Not for the Ladies

Ok. I am about to ruin the front-right portion of my 4th saddle in under a year. The inside of my right thigh rubs along the saddle with each peddle stroke. It ultimately wears down the leather on the saddle which then wears on and ruins my bikes shorts. I think it might have something to do with my “natural position” to put it delicately. Basically, I hang to the left. I am wondering now if that has something to do with how I am settling in on my saddle. I am obviously inadvertently sitting in such a way that the saddle tip ends up between the goods and my right leg. I always have my saddle set parallel to the top tube, so it isn’t saddle offset that could be causing the problem. Anybody else ever have this problem, and if so, any solutions? I’m tired of spending $ on saddles and shorts.

I just noticed the same thing on my Azoto (funny, for some reason that sounds dirty) today. On the right side, same as you. Sounds like we have the same scenario. I do tilt my saddle a bit to the right though, so that could be exacerbating the problem. Lucky for me, after I wear through the cover of the saddle, I’m now into the rubber/gel part of the saddle nose instead of plastic.

Boz,

What type of saddle? I purposely skew my saddle about .5 cm to the side away from my “hang” - see John Cobbs web site. I have done this since about 1988 since Tinley told me that little comfort trick. Anyway, I ride a Flite saddle and the same thing happens, but it takes about 4 years.

I’ve not tried this nor do I intend to. Tape it to the other side. Afterall duct tape fixes everything

turn/rotate the saddle to the left 3-5 degrees… away from your primary leg. If you’re right leg dominant rotate left, etc.

mike

This happens to me too. Always wear the right side down. I always get incredibly chafed on that side too during races. The real issue that I have with it is that I think it means I am biomechanically asymmetrical when pedaling. I hypothesize that it is some sort of hip flexor or hip flexibility issue. Anybody have thoughts on that aspect of it?

This is a good point. I notice that during seated climbs, my right knee has a tendency to quickly tick inward at the top of the pedal stroke. I don’t ever hit the TT or anything and only recently noticed this. The point is that my left leg doesn’t do the same. Are there any real issues associated with this sort of imbalance? I don’t exerience any associated pain or discomfort.

Kyle and Pooks, get someone to look at you on a trainer from the front…your knees should track fairly straight up and down. You may need to either shim a shoe under the cleat to help correct for an unequal leg length (caution: this could be an unequal femur length, even if the total leg lengths are the same!), or you may need to shim the pedal out further from the crankarm. If it isn’t a structural problem like one of those, it could be a muscular imbalance problem. Some muscular imbalance problems occur because of the skeletal geometry problem…this is either fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your ability to diagnose it and retrain your pedal stroke after making changes to correct it, if it can be corrected.

Of course, there are simple things that could be wrong that I won’t go into for risk of being insulting!

Good luck correcting it…don’t stop searching until you find what it is…these things don’t go away by ignoring them, and too often they lead to other problems.