable aero positions on tri bikes. That’s probably the main thing, no matter who they learned from, what they learned could be misapplied and give bad fits; so try to get some outside opinions.