How do YOU adjust your saddle?

Triathlon Forum
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What tells you you’ve got it right? What criteria do you use? How do you KNOW you’ve achieved the most beneficial saddle position?

I find it such a critical and hugely important factor, and so difficult to achieve the perfect position that I simply cannot believe most cyclists spend the right amount of time finding that sweet spot.

I’ve changed my mind several times over the years as to what is really correct as far as saddle position is concerned. Lately I’ve been using the “largest muscle groups should tire first” theory.

That theory holds that the largest muscles in your legs should/will be the strongest, and that they should tire out first over the smaller, weaker groups. For example, when I’m riding down the road, if my hip flexors are the first things that start burning, I’m using them too extensively, as the fire in them forces me to slow down before I’ve hardly tapped my quads. Same for hamstrings, calves, etc…

My quads are the strongest muscles in my legs/body, and yours are probably, too. So I gear my saddle towards the position that forces quad pain (when climbing, I do lots of climbing) before it forces hamstring or hip flexor or other muscle group pain.

This seems to allow me to extract maximum performance from my engine, but it is a hard destination to reach.

I fiddle with my saddle (move it back) till I find that my hams are giving out first, and give it a few weeks for my body to adjust. If it does, great! If not, I move it back. I’ll move it up till the hip flexors start giving out first, wait for the bod to adjust, and either keep it there or move it down till the pain goes away and the hams start to hurt again. If the backs of the knees hurt, I drop it down a bit. Eventually I find that sweet spot that allows me to spin hard and fast up a hill with the quads taking burning before those other little muscles give out. My results do show the difference.

I seem to have to go through this every year as I age, as my strengths change. This is all on a road bike, btw.

I’m just wondering how the heck one really knows they’ve done it correctly. How do you?

2

i am not sure i follow.

are you mostly talking about fore-aft position (so that would be adjusting the effective seat tube angle) or are you mostly talking about saddle height?

there is very, very little definitive info about (effective) seat tube angle and power output. but there is some decent research out there about seat height for cycling. which is the one that interests you?

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Both! All!

I have found definite correlations between fore/aft and up/down that relate to strain on different muscle groups.

I’m mostly interested in how you guys do it. I just can’t believe the average athlete really has a clue about what saddle adjustments do what.

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Good Luck!! Even Eddy M. after years of professional cycling, kept messing around with his saddle adjustment!! I think for “for & aft” position, you need to look at your shoulders and arms to give you an indication if it’s wrong. Any soreness there says you need to make an adjustment. As to saddle height, a lot of it depends on your style of riding. A “spinners” tends to have a lower saddle, a “pushers” will have it higher. In the “old” days, pro cyclist tended to have their saddles at a lower position then today (and it worked for them). In general, if your saddle is too low, you’ll experience knee trouble and if it’s too high, the tendons back of the knee will give you trouble. Your using your leg muscles as an indication is fairly good rational, but you also know for different riding terrain, you tend to stress muscles differently. Example, when climbing, you tend to sit back in the seat and power over the top of the cranks, whereas in TT you tend to sit forward and “run on the pedals”. In each case, different muscles are stressed. Also, flexibility of your muscles come into play and as you have noted, as you get older, your flexibility decreases, requiring small adjustments. Seat adjustment is very individualistic, and you need to find your own based on the above. If that fails, go to an expert at least for a starting point and then make your final adjustments.

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I seem to adjust my saddle every 2-3 rides at the beginning of the season, and it takes me about a month or so every year to get it right. As a former road racer, I can tell you that even some of the top Cat1 racers are constantly adjusting their saddles, trying to find the “sweet spot”.

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See - thats just it. 111 views, 4 replies, and one of them is mine. Every single one of us has at least one bike with a saddle that needs adjusting, but I bet many of us never even move it off of where it was when the bike left the store. Barely anyone can even muster a reply because I bet they don’t have an approach or are embarrassed to admit they don’t.

I’d guess nobody has a real clue and I bet 90 or more percent of us could improve our cycling dramatically with a little analytical thinking about saddle position.

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During a race with my allan key set, apparently :wink:
.

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Well, I had my bike fitted by a very reputable bike shop and used that as a starting point. They told me it would take some time getting used to, and it did, maybe 4 weeks. From there I moved it forward, back, up and down, I noted each change and referenced it from the starting point.

About 7 months after I got the bike I had my shoes shimmed and the shop that helped me with it suggested that I lower the seat slightly, just like the first bike shop said I would probably need to do after I got used to the bike. I lowered the seat untill I got a knee angle of 145 degrees at the bottom of the pedal stroke. That made me feel much more powerful and I got slightly faster.

The next season I changed my stem to a neg angle stem (and slightly shorter), I adjusted the seat so my arm angles were the same as before. Moved the seat forward and up slightly.

This season I changed saddles and found that the newer one was narrower than the first so I adjusted it much further forward so I could sit on the wider part while keeping my arm angles the same.

I found that a knee angle of 145 degrees worked very good for me while 150 to 155 degrees was slightly slower. Any lower than 145 and I didn’t see any gains, just knee strain.

Next season I’ll probably replace the base bars and saddle and will adjust the same way, knee angle and then upper body.

My $.02

jaretj

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See - thats just it. 111 views, 4 replies, and one of them is mine. Every single one of us has at least one bike with a saddle that needs adjusting, but I bet many of us never even move it off of where it was when the bike left the store.

Okay, I’ll bite. I don’t constantly move mine around but I’m also not afraid to experiment with different positions. My adjustments are not scientific, I’m afraid, but more along the lines of how I feel while riding—kind of similar feedback as you describe in your original post. What hurts (if anything)? Do I feel less/more powerful? While aero, what’s happening with my legs? Are they hitting the elbow pads or splaying out all over the place? Etc. etc.

Just picked up a new ride that I need to get professionally fit on…a few test rides and I’ve been all over the place with the saddle, both height and fore/aft and haven’t yet found that “sweet spot” hence the need to have someone else help me with the precise measurements that will (hopefully) work. And even after that there will be some tweaking over time, making sure not to ever make too drastic of an adjustment unless something is completely wrong with the current setup.

I agree with you that thinking about this could and probably would yield some significant gains for many cyclists. How many of us on the roads observe others with all sorts of funky riding styles and think “geez, saddle’s too high/low/forward” etc. How easy it is to point it out on someone else but so much harder to define for ourselves------that’s where the “ride by feel” comes in.

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Thanks for replying Mike. We seem to be thinking along the same lines. I continue to be amazed that we spend all day long here talking about gearing, pedals, wheels, tires, aerobars, etc… but rarely discuss any meaningful way to adjust what is probably the most important of all aspects - the saddle? I’d hazard a guess that saddle position can have a more profound effect than the best wheels, than any change in gearing, etc… yet few seem to really be able to define why their saddle is in the position it is.

Mike, I would like to suggest you subtract a few parameters from your saddle quest - how the aerobars/handlebars/pads feel. I think the saddle position should be only moved in accordance within pedaling constraints, and that handlebar issues should be dealt with independently of the saddle. Moving the saddle should be (IMO) done only to find a stronger pedaling position, not to adjust to the front end. This is just my opinion though. First find the proper saddle position, then adjust the front end for comfort.

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Let’s face it, discussing saddle position is not near as sexy as some of the other things you describe. Same thing goes for why not much discussion takes place here about running (except for Dev’s thread very recently)—it’s just not as visually gratifying.

Meat and potatoes are not as sexy as truffles and escargot. Or something like that.

And thanks for the suggestion—as I said, I’ll get a professional fit before I ride too seriously on the rig. I may need to change out the seatpost that came with the bike for a more forward one as well…there are a number of aspects to overall fit and feel that contribute to the performance. Saddle adjustment will be in the mix, but as we both know there will be limitations to how much you can safely move that around.