Bike and Body

Have neck and shoulder pain on the bike?

2012-02-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Have neck and shoulder pain on the bike?

You're not alone.

Roughly 40% of my clients seeking a bike fit, have moderate to severe neck, upper back, and shoulder pain when they ride.

Some feel it at the base of their skull (and this can sometimes lead to head aches), others in the neck or in the muscles connecting the neck to the shoulder.

While there are many causes, there are often a number of small changes we can make to someone's bike fit to remedy this. Of course, there are times when all the pain cannot be eliminated, like in the case of severe arthritis and other spinal disorders, and minimizing becomes the goal. I would like to also note that bike fit changes aren't the answer alone, which I think I would make as a blanket statement for almost all problems on the bike, so corrective exercises are a very common component of my bike fits.

One of the best examples of how something small can cause a lot of trouble is a rider's wrist position on the bike. Specifically, I'll address the road bike set-up with drop bars. The culprit motion is called ulnar deviation. Here's what ulnar deviation is:

Hold out your arm in front of you with your hand positioned like you're going to shake someone's hand. If you move the wrist only and move your pinkie-side of your hand down toward the floor.

This is a very common hand position when the hoods are not positioned properly -- one common way is when they're set very low on the curve of the bar.

See how the lines drawn through the center of the forearm and hand deviate.

This is a relatively neutral wrist position

More groundwork: When our hands aren't attached to anything, this is called "Open Chain Position" for the upper extremity, when they are attached to something (the bars, the ground, whatever) it's called "Closed Chain Position". So push-up position is closed chain for the arms.

So,

When we have to put our wrists into ulnar deviation in the open chain position, it's not a huge deal. The hand is not attached to anything and we can bend our wrist. The problem arises when we have to go into ulnar deviation when our hands are attached to the handlebars -- closed chain.

That's because Ulnar deviation + Closed Chain Position leads to Elbow Extension (straightening).

You can do this test on yourself: Stand about 2 feet from a soft surface that's roughly 36 inches off the ground -- a tall bed or the cushioned back of the sofa works well. Lean forward placing your fists on it like your holding the hoods of a bike (your thumbs should be pointed up toward the ceiling) BUT keep your elbows slightly bent.

Thumbs up, elbows slightly bent (beard not required)

Now push your pinkie side of the hand down into the bed going into ulnar deviation -- your elbows want to naturally straighten a little, huh? Move the wrists back and forth in and out of ulnar deviation -- it's really tough to be in ulnar deviation and keep your elbows bent, right? You can force it, but it isn't a natural position, or anything you could maintain for a long time.

Wrists in ulnar deviation, makes elbows straighten

Now stay with me because we have to take this one step further.

Ulnar deviation + Closed Chain Position leads to Elbow Extension, AND

this elbow extension creates another problem --> Shoulder Elevation (the motion you do when you shrug your shoulders).

Go back to that same test with your hands on the soft surface (and take a look at the two pictures above). When you move into wrist ulnar deviation and that straightens your elbows, then the elbow straightening pushes those shoulder up slightly. It's subtle in the test, but more pronounced on the bike, especially as we ride and "settle in" to our riding position. Those shoulders creep up a little more, which has the tendency to tighten the muscles around our neck and shoulders, and can lead to the neck and shoulder issues.

So this certainly isn't the only cause of neck pain, but it's a great representation of how something little can multiply into something ugly.

Thought? Questions?

Do I need a mountain bike fit?

2012-01-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, I do a lot of bike fits, and have done, for about a decade. I didn't get interested in bike fits, and then seek out classes to teach me to do it, I went through physical therapy school, practiced for a few years, and when my biking and biomechanics interests collided, realized that I could identify many bike fit, and movement issues merely as a result of my training that other "expert bike fitters" (at the time who were exclusively bike shop employees) had missed.

I've long said, you would likely get a much better bike fit from a PT who knows a little about bikes, than you would from an expert cyclist/mechanic/trainer who has little actual knowledge in movement science.

I've heard many bike shop employees, and general cycling "experts" say that you don't need a bike fit on a mountain bike -- it's just not worth your time.

I would have to, respectfully of course, disagree.

I will stipulate the following:

Mountain bike fits are different than road bike fits.

That's it.

If I approached a mountain bike fit as a road bike, I wouldn't have a very happy client. It's a bit like a physician treating viral and bacterial infections exactly the same. They share some similarities to treating the two -- lots of rest, good hydration, yadda yadda. But other aspects, like antibiotics, don't really apply to both.

I look at different factors when I have someone on a mountain bike. They are nearly two distinct sports that happen to share a few common movement patterns.

Pro cyclist Ross Schnell

Movement Patterns

Starting with those movement patterns, it's obvious that I'm talking about pedaling. Seated, standing, whatever. You have to pedal on the dirt and on the tarmac. This is not a revelation to anyone. The amount we stand and sit is different, though, between the two. Generally, the mountain bike gets us up off the saddle more often because of obstacles, terrain changes, steeper grades, avoiding furry creatures etc. This up and down from the saddle is something I consider when I'm fitting a mountain bike, because the ability to maneuver your butt off the seat and then forward, back, and side to side as we manipulate the bike is paramount to riding cleanly.

A different saddle position is almost a given between the mountain bike and the road bike. I don't think I have ever set someone up on their road bike the same as their mountain bike in the 11 years I've been doing this

On a flat road ride, we can often go long stretches with nothing to force us into a different position, which is why I say road biking is like a repetitive stress injury (RSI) waiting to happen. It is for this reason that I work with my clients on changing their position frequently. This often involves standing frequently on a ride even when there aren't hills or other obstacles to make us get up.

It also involves more subtle changes: for example, with my triathletes, and time trialists I will set the entire bike fit up so that they can have 3 hand positions on their aerobars. A short, middle, and long position. They spend a lot of time in the middle, but if they approach a shallow incline they may move to their short position, or if they hit a long, slightly downhill, they may move to their long position to stretch their back and hip muscles.

Overall, I think almost every cyclist could benefit from standing up a little more, just to mix things up. If we lived in a world where cyclists stood all the time, I would be giving the opposite advice -- to sit down a little more often. That's just the way our body is -- it needs position changes.

Balance

In a bike fit, I believe balance and upper body positioning are even more important on the mountain bike, again due to the fact that we have to manipulate the bike to move underneath us so much.

How is the rider's weight distributed over the bike? How about when they climb? Then, these questions beg the answer of what type of rider and what type of terrain do they frequent? All these factors will determine where we end up positioning the cyclist.

Cockpit

One of the most subtle areas of mountain bike fit are the placement and orientation of the controls. What is the best position for the shifters and brakes? How big are their hands? Do they prefer braking with one finger or two? Grip shift or triggers?

The simple cockpit of my beloved single speed

Incorrectly placed controls can throw a riders upper body positioning out of whack, and create issues with discomfort or safety. Too many people doing bike fits will just consider how they feel on a bike and then project that (often unwittingly) on their client. I have frequently re-done bike fits where a petite woman had her controls placed and adjusted on the bike by a bigger male, and he didn't take into account that his shoulders are wider, his grip is stronger, and he has much better reach with his fingers than she does. The changes we make in these situations are small and profound -- suddenly she has full control of her steed.

Suspension

The last consideration is the suspension setup. Are they set at the correct pressure? Is there enough sag? Rebound isn't set too fast? How do their leg mechanics change in the sprung and unsprung position?

So many people have their suspensions set up incorrectly. But it's not like there is only one correct answer here. Depending on the terrain they ride and whether they race or not, I may set two similarly sized riders up differently on their suspension. As always, we have to take into account all the individual differences.

So, do I think that everyone on a mountain bike needs a bike fit? Absolutely not.

Just like, not everyone on a road bike needs a bike fit. But if you're having any issues with staying comfortable or powerful on the bike, or if you think you just aren't sure you're getting as much efficiency as you can, then you might seek out an expert bike fitter.

You can't believe everything you hear, and when people call mountain bike fits "worthless" -- I can't fault them.

You can't blame someone who just doesn't have the knowledge to speak intelligently on the subject.

--John

Interval work email question

2012-01-18T09:03:00.000-08:00

I recently received an email from a client I am training this year, that has some basic questions come up as he begins this new training plan. He isn't a pro, but has good potential to do some damage in regional and even national races as an amateur. He is new to any structured training, and like many athletes, prior to our working together, he used to go as hard as he could every day on the bike.

"During this phase of training (early -- post base building, and just beginning strength building) what should my intensity/heart rate level be for my spin workouts? Should I not go anaerobic except for the intervals? I don't think I was anaerobic at all for yesterdays work out (I usually go anaerobic every day). Today shows 2 x 8min intervals (muscle endurance intervals -- strength building), but the total ride is for an hour and a half. How hard should I go when not doing intervals? I am assuming the tests (we are headed into the Human Performance Lab next week) will help with target heart rates?

Do you have any recommended reading on that would help me understand your approach? I would really like to start understanding the method to the madness (assuming it is not overly technical)."

His questions are ones that I see every year, when I take on a new athlete. Returning athletes, having seen the results of this type of training, don't come back with these questions on their second year.

Here's my response to him:

"The short answer is that you should not go anaerobic or near your threshold outside of the interval work -- even some of the intervals, like today's (low cadence, strength building, muscle endurance intervals) may not make you fully anaerobic because they are done at a low cadence, so some people feel their legs pushing really hard (which is the point), but depending on how used to this type of effort you are (like if you were a frequent single-speeder) you may or may not be breathing terribly hard. For the muscle endurance intervals today, I only want you to focus on keeping the cadence low (around 50 rpms), which should keep your muscle contractions very powerful (again, think of it as "weigh-lifting on the bike") and put out as much effort knowing that you have to do 2 of these 8-minute interval. You probably won't collapse from aerobic exhaustion at the end of the intervals, but you should feel like your muscles did some work -- maybe some of that "crispy" sensation you get after weight-lifting.

For many riders who start my program for the first time, they are disconcerted by the "down time" during the workouts. These down times are purposeful. They allow us to warm up and cool down appropriately, as well as give us adequate recovery between intervals and make sure that we don't go too hard cumulatively day to day so that we build up an unwanted level of fatigue.

I don't want you to get tired from fatiguing yourself by working near your threshold for 45 minutes to an hour in 3 consecutive workouts. This doesn't bump up your upper range power at all -- it really just makes you tired. I'd rather you go easy, and then when it's time to go hard, you can really go that much harder. Again, I'd rather your fatigue come from working on wattages that are much higher than your threshold, because by working here, we actually make you more efficient at this super-high wattage and the trickle down effect makes sure that you get more efficient at your threshold, so this power gets bumped up as well.

This particular early stage is all about setting a neuromuscular basis on which we'll build the rest of the program. That's why we focus early on these "weight lifting" intervals and the progressive increase of your riding time.

The muscle endurance intervals increase the number of motor units in each of the muscles that are working (when we contract a muscle, the entire muscle doesn't work, just certain parts of it -- we want more of the muscle to work all the time). Then in a few weeks, when I throw in some high intensity work, you'll have more motor units working and they'll all get more efficient at pushing big wattages. So it's kind of like we're stacking the deck.

As far as reading up on some things....that would be a little tougher. I've been a PT for 15 years, so I've been doing this a while and refining things the whole time, from a lot of different sources. Two of the more accessible books out there that I really like are The Lore of Running, by Dr. Tim Noakes, and High Performance Cycling by Dave Morris. I took some of the names of the intervals from Dave Morris' book, but I do differ some in how he sets his programs, but it's a good book, and only about 150 pages. Noakes book on running is about 1200 pages -- I think it's fantastic, and it really is a pretty easy read, but it can be a bit much hauling around that thing -- it's weighs more than a Bible! I have both books at the Studio if you'd like to borrow one or the other."

This email exchange brings to light two of the most dangerous scenarios in training: 1. Going too hard in our time between intervals, which can decrease the overall power we achieve during those intervals, and 2. going slightly too hard in consecutive days which will add up to a cumulative fatigue that takes longer to recover from.

So, if you have an hour or hour and a half to ride or run each day, don't just go the same "semi-fast" speed every day. Mix it up between very fast and very slow -- it'll get you better fitness, and much quicker.

Inventory

2012-01-06T07:53:00.000-08:00

Click on a bike here at the top and it will take you to more information and pictures.

Road Bikes

2012 Wilier Izoard XP -- Small -- MSRP $2599
2012 Wilier Gran Tourismo -- Small -- MSRP $3599
2012 Wilier Gran Tourismo -- Large -- MSRP $3599
2012 Wilier Gran Toursimo -- X-Large -- MSRP $3599

2012 BMC Streetracer -- 48cm -- MSRP $1799
2012 BMC Streetracer -- 51cm -- MSRP $1799
2012 BMC Roadracer -- 54cm -- MSRP $3599
2012 BMC Roadracer -- 57cm -- MSRP $3599
2012 BMC Racemachine -- 53cm -- MSRP $5499

2012 BMC Racemachine -- 57cm -- MSRP $5499

29er Mountain Bikes

2012 BMC Team Elite 29 (Hardtail) -- Small -- MSRP $1999
2012 BMC Team Elite 29 (Hardtail) -- Medium -- MSRP $1999
2012 BMC Speedfox 29 (Full suspension) -- Small -- MSRP $4599
2012 BMC Speedfox 29 (Full suspension) -- Medium -- MSRP $4599
2012 BMC Speedfox 29 (Full suspension) -- Large -- MSRP $4599

Lenz Sport Leviathan ( FS) -- X-Large -- MSRP $4900
Lenz Sport Mammoth (FS) -- Small, Medium, Large, & X-Large -- coming early spring!

Time Trial/Tri Bikes

2012 BMC Time Machine 01 -- M-S -- MSRP $5999 (coming February 1st)
2012 BMC Time Machine 01 -- M-L -- MSRP $5999 (coming February 1st)
2012 BMC Time Machine 02 -- M-S -- MSRP $3699 (coming February 1st)
2012 BMC Time Machine 02 -- M-L -- MSRP $3699 (coming February 1st)

2012 Wilier Izoard XP

This is the bike for anyone wanting to see what all the fuss is about with Italian road bikes, without breaking the bank. It's a size small and would fit many riders up to about 5'8" tall. It has Ultegra componentry with custom badged FSA cranks, brakes, stem, handlebar, seatpost, and saddle. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included.

2012 Wilier Gran Tourismo -- S

The Gran Tourismo has striking tube shapes and lines that please any eye. Built with comfort and efficiency in mind, this bike is definitely a workhorse in the Wilier line. Oversized chainstays and Razor's Edge Design front end deliver crisp confident descending, and snap when you stand up on a climb. Comes with Ultegra components, and custom badges FSA cranks (carbon), brakes, stem, handlebar, seatpost, and saddle. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: up to 5'8"

2012 Wilier Gran Tourismo -- L

The Gran Tourismo has striking tube shapes and lines that please any eye. Built with comfort and efficiency in mind, this bike is definitely a workhorse in the Wilier line. Oversized chainstays and Razor's Edge Design front end deliver crisp confident descending, and snap when you stand up on a climb. Comes with Ultegra components, and custom badges FSA cranks (carbon), brakes, stem, handlebar, seatpost, and saddle. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'8" - 6'2"

2012 Wilier Gran Tourismo -- XL

The Gran Tourismo has striking tube shapes and lines that please any eye. Built with comfort and efficiency in mind, this bike is definitely a workhorse in the Wilier line. Oversized chainstays and Razor's Edge Design front end deliver crisp confident descending, and snap when you stand up on a climb. Comes with Ultegra components, and custom badges FSA cranks (carbon), brakes, stem, handlebar, seatpost, and saddle. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'11" - 6'4"

BMC Streetracer -- 48cm

Great introductory bike that still carries the racing pedigree. The Streetracer is made from BMCs custom hydro-formed aluminum. With a Shimano 105 of components and sensible training wheels, this would be the perfect bike for someone entering the sport or looking to upgrade to 2012 technology. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'0" - 5'7"

2012 BMC Streetracer -- 51cm

Great introductory bike that still carries the racing pedigree. The Streetracer is made from BMCs custom hydro-formed aluminum. With a Shimano 105 of components and sensible training wheels, this would be the perfect bike for someone entering the sport or looking to upgrade to 2012 technology. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'2" - 5'9"

2012 BMC Roadracer -- 54cm

The Roadracer hits the "sweet-spot" with features and price. Using the same carbon technology as BMC's top tier bikes, it is equally as comfortable on a 100-mile tour as a smashmouth road race. Full Ultegra group, DT Swiss wheels, and a striking custom airfoil seatpost round out the mix. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'6" - 6'0"

2012 BMC Roadracer -- 57cm

The Roadracer hits the "sweet-spot" with features and price. Using the same carbon technology as BMC's top tier bikes, it is equally as comfortable on a 100-mile tour as a smashmouth road race. Full Ultegra group, DT Swiss wheels, and a striking custom airfoil seatpost round out the mix. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'9" - 6'3"

2012 BMC Racemachine -- 53cm

This is my favorite bike. There aren't many bikes out there for this price ($5499) that deliver a bike that comes in under the UCI-mandated limit, right off the shelf. It makes use of BMC's Tuned Compliance Concept (TCC) technology in the seatstays, fork, and their Racepost seatpost. SRAM Red components, Easton EA70 wheels, Easton EC90 carbon handlebar, and Fizik's popular Antares saddle, this bike is race ready. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'6" - 6'0"

2012 BMC Racemachine -- 57cm

This is my favorite bike. There aren't many bikes out there for this price ($5499) that deliver a bike that comes in under the UCI-mandated limit, right off the shelf. It makes use of BMC's Tuned Compliance Concept (TCC) technology in the seat-stays, fork, and their Racepost seatpost. SRAM Red components, Easton EA70 wheels, Easton EC90 carbon handlebar, Fizik's popular Antares saddle, and this bike is race ready. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'6" - 6'0"

2012 BMC Team Elite 29 (Hardtail) -- Small

This hardtail is versatile in every respect. Coming with a stellar price tag, this bike can live many lives due to the durability of the custom aluminum frame. Want to try the 29er-thing without breaking the bank? You can use this bike in many different forms. We've "single-ated" one and ridden it as a single speed (which is just one area where 29ers shine) -- we've even used these as "road" bikes during the winter! Some of the best 29er geometry out there (lots of iffy geometry from a lot of manufacturers), that's ready to hits the trails for a beer-ride as well as kill it at the next race. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'2" - 5'8"

2012 BMC Team Elite 29 (Hardtail) -- Medium

This hardtail is versatile in every respect. Coming with a stellar price tag, this bike can live many lives due to the durability of the custom aluminum frame. Want to try the 29er-thing without breaking the bank? You can use this bike in many different forms. We've "single-ated" one and ridden it as a single speed (which is just one area where 29ers shine) -- we've even used these as "road" bikes during the winter! Some of the best 29er geometry out there (lots of iffy geometry from a lot of manufacturers), that's ready to hits the trails for a beer-ride as well as kill it at the next race. As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'5" - 6'0"

2012 BMC Speedfox 29 (Full suspension) -- Small

This bike ticks all the boxes for riding on western Colorado trails -- great geometry being the hallmark. Most manufacturers get it wrong -- bottom brackets that are too low, head angles that are too steep, chainstays that are too long. Don't resign yourself to a season of smacking your pedals on rocks, or endo-ing repeatedly on easy drops. The Speedfox 29 has full SRAM X.0. components, Fox Racing front and rear shocks, and comes in from 26.5-27.5 lbs (depending on frame size). As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'2" - 5'8"

2012 BMC Speedfox 29 (Full suspension) -- Medium

This bike ticks all the boxes for riding on western Colorado trails -- great geometry being the hallmark. Most manufacturers get it wrong -- bottom brackets that are too low, head angles that are too steep, chainstays that are too long. Don't resign yourself to a season of smacking your pedals on rocks, or endo-ing repeatedly on easy drops. The Speedfox 29 has full SRAM X.0. components, Fox Racing front and rear shocks, and comes in from 26.5-27.5 lbs (depending on frame size). As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'5" - 6'0"

2012 BMC Speedfox 29 (Full suspension) -- Large

This bike ticks all the boxes for riding on western Colorado trails -- great geometry being the hallmark. Most manufacturers get it wrong -- bottom brackets that are too low, head angles that are too steep, chainstays that are too long. Don't resign yourself to a season of smacking your pedals on rocks, or endo-ing repeatedly on easy drops. The Speedfox 29 has full SRAM X.0. components, Fox Racing front and rear shocks, and comes in from 26.5-27.5 lbs (depending on frame size). As always, a full Retul-powered bike fit is included. Sizing recommendation: 5'9" - 6'3"

Off season triathlon training -- to run or to bike?

2011-12-05T20:26:00.000-08:00

I've been asked about off season training for triathletes a few times in the last few weeks. A few athletes have come in after 4 and 5 hour rides, and when I asked them what races they had coming up, they rattled off either a half-iron or full sometime next summer.

How come the 5 hour rides now? -- "Doing some bigger builds to get stronger on the bike"

Okay, I can buy that. Plus, the weather has been incredible here, so I can understand wanting to get out on the bike more. My only hesitation is that these people are good cyclists -- not great, not headed to the Tour de France, but good solid bikers. They typically cover the 112 miles on the bike in 5:15-5:30 or so. And, like many triathletes, they are mediocre runners -- above 4 hours for the marathon leg.

So here's my hangup -- triathletes are always strapped for time, and need to make the best use of their training days, especially those of us who work and have families, etc.

If we really want to improve the most, how should we go about it? If we do a little simple math we can find the right thread to pull.

It doesn't take long in the sport of triathlon to understand that winning a triathlon because of a great swim is about as rare as, well, a triathlete eschewing a wetsuit voluntarily in a race. There's just not enough time to be made up in the swim. Which isn't to say that the off season isn't a great time to work on your swim form -- getting out of the water having wasted less energy than your opponents is a great way to start a race.

So that leaves the bike or the run. Which one holds the most potential for improvement? Well, that's going to depend on the athlete. But if we do a simple experiment, like taking the first 5 finishers in an age group for an ironman, and finishers number 70-75 in the same age group, and average their bike and run times. We can then take those times and compare bike and run to see if there is a more significant gap in one or the other.

I mined data from two separate Ironman races on two different ends of the globe. Race #1 is Ironman Western Australia, and race #2 is Ironman Cozumel.

Looking at the mens 30-34 age group I took the top 5 finishers times, and then the 70th through the 75th.

Here's what I found:

Ironman #1 the top five bike average was 4:45, run average was 3:13
finishers 70-75 bike average was 5:29, run average was 4:10.

Ironman #2 the top five bike average was 4:58, run average was 3:16
finishers 70-75 bike average was 5:37, run average was 4:10.

That means in race #1 the 70-75th places biked 15% slower, but ran 29% slower than the 1stthrough 5th finishers. A 44 minute difference in bike, but a 57 minute difference in run.

Race #2 they were 13% and 28% slower respectively. A 39 minute difference in bike, and a 54 minute difference in run.

It's clear that most people ride well enough, and the place to spend some time to improve on is in the run -- for most of us.

If we look further down the finishers list the disparity gets even larger. Looking at the same races, same age group, but now finishers 175-180 we find for race #1 that they were 35% slower on the bike (+101 minutes) and 81% slower on the run (+158 minutes), and in race #2 they were 38% slower on the bike (+114 minutes) and 70% slower on the run (137 minutes).

I will completely stipulate that many athletes merely need to spend more time just getting better aerobic efficiency overall, and the easiest and usually the least injury prone way to do that is to bike more, but this definitely shows some major gaps in running efficiency.

If you're new to triathlons and you can run a sub 2:45 stand alone marathon, then you're probably fine biking a bunch this off season. If not, then this might be a good time to bring down that marathon time and work on your running efficiency.

Basic Triathlon Bike Fit

2011-11-20T19:47:00.000-08:00

I do a lot of tri bike fits every year, and while there are dozens of variables to consider when doing a fitting (and innumerable possible fixes and outcomes) this video is just a very quick before and after.

What it demonstrates, though, is how drastic a change can be made to put the rider into a position to access larger muscle groups. and allow those muscles to work in a more powerful range of motion.

This is a quick visual reminder of that:

Lenz Sport Mammoth -- the new standard?

2011-11-02T07:52:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to ride a new Lenz Mammoth this past weekend for an extended singletrack adventure and I was not left wanting.

The Mammoth is a new model from Lenz, and there are only a couple demos/prototypes out there yet. It's purpose was to fill a niche between the more cross-country driven Leviathan (80 or 100 mm travel) and the more all-mountain Behemoth (140 mm travel). You could say alternately the goal was a burlier Leviathan or a lighter, quicker Behemoth.

Devin Lenz succeeded in this quest, no matter which side of the fat wheel crowd you view from. The bike is certainly lighter than the 'Moth -- the size large test rig I was on was about 28 pounds and some change -- and definitely more capable in the chunk than the Lev. But I'm getting ahead of myself....first more about the bike.

The Mammoth is not in between in travel -- it's a full 140 mm like the Behemoth, but that travel is accessed so differently than either of it's predecessors. It has a tapered head tube, what appears to be a Behemoth top tube, and seat stays, with a Leviathan down tube and chain stays, a brand new seat tube configuration (which is direct mount front derailleur compatible), and 135 mm rear spacing. Essentially the top half of the bike is Behemoth and the lower half is Leviathan, but again, I think that is extremely simplistic view based on the amount of sweat that went into designing this bike.

My ride on Saturday was for the better part of 3 and a half hours, with lots of singletrack, some climbing on a road initially followed by consistent ups and downs all day, in varying degrees of smooth trail, and messy western Colorado chunk. I was riding with MC and we switched back and forth between the Mammoth and a Behemoth.

Succinctly, the Mammoth was.......remarkable. I certainly couldn't hammer down heavy technical trail at the speeds I was doing so on the Behemoth, but the difference in fork and tires (the Behemoth had bigger, heavier components on it) likely played a bigger role on that than in any short-coming of the Mammoth.

I actually think it climbs every bit as good as any Leviathan I've ridden (or any other cross country bike I have ever ridden for that matter), and feels as "flick-able" as well.

The rear linkage is, I think, clearly the best that Devin Lenz has designed, and if you've ever ridden one of his bikes, you know this is not any small compliment. It feels deeper and smoother, from the first millimeter until you knock the O-ring off the rear shock.

In fact, on this particular ride, we purposely hit a few small ledges and drops to test out the full range of the suspension. On the final one of the day, I re-set the O-ring up onto the rear shock and took the 2 foot drop with a little more, shall we say, prejudice (I kinda goosed the landing a little to try and get the bike to bottom out). To my surprise, I never felt the bottom. There was never any harshness on the landing, just a nice smooth, and what felt like a very linear compression. I looked down at the rear shock, and the O-ring was completely off -- I had gone through every millimeter of it's travel, and it never ramped up, clanked, or harshened. Needless to say, I was impressed.

In the words of MC, it also feels like you're sitting higher in the travel even when you're just pedaling along. Does this translate into being able to access more of the travel? I don't know, I can't say with scientific certainty, but it sure felt like that.

To round out, the Mammoth has the signature geometry of a Lenz -- slacker head angle, higher bottom bracket, short chainstay -- and, again the BB height and chainstay length fall comfortably in between the Leviathan and Behemoth. (Lenz bikes are unique and, I believe, vastly superior to just about every other full suspension 29er out there in this regard -- the major manufacturers have really screwed up here. You can read more about it in my article about what makes a good full suspension 29er.)

I'm sure the Leviathans and Behemoths will continue to roll out the door at the Studio here, but the Mammoth provides another "can't miss" option for riders to enjoy.

Specs:
Lenz Mammoth frame
Chris King Headset
White Brothers Loop 140, QR15 fork
SRAM X.0 drivetrain (21/33 and 11-34)
Hayes Prime Pro brakes
Stan's 355 rims, DT Swiss 240s hubs
WTB Vigo carbon saddle
Maxxis Ardent (rear), Schwalbe Knobby Nic (front) tires

2012 Wilier Gran Tourismo road bike

2011-10-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

New video about the 2012 Wilier Gran Tourismo road bike:

Rare Treat - The Colorado National Monument

2011-10-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I get sneak away for an early morning bike ride in the middle of the week. Between getting the kid to school, answering emails, writing training programs coming up for the next few weeks, working around bike fittings, and just trying to spend quality time with the family, riding my bike uninterrupted for a few hours just doesn't happen often.

When all the planets align just so, I try to take advantage of it as I did a week or so ago. I opted for my default road ride -- that's the ride I do when I know I'll be by myself, and I have a couple hours -- which is the Colorado National Monument.

I prefer the west side climb for a few reasons. The main body of the climb is not as steep as the east side, but that's not why I prefer it. It's the fact that it keeps on climbing, pretty much all the way to the Black Ridge, and even after that there are three more short climbs to reach the high point.

When you hit the high point, there is a fair bit of descending, but not nearly as much as going the other direction.

I like the extra work that going west to east makes you do. There's very little traffic during the week, so it's very relaxed with respect to cars. If I'm alone, I'll pop a podcast in one ear (usually "Wait, Wait. Don't Tell Me" from NPR or "radioLab" from WNYC) and settle in for the roughly 45 minutes of climbing to the top. If I'm riding with a friend, it's just nice to chat and catch up on the week.

So it's a rare treat indeed, to sneak away, and ride one of the best road rides on the planet....right in my backyard. check it out.

Full suspension 29er geometry...what's "good", A brief history from Gary Fisher to the BMC SpeedFox 29

2011-10-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

29ers are nearly ubiquitous these days on the trail. When I first began riding them in 2001, they were fringe, at best. There were only a couple of tires around, and the best option for us out here in the desert of western Colorado, the WTB Nanoraptor did pretty well. There were only one or two forks, and they were hard to come by.

Especially back then, critics said (often, I believe without ever having taken a 29er out on a technical trail) they were too slow to accelerate, were suited only to tall riders, and, my favorite, couldn't make any of the tight technical turns on trails, like the ones we have here out at our local haunt, the Lunch Loop.

In those early days, we were limited to hardtails for a while -- perhaps a lucky individual would get "the angry inch" on Moots YBB -- but we were cross-country riding for the most part.

Now sidelined Gary Fisher, came out with the Sugar 292 and 293, since Gary was the first to really embrace the big wheeled bikes. These early full suspension designs were plagued with problems though -- poor cable routing, and questionable geometry among others, but it was one of those necessary first steps into the foray to get things rolling in the full suspension 29er market.

Even a year or two later, at the Interbike Trade Show in Las Vegas, the 29ers were seen still as fringe elements. I liked to joke that they seemed to be getting as much attention and support from the component manufacturers as the "burro bikes" with their funny 12 inch wheels.

So now we're up to about 2005 or so, and some of the bigger names in the industry are beginning to build hardtail 29ers -- Specialized, Trek, Scott, Cannondale, etc. Around that same time, Devin Lenz of Lenz Sport mountain bikes began making a 3" travel full suspension 29er. Devin had been building mostly big-hit and downhill 26 inch bikes, and he took what he learned from that to make his 29er (he skipped the hardtail step altogether). the geometry he built with was unique -- he maintain high bottom brackets (13.625 inches), very short chainstays (~17.3inches), and the more slack head angles (~69.5 degrees) most associated with his all-mountain bikes. The result of these changes is that you hit your pedals less or not at all on technical sections (higher bottom bracket), the bike climbs well and is easy to manual/unweight the front wheel to get up ledges (short chainstays), and it descends with exceptional stability and makes it much less likely that you will go over the handlebars when coming off rocks or ledges (slacker head angle).

Devin is a small, one-man operation, and probably not on the radar of the big manufacturers, and frankly, I'm sure they figured they knew better.

When the bigger companies finally began investing in full suspension 29ers, this turned out to be true. They listened to the "problems" 29ers -- they're slow accelerating, their wheelbases are too long, poorer cornering stability since you're higher up -- and they concluded incorrectly, I believe, what they should alter. They didn't want to take a 26-inch bike and just scale it up to the bigger wheels, so the changes they made were to shorten the chainstays (which is good, but not all of them accomplished this because their suspension design wouldn't allow that), lower the bottom bracket height to "improve cornering stability", and steepen the head angle to keep the overall wheelbase shorter.

There are some small differences between the big guys, but for the most part they all share this very common, and in my opinion, poor geometry. If you don't ride on any technical terrain, these bikes can work fine, but they can make stepping up your technical riding game difficult and/or painful.

Here is a brief breakdown of a few of the more popular bikes out there. The three dimensions listed are the head angle, then bottom bracket height, and then chainstay length:

LenzSport Leviathan
69.5degree;
13.625" ;
17.75"

BMC SpeedFox 29
70degree ;
13.3" :
17.5"

Specialized Epic series
70.5degrees ;
13.1" ;
17.6"

Cannondale Scalpel 29
71-71.5degrees;
12.9" ;
17.5"

Santa Cruz Tallboy

71degrees ;

12.8" ;
17.5"

Ellsworth Evolve
72.5degrees ;
13.4" ;

18.2"

There are a lot of other out there, nearly all very similar to the Ellsworth, the Santa Cruz, and the Cannondale.

The Specialized's geometry is not bad, but my point was to point out the sleeper in there -- the newer-to-the-market BMC:

It is as close to the optimal geometry for riding moderate to severe technical terrain in it's first iteration. Even better is that their hardtail 29er - the TeamElite 29 -- still has this optimal trail geometry, where the big manufacturers really drop the ball -- they revert back to 72.5 degree head angles, and even lower bottom brackets (the Orbea Alma drops theirs to 11.95"!). What does this ride like? Imagine just putting fat tires on your road bike, so I hope you don't plan on riding on any obstacles, like dirt or rocks, or maybe branches.

So if you don't like going over your handlebars, you don't like cracking your pedals on every rock you pass, and you just want the most enjoyment on the trail, then do your homework. Find a friendly geometry, and hit the trails with confidence.

Guess the fix

2011-08-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

What would you change in this rider's position? Can you pick out the main things that need to be done?

I'll post a follow up (what we did for him) and include a video of the "after".

Meanwhile, lemme see what you come up with.

Orbea Onix Dama vs Onix -- more on the women's specific myth

2011-07-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

Orbea Onix

Orbea Onix Dama

I know I've gone over this before, but more on the "Women's Specific" myth.

My primary gripe is that the geometry changes that are actually made to the frame are minimal, and usually very poorly thought out. Also, yes, some women have longer legs and shorter torsos -- but a lot of them do not. In fact many men have long legs and short torsos, rather than the shorter legs and longer torsos that the bike manufacturers would have you believe.

For instance, look at the Onix series of bikes from Orbea -- they have their standard version and the Dama, or women's specific version.

The Dama, size 53 is essentially just the size in between the standard Onix sizes 51 and 54 -- possibly a slightly taller scaled head tube. The Dama size 49, has an effective top tube of 51 cm. The standard Onix size 51 also has a 51 cm effective TT. The women's version has a head tube length of 110 mm, the standard version has a 122 mm one.

If women did have shorter torsos wouldn't they need to make the reach and overall cockpit of the bike more relaxed rather than more aggressive? Especially since the women's bike has a seat angle that's a full degree steeper (while still maintaining a 51 cm eff. TT), making it's weight bias more forward, upsetting the handling and making it squirrely at high speeds.

Again, I'm not saying that women shouldn't have their geometry tailored to them -- in fact they should, and just as often as the men-folk. These are not well-thought out changes, they're token, and gimmick and marketing. These changes are made because they're easy, not because they work.

Don't be fooled; more thought goes into how to "accessorize" a bike in pink and purple bits to make it "Women's Specific" than goes into the fit and the geometry.

"Barefoot" running shoes -- my $.02

2011-07-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

It seems every time I look at a running or triathlon magazine these days, there's an article about barefoot running technique. The book by Christopher McDougall Born to Run has created so much pop culture force behind it that it has nearly become mainstream. Meaning even people outside the running or endurance sport circles consider running in minimalist shoes to now be the norm.

In fact, the evidence for "barefoot" running technique has been around for many years, and many of us who frequently keep up with the newer research trends have been aware of it for some time now.

I began my transition to minimalist shoes about 4 or 5 years ago. Notice I didn't say I switched to them -- it took me roughly 8 months to make the move full time (i.e. when I could run a marathon in them). Switching too soon is the number one mistake amongst runners, and is the reason why physical therapist, orthopedic surgeons, podiatrists, etc, have seen a huge uptick in running related injuries as a result of people switching to lower profile shoes.

I won't get into the why and how of what makes people fail and injure themselves -- suffice it to say that they either aren't a good candidate for running in minimalist shoes (Yep, that's right, not everyone can or should run in them) or they tried to run too much too soon in them.

Today I'd like to share my experience with the different shoes I have had in the last half-dozen years or so.

6 or 7 years ago I was running in some very rigid, motion-controlling shoes. I was a heel striker who had a pair or Nike Air Structure Triax shoes for the road, and a pair of Montrail Hardrocks with custom orthotics for the trail.

My education as a PT had reinforced to me, in error -- it was 10 years prior--, that I needed to control my mid-foot motion when I ran to prevent injury (I was frequently experiencing ITB syndrome, plantar fasciitis, among others). My continuing self education, formally in classes geared towards PTs and informally from just voraciously reading research articles, began to reinforce to me that perhaps there was another way.

When I was deciding what new shoe I wanted to buy I was having a little trouble. At the time there were really no viable mass-market shoes that fit the bill -- at the time, the shoe industry was still in full swing telling us that we needed the super-duper max-flow cushioning, motion control wonder-shoe.

Then as I thought about it more, it dawned on me: back in the 1960's and 1970's, before the shoe industry went completely haywire, shoes were simpler; usually not much more than a thin layer of rubber and a few millimeters of EVA padded the bottoms of the shoe. We used to make fun of these "old school" shoes, since the cushion, the striping, the decals of today's shoes certainly had more pizazz, more sizzle.

So I decided that fashion aside, I just had to get some old school wonders to try out this minimalist thing. It made sense to do this also because these older shoes can be found online for cheap -- I think I paid 40 bucks for that first pair. If I can, when I'm experimenting with some new idea, I like to keep it simple, and not have to drop a lot of coin on it, in case it doesn't work out.

I chose three of the shoes I have used in the last 5+ years to demonstrate some of the pros and cons of the varying avenues of the minimalist shoe revolution. I actually haven't used very many pairs of shoes in this time -- they tend to last so darn long because the proper form to run in them is not dependent on having a lot of cushioning or motion-controlling, which new shoes tend to lose the ability to do as they age and break down. When you have a shoe that affects your gait in some way (again, by either controlling some motion or providing artificial cushioning) then that shoe is going to lose that ability over time and you'll have to buy new shoes sooner.

Anyway, here are the three and my thoughts on them:

The Old-School dreamboats

These are the classic Saucony Jazz Low Pro, which was one of the best selling shoes of it's day -- more than thirty years ago!

I was initially a little embarassed, I have to admit, when I first ran in these shoes. They were my first pair, and I had always worn the latest, modern marvel of shoeware, and these were a bit doofy looking. But they grew on me, and quickly. They have a very comfortable fit, the tread was perfect for either road or trail runs, and they have just enough strength through the sole of the shoe that they were good at resisting small rocks from gouging the underside of my feet when I stepped on one wrong. I used these shoes for 2 years! The EVA foam in the sole packed down in the first few months -- there was a slight depression inside the shoe where my heel rested, as well as my metatarsals (balls of the feet), and even a couple of the toes, which rather than being a negative, actually made the shoe really feel like it fit like a glove. After 2 years of many miles, though, they "packed down" a little too much -- I began to feel more pebbles "poke through" when I ran, and so it was time to try something else.

Shortly after this the first printing of Born to Run had come out and manufacturers had begun to offer some low profile options. I decided to go with this pair of Nike Zoom Streak XCs. They are made for those running cross-country and track middle to long distance, but without the spikes.

I found these to be very light, having an all-mesh upper, which was great most of the time. In the winter, however, I'd have to wear two pairs of thin socks with a vapor barrier between to keep the wind, rain and snow from abusing my feet. The soles were nearly as resistant to poking as the Sauconys were, and the sole performed well on the road and trail. Aside from the cold-weather short-comings, the soles did wear out faster -- there seemed to be less rubber on the underside of the shoe to protect the foam from getting torn up by the ground. Also, the all-mesh upper, while light, was prone to tearing, and after about a year I was left with a number of holes in he shoes as you can see. So I got (only?) a year out of these and they cost me about $75, so about 4 times the yearly cost of the Sauconys.

After going back to my old school choice for a while, I recently decided to try a new generation shoe again. I figured it had been a while, perhaps they had improved the offerings.

I went with these New Balance Minimus Trail shoes.

They cost me about $100, and I've had them a little over a month, so I don't know what the longevity will be just yet. They have a very comfortable, anatomic fit, but the lacing doesn;t extend as far up on the shoe as I'd like to improve the fit through the toe box. The sole is made of a Vibram checker-board pattern of sorts, and there seems to be little to no "foam cushioning" inside them. They're comfortable to wear, and they definitely look cooler than my previous entries (I think anyway). My main complaint is that they are terrible at resisting small rock pokes through the sole. The Vibram is strong, but there isn't one continuous piece of it on the underside; it has that checkerboard pattern which makes the bottom of the shoe articulate more than any other I've used. I understand that they're going for a barefoot feel, but it makes the sole of the shoe so flexible that I jab the bottom of my foot a couple times every single run -- road or trail.

I don't know how long these are going to last. I think I'm going to tire of their "pokiness" long before the Vibram wears out.

So for now, still my favorite, considering all of the pros and cons, are the Sauconys. They don't look new, but the old school style is starting to grow on me (I began wearing my old ones to work on occasion).

I know there are many other options out there, so tell me, which ones have you had experience with? Any out there that you love? Lemme know

J

Earthquake proof bikes!

2011-06-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

Remember in mid February when that 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch, NZ? This was before all the volcanoes started erupting, before all the tornadoes hit the US, before the tsunami and resulting nuclear crisis in Japan.....it seems like the year ought to be older. This is merely an interesting story about 2 bicycles who survived the quake.

About 3 years ago, I collaborated with Seven Cycles to build steel road bikes for a very nice couple from Grand Junction, who had retired and planned to spend a lot of time traveling and riding their bikes. Because of the travel we built them with S&S couplers, which, if you're not familiar, allow the bike frames to be broken down into two pieces and packed into an airline approved hardcase -- your bike is well protected and you don't get charged bike fees on the plane, which can run $100 per leg.

As with all the custom bikes I build, not only was the frame geometry full customized for their riding style and purpose, but the fork was rake-matched for optimal handling as well (eat your heart out twitchy stock bikes).

They rode these bikes all over and if the bikes had passports, the stamps in them would rival any globetrotter's. Paris, London, Sydney, all over the US..........you get the idea. I think in two years the bikes had been ridden about 12,000 miles and had flown upwards of 45,000 miles.

Spring of 2010, they came back and again told me how much they loved their bikes, but....

But, they wanted to be able to run bigger tires to handle some moderate off-road, muddy, gritty trails as well as be a little more forgiving on the rough cobbles common throughout Paris.

This time they opted for titanium bikes with S&S coupler (and custom paint to boot) that could fit up to 35mm tires. No compromises on function, of course, so we went outside to Waterford to build custom steel forks with the proper rake (in this case 58 mm) that fit the fatter tires and still had an appropriate axle to crown measurement to keep the head tube at the angle it was designed for.

The bikes were finished, and almost immediately whisked off to Paris to see the 2010 Tour. These bikes, like their steel siblings, traveled far and wide until late January 2011.

They were taken to New Zealand to tackle the Otago Trail. Two weeks of every trail and road condition imaginable and they had safely and successfully completed their mission. The bikes were cleaned as best as possible, and carefully packed away into their travel cases. They soon found their way to the concierge's locked storage at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Christchurch, while the owners continued site-seeing on foot the remainder of the trip.

On that late day in February the earthquake hit. My clients were in the lobby of the hotel, saying it felt like being in an elevator that suddenly drops, except that instead of dropping down, everything lurched sideways.

Like nearly everyone in that part of New Zealand, they fled to a safe area -- in this case a nearby park -- and took up residency with tarps and sheets of plywood supplied by the Kiwi government.

Everything was left at the hotel. Everything. Bikes, computers, cameras, clothes, GPS's, passports. With the help of the US Embassy and local government, they were able to finally make their way back to Colorado.

The Crowne Plaza Hotel, luckily is one of the most well built structures in Christchurch, and it didn't sustain major damage in the quake. However, buildings immediately surrounding it sustained serious structural damage and, like many buildings in the area had either collapsed or were threatening to, so nobody was even allowed in the area in the weeks following.

Without much information, aside from checking Google Earth images to check which buildings were still standing, they had no idea when or if they could expect to get their things back, but being the compassionate, pragmatic people that they are they always reinforced that they felt very lucky that the only thing they may have lost were things, while many others their lost much more.

Finally......

Nearly three months later, I received an email that they thought the bikes were on the way -- something had been sent from the hotel -- and they might be somewhere between Hong Kong and Cincinnati (?!??).

Well, they did show up:

It was clear that someone had opened up the hardcases on their way back into the US, and let's just say that they were not closed and re-packed with the utmost of care.

Both bikes were brought into the Studio, and aside from having to true all four wheels, replace some cables and housing and generally clean them up, they were in surprisingly good shape.

Besides a few scrapes and chips in the paint, the frames were perfect, but that wasn't too surprising: titanium frames, properly built can last about 200 years or so (steel is about 50 years, aluminum about 15 or so, and carbon is around 10 years).

So, things turned out okay, and the bikes live to travel on. I'm glad these rolling works of art and their owners, are able to roll around the world together for many years to come.

Clipless versus platform pedals

2011-05-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have had a few clients asking about whether platform pedals will make them faster on their mountain bike. I think it's important to carefully consider equipment choice when it comes to your bike, since that can severely affect how enjoyable the sport is.

I'm not here to tell you that flats or platform pedals are bad, and clipless pedals are good. In fact, I think there are situations that warrant either.

Normally, I wouldn't mention anything, but some of the advice and "facts" I have read of late have convinced me that the "No Harm, No Foul" rule has been violated. If someone who coaches cyclists is telling them, "You know, you might ride better and more confidently on flats" I don't take issue. It very well may be true, and in the best interest of that client.

But when I read about claims that clipless pedals cause injury, "mask dysfunction", "feed into dysfunction", "artificially strengthening the weak link of the feet", they can "increase your risk of overuse injury" with no explanation of what dysfunction they're feeding into, I think some balance regarding the science is needed.

I do a lot of bike fits. As a practicing physical therapist for 14+ years, I have seen and assessed thousands of riders using some of the most sophisticated infrared motion capture equipment on the planet. I assess clients who ride with flats and with clipless pedals, and each group has consistent numbers of knee pain. There never has been any research that proves the claim that clipless pedals cause more injuries because of their inherent "dysfunctional movement". There is no research whatever that shows platforms to be better that clipless.

So let's get to the research cited. I have seen two main articles cited as evidence that platforms are superior to clipless.

KORFF, T., L. M. ROMER, I. MAYHEW, and J. C. MARTIN. Effect of Pedaling Technique on Mechanical Effectiveness and Efficiency in Cyclists. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 991–995, 2007.

The Korff et al article in a nutshell took 8 cyclists (with a minimum 2 years experience experience cycling)and had them perform 4 different pedaling trials at 90 rpm and at 200 watts. The four trials of different pedaling where referred to as:

Preferred: they used their preferred pedaling technique
Circling: pedal in circles and to concentrate on the transition phases through top dead center
and bottom dead center of the crank cycle
Pulling: emphasize an active pull during the upstroke of the crank cycle
Pushing: emphasize the pushing action during the downstroke of the crank cycle

Each pedaling test was 6 minutes long followed by 6 minutes of passive rest.

The long and short of the results is that the cyclists had the lowest metabolic cost (or the highest metabolic efficiency = least energy expended) during the "Preferred" and the "Pushing" tests. But the "Pulling" and the "Circling" had significantly higher mechanical effectiveness (you might say it was the most even or balanced distribution of power throughout the entire pedal stroke).

Some issues to consider:

Just because the cyclists "Preferred" pedaling style and the "Pushing" closely mirrored each other is not proof that "we already know how to pedal", and instructions to change this (cueing riders to pull up to even their distribution of force) just screws up our stronger natural instinct on how to pedal. The authors of the study even think that this lends support to the idea that other pedaling styles (other than just "Pushing") may be better in the long run because:

"...multiple physiological systems are likely to adapt in response to training with a specific pedaling technique. Our data support this speculation by demonstrating that in all participants, the preferred pedaling style was accompanied by the greatest gross efficiency."

Another thing to consider is that these cyclists were tested on an ergometer (power meter) at a low wattage of 200 watts -- really just easy spinning for most riders, especially the male cyclists employed in this study. No significant effort was required so it's not surprising that the "pushing down" was emphasized during their "preferred" pedaling style. If you are trying to determine efficiency (metabolic) and effectiveness (mechanical), a range of wattages would provide for better data -- a more difficult study, for sure, but it would shed more light on the differences and benefits of the pedaling styles.

Pedaling in a circle decreased torque? It did, but only "peak Torque", or the very high of the high end, and, again, at a very sub-maximal 200 watts -- severely limiting what conclusion you can draw about torque and force profiles. I.E. drawing "Peak" or "Maximal" torque conclusions from sub-maximal testing (actually not even close to their threshold level) is not very effective.

Metabolic efficiency was highest for the "pushing down only" pedaling style? True, again, but only at 200 watts, but "mechanical effectiveness" increased significantly.

One thing to reiterate is that this study only tested eight (yes 8) cyclists. In research, that's referred to as a study with N = 8. Not very in depth, and certainly in need of more subjects of varying abilities to draw better conclusions from.

Another problem: We don't know a lot of things -- like if these cyclists were ever trained in circular or a balanced pedaling style. They were just prompted into this technique briefly before the study began. We don't know how much they actually ride -- only how many years they have participated in the sport.

Mornieux G, Stapelfeldt B, Gollhofer A, Belli A. Effects of pedal type and pull-up action during cycling.Int J Sports Med. 2008 Oct;29(10):817-22. Epub 2008 Apr 17.

On the other study, Mornieux et al., 8 elite cyclists and 7 non-cyclists were tested at 60% of their maximal aerobic power (MAP) in three different pedaling situations:

With platform pedals
With clipless pedals
With clipless pedals and instruction to pull up on the upstroke

Despite claims I have read online to the contrary, the pedaling forces of the trained versus the untrained cyclists are different through the pedaling styles. The untrained cyclists have much greater negative pedaling forces no matter how they were pedaling, than the trained cyclists. This actually lends support to the idea that more practice with a balanced pedaling technique (some pulling up on the back-stroke with clipless pedals) may lead to better effectiveness in your pedal stroke.

Of course, you see I'll say it MAY lead to better effectiveness. This, again, is a very small study with barely over a dozen of participants, so we have to be careful of the conclusions we draw. It was also conducted with low power output -- 60% of MAP is a very steady, easy pace (it's not 60% of their "maximum" but of their aerobic max -- much different). But all the same, it actually makes it worthwhile to consider testing a "pulling" pedal stroke further to see what benefits can or should be gleaned from this.

In fact the authors of this study in a more recent article called Muscle coordination while pulling up during cycling from 2010 concluded:

" training the pull up action could be of interest to optimize this muscle coordination associated with better pedalling effectiveness by additionally relieving hip or knee extensors during the downstroke."

Scientific research is great, but at least three rules should be adhered to:

Read the whole article
Learn how to dissect a research study to find it's strengths and weaknesses.
Be careful with the conclusions you draw -- the good research authors usually are. they understand that research can almost never pronounce anything with 100% certainty. For example, in the full text of the Korff et al article the authors say in the Discussion:

"Although our results suggest that actively pulling on the pedal reduces gross efficiency during steady-state cycling, there may be situations during which an active pull is beneficial in terms of adding power to the crank.....A limitation of our study...is that it does not rule out the possibility that there may be a more efficient
pedaling style if participants are given enough time to adapt to it. Longitudinal studies are needed to explore this possibility."

Again, my purpose is not to do a flame-job on anyone, or tell you that clipless pedals are better for everyone in all situations, but reading these articles and drawing conclusions like,

"...clipless pedals literally offer no help....and will decrease pedaling force and screw up their (riders) pedaling patterns."

is not prudent or helpful for readers looking for good advice.

You can't take one idea about movement and apply it to all things -- this is why the study of human movement is difficult and takes years of schooling and clinical work to best understand.

Can you generate a lot of peak power with platforms? Yes, definitely. Nathan Rennie is a super strong pro mountain biker. He tested at 1800 watts on platforms. But, there are also a few dozen track cyclists that test between 2300-2400 watts all with clipless pedals (and some with pedals that are molded into their shoes -- you don't unclip at all, you have to take the shoes off to get off your bike).

Again, I'm not hear to tell anyone they have to do anything one way or the other. But the discussion went from "Flats are good on technical terrain, and for gravity racers" to "Clipless pedals are bad for you and don't help anyway, so no matter how you ride you should use flats".

Many cyclists on the dirt find clipless pedals more useful because of the fact that they do allow you to smooth out the peaks and valleys of power generation, and decrease the likelihood of spinning your rear wheel on a steep, loose climb. Some of us still ride on hardtails, which makes this even more important, but even on the best full-suspension machine, there are times when smooth, not maximal, power generation will get you up a climb.

I can see flats being better when you're on terrain you're really not comfortable tackling yet, if you are more into the gravity end of the sport, or if you're riding very leisurely. But road riding/racing on flats? -- sorry nope, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to convince any roadies to give up their clips. If you mountain bike, and you sometimes ride easy, you sometimes ride harder racing your buddies, sometimes you go downhill fast, sometimes you flat-track fast, sometimes you climb, sometimes you single speed, sometimes you ride the White Rim liesurely, then like many of us, you may ride better with clipless pedals. Maybe not.

So try them both,and decide for yourself. Research doesn't prove anything one way or the other (as is usually the case). I'm here to tell you that just because you ride with clipless or platforms you don't have a "dysfunction".

That's all for now.

John

SRAM Red? Shimano Di2? Campagnolo Super Record? What's the difference?

2011-05-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

I've got some good info brewing, just trying to finish it up: aesthetics aside, where do you get the mostr bang for your buck?

A little teaser: Did you know that SRAM Rival (3rd tier) costs less than Shimano 105 (also 3rd tier) but weighs less than Shimano Ultegra (2nd tier)?

More later

J

What goes into designing a bike?

2011-04-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

At my Studio, we, of course do a a lot of bike fits. We also build a lot of custom bikes. But not everyone that needs one has the dough for a full custom rig. There are ways around having to go the full custom route, at least for some clients, but there are always compromises that take place.

This post is about how we go about finding the right fit for each client regardless of whether they are spending $15,000 on a custom carbon road bike or $1800 on a stock-sized steel hardtail mountain bike.

In the picture above is an size XS Wilier Izoard XP -- a $2500 carbon road bike. Behind it is a Size Cycle; which is an adjustable bike we use to mock up various positions to see what the best fit is. We can then take these raw contact points -- where the seat is relative to the bottom bracket, where the bars are then placed as far as reach and height, as well as the proper crank length. If a client is interested in a particular bike, like this Wilier, I will mock up that bike's contact points on the Size Cycle and test from there.

Why not just get them on the Wilier to start? Sometimes I do, but the Size Cycle allows for quicker adjustments, and makes it more likely we're going to settle on the best fit for that client, not just the best fit that's possible on that bike. There are times, like with a client that came in last week, where the bike they were interested in would not provide the best fit, even with drastic alterations to it's components. On the size cycle, we aren't limited by the bike, because all it's dimensions are adjustable. To make the reach longer or shorter, I can change:

the effective top tube length
the seat angle
the saddle fore-aft
the stem length
the bar reach
and even the head angle (which changes how much reach the stem has).

On an actual bicycle I can only change:

the saddle fore-aft
and the stem length

If I don't think we can make the bike work well for them, I will talk to them about other options. And, no, I don't just tell everyone they need to get a custom bike. In this case, this client will spend less money on the bike I have proposed, than they would on the Wilier bike they were initially looking at.

So the first thing we get out of the way using the Retul infrared motion capture system is the saddle height and it's set-back from the bottom bracket. While the set-back is important because it relies on the seat angle of the bike -- something that is not changeable once we have an actual bike under the client -- the saddle height is not of huge consequence because it is by far the most adjustable aspect of the bike via seatpost adjustment. (we do still need to consider things like what shoes and cleats the client will use since the overall seat height plays directly with the overall saddle to bar height differential -- how much the bars are above or below the saddle).

After we determine the saddle height we begin on the reach and height of the bar. Using the Retul, we can again make adjustments to find the optimal bar position. We have to take into account the client's riding history (do they get numb hands, neck pain, low back discomfort?) as well as their medical history (have they had any orthopedic surgeries? leg length issues?)

Once we have them comfortable and efficient, then I start with the 7th grade math and trigonometry.

What is my aim? Basically to take this bar position (it's height from the ground and it's reach from the seat) and find out the easiest way we can achieve this position and STILL have room to move the bars up or down or further away or closer to the rider. We establish this as a sort of middle point for the bar.

The reach to the bar is relatively simple -- there are only a couple variables. We need to know how much set back the seatpost gives us, which we can use some simple trigonometry from the seat height measurement to get. We factor in the effective top tube length, but using a measurement call the frame reach is more effective (this is the horizontal distance from the center of the bottom bracket to the middle point of the top of the headtube). And then the length of the stem (with a bit more trig to take into account the rise of the stem and the head tube angle), is the final piece to give us the overall reach of the bike.

The bar height has more variables to consider:

A simplified list of the parts that determine bar height are (from the ground up):

radius of the wheel and tire
fork axle to crown measurement
lower headset cup stack height
head tube length
upper headset cup stack height
spacers under the stem
and stem rise or height

There are a lot of limitations in these parts:

radius of the wheel and tire -- this doesn't change much unless you get a huge tire on there
fork axle to crown measurement -- while there are variations in fork height, we often are stuck with what a given manufacturer provides
lower headset cup stack height -- sometimes this is zero with inset headsets (as in the Wilier above)
head tube length -- again, can't manipulate this after the fact
upper headset cup stack height -- varies anywhere from 5mm up to 25mm
spacers under the stem -- most modern forks, we're limited to 35 mm of spacers
and stem rise or height -- while we can alter the stem rise, if we need more height, 35-40 degrees, depending on the length of the stem, is usually all we can get, and this isn't necessarily optimal for handling and aesthetics

So I can do all the math and run the variables for the bar height by hand, but I have created a couple of customized excel files to make estimating the bar reach and height a little simpler.

I can plug in certain parameters, like for instance that I want to keep the stem to only 12 degrees of rise and no more, and this will tell me what bar height I'll end up with.

I can use this to determine if the frame and bike the client is interested in will work -- if the head tube is the right length, but also is the headset integrated into the head tube or does it have external cups? Just this small variable change can make a big difference in whether a bike will work for someone.

Building a custom bike takes more knowledge about bike fit, handling and weight distribution, but it is much easier to get the bar position where we need it because I can manipulate the head tube to almost any length I want. This will ensure that I don't need to use an excessive amount of spacers under the stem, or a high rise stem, etc.

When dealing with a stock sized bike, we're essentially stuck with the size of bike that the manufacturer has created. Why not just get a frame the next size up to get a longer head tube if I need it? The problem with that is as the head tube gets longer, so does the effective top tube -- so the reach of the bike may then be too big.

It's a lot to keep track of, but we have to (yes, have to - at least in my shop) do our due diligence to get the best possible fit for our client. Anyone can build and sell a bike, but only the most particular professional can make sure that each and every client is as comfortable and efficient as possible on their bike.

There's more money in just selling bikes and getting them out the door, but we want to make sure that the bike will feel good in the shop, and 6 months down the road.

Check back later this week, and we'll have gone through all these variables and in the process of building a client's bike. We'll post details of the build as we go, including why we chose certain parts and accessories

Stay tuned

--J

Trail musing

2011-04-16T16:02:00.000-07:00

The above picture is of Andy's Loop out at the Tabeguache. It has been the ugly step-child of the trails out there. Just rode down it today - figured I'd check it off the list for the year -- still no flow to it. It's really not fun to ride up or down. It's a shame because it has so much potential. It could be a killer descent, and one of the longest out in this area.

As many of you know, I live on the western slope of the Rockies in Grand Junction, CO. It's a great place -- the redneck issue is becoming less of one each year, we have great weather (we are where the mountains meet the desert), and fantastic trail systems for running, biking, hiking etc.

This time of year, we get a lot of tourists coming to mountain bike here. There was once a time when they only frequented the Loma (Kokopelli) and Fruita (18 Road) trails. Now the local's favorite of the Lunch Loop -- not called the Lunch Loops despite what the signs say -- is seeing it's parking lot full nearly every evening and all weekend long.

We're happy to play the cordial host, but please, if you come to visit adhere to a few rules:

1. DON'T ride off trail. Even when you are crossing paths in opposite directions with other riders. Just barely pull your tires to one edge of the single-track, place one foot off the trail, preferably on a rock if you can, and lean your bike away from the trail. When you ride off the trails and create a new "scar" off the side of the trail, you'll be able to come back and visit it in 2 or 3 years -- it'll still be there; the desert heals very slowly.

2. Try to ride in smaller groups. Every weekend this spring I have seen huge groups -- 15, 20, 25, even 35 (!!) riders. This can't be fun for anyone in the groups -- the fast riders are always going to have to wait and the slow ones will feel guilty for slowing everyone down, but you also create a juggernaut on the trail that can take a lot of time to get through if you're a lone rider heading in the wrong direction. If you come over in a big group, try to break up into group of maybe 6-8 at the most -- you'll be a lot more nimble, everyone will get to ride more, and you won't irritate the locals. BTW this goes for riding anywhere -- we break up into boys and girls rides when we head to Crested Butte in the summers to ride.

3. Know the yielding rules. On a mountain bike you basically are supposed to yield to everyone -- hikers, runners, horses, and other mountain bikers going uphill. If a runner/hiker sees you and steps off the trail to let you by, it's because it's expedient to do so sometimes. Thank them.......and don't get used to it.

That's all for now. I want to reinforce that we love it that we're a popular destination, but you'll have a lot more fun if you're not stepping on everyone else's toes.

The high cadence "issue"

2011-03-24T15:45:00.001-07:00

A lot has been made of “spinning” and keeping a high cadence in the last 10 or so years. Of course, many of us have heard the story about how Lance Armstrong optimized his riding style by changing his average cadence and in the process made himself into a grand tour contender.

Here is the basis of it: higher cadence has a lower muscular cost, and a higher cardiovascular cost. Lower cadence is a higher muscular cost, and lower respiratory cost.

When the muscular system is overly taxed, like in a hard one day bike race where you rode with a high wattage, but a low cadence, it can take a few days for the muscular system to break down and repair the damaged tissue. If you're just doing a one day race and won't race again for a few days to a few weeks, then this may be just fine, and as we will find out later it may be the best game plan to do well in that race.

If you're riding many days in a row, as in a grand tour (3 weeks) or a shorter stage race (say, 5 days to a week long), you won't want to carry this muscle damage from day to day, since recovery will be far from complete, and in fact, you could experience progressive breakdown, and a precipitous decline in performance.

The higher strain on the respiratory system has much shorter term down side. The respiratory system, our lungs and heart, can recover after a hard ride within a few hours. Think about that: imagine you just did a hard ride (at any cadence) that was an hour longer than any ride you've done so far this year. Your lungs may be a little “phlegm-y” for a few hours from breathing hard, but it's usually gone by the evening or in the morning. Your legs, however, can be sore for many days after.

The more consistently you ride, and the more consistently you race, the more useful a high cadence is. If you ride only a couple days a week or, more importantly, compete only infrequently then there is not much benefit to pedaling with a cadence over 90-95 rpm.

As with most things, “low” cadence is also a matter of degree. I would consider 90-95 rpm “high”. When the magazines and websites began touting the benefits of high cadence, many cyclists, as is common for their type-A, if-some-is-good-then-more-must-be-better attitude, immediately decided if 90 was good, then 110 must be even better. I had, and still have, dozens of bike fits every year where the client is spinning madly, in an obviously uncontrolled way to reach their high target. Things brings me to two points:

Extremely high cadence: 1. requires more coordination and pedaling skill and, 2. makes small mechanical deviations more likely to create injury

Doesn't extremely low cadence can also create injury? It may, but I can say from two points that cadence on the lower end requires much less coordination and skill and it does not make mechanical deviations (like a drifting knee) worse overall – this has been born out over years of performing bike fits. Remember those clients spinning madly on their bikes? Well, their 3D motion capture numbers were often all over the place: Knee Lateral measurements over 50-60mm each side, Knee Angles anywhere from 6 - 15 degrees, Hip Vertical Travel measurements excessive, etc. etc. I would then make them shift into a bigger (harder) gear, and take another view with the infrared -- voila! Usually about a 30% reduction in the aberrant motions. Then we were able to get down to the business of finishing their fit.

Studies have varied, but the median for overall efficiency is somewhere in the low 80s, which, in my experience, fits with the clients who have the lowest incidence of injury. (Again, this is an average or a generalization over hundreds of bike fits, but indicative nonetheless.)

So should you grind up all your climbs at 45 rpms? Of course not, but there is no good reason to spin away at 110 rpms on the flats either.

"Will weight training help me this season?"

2011-02-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

A question I get asked a lot, especially this time of year, is about weight lifting routines. Specifically should my athletes (runners, cyclists, and triathletes) lift throughout the winter, and if they do it, when and if they should stop lifting.

Let me start by saying that, as a physical therapist, I do think that weight-lifting is beneficial for most every athlete, but the degree to which an athlete needs to participate can vary greatly.

I think that in the dark of winter, just about every athlete could see some benefit from a few weeks of weight lifting. Will this make them stronger in the short term? Certainly. But they shouldn't expect to really hang on to any of this strength once they stop, and especially as they head into the summer racing season. What's the point then? While I wouldn't expect to see someone really cranking out significantly more watts I think the benefits for injury prevention or resistance are worthwhile. Some of the structural changes that occur at the tendon and bone/tendon junction can help prevent break down of these tissues during hard training phases. I know some people may say, "Well if it helps you during hard efforts, then it must make you stronger/faster". Maybe. It's no guarantee that the athlete who didn't do the weight routine, would definitely get injured; nor is it clear that he athlete who did the weight routine would be able to swim/bike/run faster or harder during their intervals.

I think triathletes have the most chance for gain with the weights -- the more "whole body" nature of the sport and the fact that triathletes tend to be bigger and more muscular than their cycling and running counterparts, makes it a good match for weight-lifting.

The problem with weight-lifting and these types of sports is two-fold:

1. the extra body weight is often not helpful and often becomes a liability -- again triathletes are exempted from this a little

and

2. sport-specificity is definitely not a strong suit of weight-training

The extra muscle mass is easy to understand, but what is the sport-specificity thing have to do with it?

Put simply, some tasks (specifically pedaling a bike is what I will spend the most time on right now) are too complex biomechanically to have the strength increases transfer over from weight-training. Think about it this way: when you train your quadriceps in the gym what is the most common exercise? The squat or leg press, right? How does the brain "see" this exercise from a motor-plan standpoint? It basically breaks down like this:

distal quads activate (eccentrically of course) first to manage patellar movement -- progressive engagement of the majority of the quad muscles -- deeper into hip flexion the gluteals/hip extensors engage progressively -- then all these muscles work concentrically to reverse the motion

The most important aspect here? BOTH legs are working at the same time in the same direction.

So what about the motor plan of a pedal stroke on the bike:

(starting at the top of the pedal stroke - 12 o'clock)

the gastroc-soleus muscles (calves) progressively engage from 12 until about 3o'clock as does the gluteus max (rear end), but the gluteus is done with it's power phase and on the decline even before 3 o'clock -- in this same time period the quad muscles (specifically the vastus muscles and the rectus femoris) are in the middle of their engagement and declining, and their involvement flatlines around 4 or 5 o'clock -- just before 3 o'clock the hamstrings start to engage and they peak about 4:30 and start their slow decline until about 8 o'clock -- after 6 o'clock nothing much is going on, but ideally the tibialis anterior and the hip flexors would be working powerfully from about 7 o'clock until about 9 or 10 o'clock (this does not happen to a significant degree, however, for all but the most talented of pedalers) -- at 9 o'clock the rectus femoris begins it's phase and the vastus muscles start a bit later at around 10:30 -- and then we're back at the beginning.

What's the most important aspect here? ONE leg is doing this complex sequence while the other is doing the OPPOSITE while positionally opposed 90 degrees.

The second most important aspect? On the back side of the pedal stroke (from 6 until 9 o'clock specifically) our leg can't get out of the way fast enough of the rising pedal (and it's rising because our opposite leg is powerfully pushing it down) so everyone (yes, everyone - even the most efficient pedalers) is exerting a sort of "negative torque on the pedals with their recovering leg.

Back to the weights: If you are training your quads/gluts to push downward with more force, invariably they will be doing so with more speed as well. If you haven't improved your body's ability to get the recovering leg out of the way, that leg will only be exerting more "negative torque" and your net gain of power is roughly zero. Can you train the legs to improve during their recovery phase -- basically training to improve hip flexion? Possibly, but their is a significant limitation of this as well and it has to do with another aspect of sport or task specificity -- cadence. Often we're pedaling at roughly 90 rpms. Do we ever do weights at this frequency? It's not really feasible.

What's the answer? If you're going to work on your strength do it on the bike where you have the specificity of the pedal stroke motor plan and where you can work on training the recovery leg to improve with the power phase.

For my athletes, I have them do specific intervals on the bike to work on strength AND cadence in a bilateral and a unilateral manner.

So if you don't get into the gym this spring after being diligent through the winter, don't sweat it too much. Often there are other, more efficient ways to use your time.

video/picture bike fit?

2010-12-02T09:42:00.000-08:00

The new version of the Retul software is going to come with video capability so that after capture periods with the infrared portion the fitter can show the client pictures and video of them pedaling to correlate the numbers that the fitter has from the infrared, and give it a second visual aspect.

Why did it take so long to incorporate video? The main reason is that pictures and video are a poor means of measuring in a bike fit. Even with expensive video systems, like the Dartfish video software, it comes down to the user placing points of rotation on a picture, and making measurements based on that. Even with a large LCD display the picture of the cyclist might be 12-15 inches tall, at most, and placing an anchor point at the hip for instance, it would be easy to have it be "off" by a large margin.

In fact, infrared and video systems have been tested side by side, and the video's margin of error consistently comes out to at least 10%. Infrared measuring on the Retul usually runs at a margin of error of 0.2 mm (two-tenths of one millimeter).

Is it a big deal to be that accurate? Even clients who are already pretty happy on their bike, benefit from the infrared because small refinements have shown large gains in pedaling efficiency and power. 10% error is too much to significantly impact aberrant mechanics and fix pain patterns on the bike, but it may help with "showing" clients very gross changes and malalignments.

So I guess it was a pretty good idea that Retul decided to use it this way.

The bike geometry problem

2010-11-30T19:00:00.000-08:00

I know I've mentioned this one before, but it continues to cause issues every week, with at least one client that ends up on my fitting table that I need to bring it up again.

Carbon bikes can be a very good thing. They can be comfortable (although often this is not usually a consideration of the stock bike company), they can be light, they can be stiff, and they can look cool. The problem is that now they are cheap. It costs so little to manufacture a carbon fiber bike that often the uber cheap and uber pricey stock frames come off the same lines, from the same hands, lay-up schedule and materials.

Okay, so that is another problem I can get into later. The problem I want to talk about right now is molds. Not like the fungus, but the casts that they create the frames and tubes from. I don't have as big a problem with the frames as the forks. If you look at the geometry charts of any major brand, and if they list the fork dimensions on the website (which more and more often they do not), you'll see that for a particular model the fork axle to crown and rake measurements are the same for every size. Put simply, they use the same fork for every bike from 48 cm up to 62 cm. The head and seat angles (and sometimes the bottom bracket heights) are altered between the sizes. This doesn't seem like such a big deal until you look at the effect some of these angles, coupled with the fork rake measurements affects the handling of the bikes.

In general, the fork and frame angles are great for the "middle" size bikes -- the 54s, 55s, and 56s, or there-abouts. But the small and the large bikes are sacrificed. I've seen 76 degree seat angles on small bikes, and some steep head angles on the bigger bikes.

Not sure if you're bike is affected this way? How does it handle? Are you comfortable descending on the bike? Do you have a "speed wobble"? Even on the flats, do you have trouble holding a straight line?

Unfortunately, this problem is more and more common now with all the carbon manufacturing out there. A well balanced bike fit is one way to lessen the problem, but even this has it's limitations.

Ride well.

Getting a coach

2010-11-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

I've been coaching athletes for about 7 or 8 years now, and it grew out of a natural extension of being a physical therapist. As a PT I need to educate and guide my clients in different aspects of their lives (strength, flexibility,nutrition, sleep patterns, body mechanics, alteration of work duties, etc.) to effect a meaningful recovery.

Coaching athletes is at once easier and more difficult than rehab-ing. Easier in the sense that my athletes are willing to do whatever I tell them so that they usually accomplish the goals; harder in the sense that expectations are much, much higher. That part I like.

So what to look for in a coach? I think there are 4 things to look for:

1. Credentials
2. Experience
3. Athletic background
4. Repoire

Credentials can be tricky. There are many "weekend credentials" out there, so don't be fooled. A "CPT" is not a physical therapist, but rather a "certified personal trainer" which is a distinction that can be obtained in a weekend. USA Cycling will certify someone as a "Cycling Coach" by merely completing a take-home test. There are many more out there -- these educational companies are a big business these days, so don't be fooled. Do a little research to find out what it takes to become what your coach has as credentials, and lean toward people with advanced degrees in the field of the exercise science/physiology etc. Although, this too can be a problematic since you can obtain a degree and become a "doctor" from shady "universities" that are unaccredited or have numerous times lost their accreditation, like California Coast University. Bottom line: do some digging, and find out what your coach had done.

Experience: Find out who your coach has worked with. What level of athletes has he or she worked with? Professional? Newbie? As a new-comer to a sport, you may not want someone who works with pros -- they might have a poor understanding of what your needs will be, and certainly the reverse situation wouldn't work very well. every good coach should have a list of athletes with whom you can talk to about their experience.

Your coach's athletic background is just to verify that they have undertaken the sport you wish to train for. You wouldn't want to take advice from someone about how to train for a triathlon when they haven't done one themselves.

Repoire: Your coach should be a good communicator and there should be some semblance of a relationship between the two of you. There is no need to be "buddies" but you do need to be able to talk to each other.

Elite athlete turned coach

I often see ads for former pro and semi-pro athletes hanging out there shingles as coaches once they retire. This seems like a normal progression -- they've spent a number of years preparing themselves for the height of competition, so making the leap to guiding others doesn't sound like a stretch.

The problem with this lies in the reason they excelled at their sport. I know, at first, this doesn't seem like a problem, but put simply, they could be good at their sport in spite of their training techniques. I have read so many accounts of very talented athletes breaking all sorts of basic rules in regards to training that it has become almost routine. There's the short-course triathlete who puts in 750 miles per week on the bike, all at long, slow pace, or the Ironman racer who puts in a 25-mile road run a week before their big race, because they "do better when they ramp up their mileage right up until race day." In most cases, these athletes don't do things as infinitely stupid as this, but they just do what has worked for them, without regard for what might have worked better. Many pro athletes don't alter their programs much from year to year, because "it worked well in the past so why mess with it too much." There is not much understanding of the principles behind exercise physiology and human performance. And, yes, perhaps breaking the rules was exactly what helped them achieve their outstanding results, but just because their top flight physiology responded to it doesn't mean that the average (or even the slightly above average) athlete will.

Elite athletes, I have found, tend to also have a poor grasp of what it "feels" like to only be able to run a 25-minute 5K. They might have broken that threshold before they were a teenager. I have seen a number of programs written for age-group athletes with significantly varying intensities for different intervals, which is great, except that many of these athletes didn't have this many different "speeds." When they run, they may have their marathon pace (which is the same as their pace for any run over 45 minutes) and their 5K pace (pretty much the same as their 10K pace), and that's it. And yet, their coach has prescribed 3 to 4 different speeds/intensities in one single workout.

Time strapped athletes are also often ill-served. I know Chris Carmichael just came out with a book about how to maximize training effect for the busy athlete, but this is not a new idea. There are many of us out here that have been helping guide these athletes with time-saving, effective workouts for more than a decade. I know amateur athletes who have been turned away by a coach because they only had 8 hours a week to dedicate to training. The elite-turned-coach may have a really tough time coming to grips with the fact that their client is making decisions on the road whether to ride 15 extra minutes or to stop early so they can cool down and stretch.

It definitely can be confusing, so do some research and find someone you're comfortable with. If you need to tell them to bump up or back off with the schedule more than twice, then maybe they aren't the trainer for you.

Best of luck

The Saddle Library

2010-08-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

I consider my business to be a a healthy mix of high end, boutique bike sales, with no nonsense, a lot of bang-for-your-buck services. I don't expect my clients to be wasteful in how they spend money with me.

A few years ago, when I first began using the infrared motion capture system from Retul, I had 2 clients in quick succession who were having significant saddle problems, and their journey to solving this problem followed fairly similar paths. They both did what most people do, and went to their local bike shop and explained that they were having saddle sores/discomfort and were promptly sold a seat that had proved to be very popular with the shop (for whatever reason). Seat went on the bike; seat was ridden. Discomfort persisted.

They then asked a friend, who recommended another seat -- ordered it online; seat went on the bike. Discomfort persisted. They repeated this at a second and sometimes a third bike shop. They now had a collection of four or five saddles a piece and had spent between $400-$500.

They didn't know each other, but they both came to see me for a bike fitting at the recommendation of a mutual friend within a month of each other, and their fittings went very similar. We had left whatever saddle was on there last for the fitting. We made many adjustments (as usual) to the seat, but also to cleats, bar position and even gave them exercises/stretches to help with imbalances when needed.

The result?

This last saddle felt great.

So, fantastic, they had found the saddle that worked for them. As an experiment, I asked them to bring in their "saddle collection" on a few follow ups. I traded out for one saddle and then another and after a week of riding on each in their new position, lo and behold! they all worked pretty well (except for one of them). So really, for the most part, it wasn't the saddle, but the position of the saddle.

I thought this was a pretty cool experiment. Neither client was terribly happy that they had spent hundreds on redundant seats, but they were quite thrilled to finally be comfortable riding their bike long distances again.

So after this experience, I found it ridiculous that there was nowhere that you could test out a new set for a few days at a time without plunking down the cheese to buy it. So I began collecting saddles that were popular with other clients, and pretty soon I had quite a collection. Here are some pictures of just a portion of them:

Now I have saddles from:

WTB
Selle Italia
Fizik
Selle SMP
Terry
Salsa
Selle Royal
Hobson
Profile

And I'm going to be adding soon a few from Prologo, San Marco, and possibly Brooks.

The idea behind my new collection -- or saddle library -- is that clients can "check out" a saddle for a week or two, and actually ride it to see if it's compatible for them, rather than just taking someones word for it. When we find that right saddle and we have it in the right position, then they buy. Hopefully, no more wasting a few hundred bucks on saddles that aren't a good fit.

New Zipp carbon clincher 404 -- Updated review

2010-07-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

July 25, 2010

You can read below the original post, but for those who have been there already, here is my second take:

I still really am impressed with the wheels. One new thing I noticed was the sound -- or lack there of. Previous versions of the 404 carried the standard whooosh-whoosh sound, especially when you stood up. I guess it was the echo through the carbon of the road. This was much more prominent in the 808 and nearly symphonic in their disc. On the new Firecrest rim it is nearly gone. I honestly don't know why or if it is a good or a bad thing....just something that I (finally) realized.

I rode them in the wind and rain this past Wednesday morning (we had a very rare rainy morning here in the desert). I still found them to handle very well in cross-winds, and the wet-braking was very good. I think most of that can be attributed to the Swiss Stop pads, but I thought it was nonetheless important that braking never got grabby in the wet.

My one knock so far on the wheels is something I knew before I rode them -- the spoke holes are drilled not molded in the layup process. Zipp has been doing this for years, and I here that he tool that accomplishes this very difficult procedure is actually quite remarkable, but in recent years an improvement has occurred elsewhere in the wheel market. At Edge Composites, they have a technique of molding in the spoke holes, and they use a nipples that has a dome top section (the part that fastens to the inside of the rim) that allows the spoke to rotate ever so slightly, if needed to relieve stress. My wheel-builder tells me that the Edge wheels he has built all come out nearly flawless and with great tension. When I heard that Zipp was redesigning the 404 I hoped that hey would find away around the drilling (and prevent the small bend that sometimes occurs in their nipples), but I must say that my wheels have always been so strong it rarely, if ever presented a problem.

That's it for now -- I will update more as I go.

So I'll just get it out of the way and say, I am super lucky to be able to try these wheels. As far as I know they are not shipping them yet, so I know this is pretty sweet to be able to try them early.

Zipp has waited for years to do a full carbon clincher, because they weren't confident that the technology was there. Many of the early versions from other manufacturers had some issues with durability so succeeding iterations tended to be heavy and overbuilt. I remember talking to Zipp engineer Josh Poertner, a few years ago and his basic take on it was "If we can't do it well (strong and light), then we just won't do it yet." (Loosely quoted).

I have been a fan of Zipp products for a number of years, and I've been fortunate to be able to try many different flavors. I was lucky enough to be able to ride a set of custom laced 303s in the Leadville 100 about 8 or 9 years ago, and I always have a couple sets of 404s in the garage.

So, to the new rim:

First, let me say that these rims I received are different from what will be shipped -- they are 28-hole, and given the strength and durability of these I expect that they will ship with spoke counts of something like 16/18 front and 20/24 rear. My wheels are overbuilt, for sure, but I don't mind that so much.

What is glaringly obvious with rims in hand for the first time is the radically different shape from the older 404. They are wider at the spoke bed, wide in the "belly" of the rim, and wider at the brake track. The design is their Firecrest rim design, and it is different. At first look, I thought that these could be ridden on a mountain bike, and might take a 29er tire quite well (Disclaimer: Zipp does not recommend you ride their wheels on mountain bikes or with disc brakes, under any circumstances).

One small bonus is that the tires mounted up easier than on previous 404 iterations. Granted it wasn't overly difficult before to get a tire on but I would occasionally need to use one tire lever at the very end to get it to set. Not so with these. My Zipp Tangente (21mm) tires went on by hand -- not so loose that it concerned me, but I was able to work at it and get the tires on and off by hand. Kind of nice in case of flats later on.

So I just mounted everything up and went on the first ride. The Zipps certainly changed the look of my Seven Axiom SL:

So In know what you're thinking -- new Zipps and a frame pump? Hey call me old school but I hate getting caught out with a dead CO2. And those small pocket size pumps make me feel like JoJo the Circus Monkey as I pump them 8,000 times just to hit 95 psi.

I rode the wheels up here:

The picture is at the top of Little Park Road, which is a twelve mile climb just out of town here. It has some 14% grades but a lot of it in the 5-8% range. Pretty tough for someone in my sorry shape. I knew how the Zipps would climb -- that was not what I was curious about. I wanted to make sure they handled well downhill, see how they tracked on the flats, and what a cross-wind felt with them.

Downhill they were.....disconcerting. I mean that in a good way. I descended the east side of the Monument (Colorado National Monument) and they are so much faster than the Fulcrum "training wheels" I had on the bike I was not prepared for the speed when I entered the first few corners. Eventually I got the hang of it and found the wheels corner very predictably. They almost feel like a really good set of skis on perfect snow -- when you set that outside edge they just rail right through. The braking was predictable and not grabby as it can sometimes be on a carbon brake surface -- I also replaced my SRAM brake pads with Swiss Stop yellow pads for these wheels.

I think the area I was most pleased with is how the wheels act in a cross wind. On previous deep wheels I have ridden (the old 404s among them) I always felt like I was getting pushed around just a little bit in a cross wind. I don't know the mechanics of why these wheels did not, but I didn't get one inkling of this sensation when I rode them. I kept bracing when I felt a strong gust come at me from the side, but it never did push me. This is one area I will report back more on later.

So far I am really impressed. I am sure I will find something I want to change in them, but nothing so far. Stay tuned

-J

Reader email question

2010-07-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

Got this question this week from a reader in Norway, and while it's not the most common, his back problem is more common than people realize:

I have spondylolisthesis grade 3. Bike fitting will be critical as a wrongly fitted bike is very painful.

What are the adjustments I would most likely need on a bike that is basically fitted right for a healthy back?
What are the typical “spondy adjustments”?
I (am) cycling quite a lot today on a hybrid that is 20 inches. I am 172 cm. The bike is maybe too big but it seems my back is better when I am streched forward.
I prefer a lying forward position (racing style) and the large bike size allows the seat to be adjusted forward compared to the pedals. Seat being slightly too low.

But I also want to do off road cycling. Problem is that the off roaders are smaller and more upright. (But there is no point in adjusting the off roader to give me a racing position)

I will be very happy to have some ideas about this from you.

Kind regards

GM

For those unfamiliar, a spondylolisthesis (not to be confused with spondylosis or spondylolysis -- professors in medical and PT schools love to torture first years with the differences between them) is when one vertebral body begins to slip forward relative to the one below it. This slipping forward closes off the space for the spinal cord (within the spinal column/vertebrae) as well as for the nerve roots as they exit the spinal column. Occasionally people even have a "step deformity" where if you run your fingers down the spine you can feel a "step" or a larger bump, which is the now more prominent vertebral body below.

These are tricky and early detection routinely is misdiagnosed as some sort of disk injury. The treatments for disk injury and spondylolisthesis, however, are nearly opposite, so distinguishing is important.

In general, lumbar flexion helps to reduce the slipping vertebra, or puts it in a neutral position -- often clients can feel the bone "click" back into alignment very softly. Lumbar extension, or back bending has the effect of pushing the bone further forward and causing more pain.

These people often get severe symptoms if they sleep on their stomach or have to stand in one place too long.

You'll notice that our friend from Norway is more comfortable in a racing or stretched out position, and he's not alone. My clients with spondylolisthesis often are more comfortable stretched out on their road racing bike, and really can't tolerate their mountain bike due to it's upright position. The upright mountain bike position, like standing in one place, requires active abdominal stabilization in order to keep some "flexion pressure" on the lumbar spine -- or really just to keep the spine in neutral. When we stand in place, our trunk muscles get lazy and we begin to "rest" on the static (non-muscular) structures of the spine, like the spinal ligaments, and more often than not our balance point pushes us into lumbar extension. A very similar thing happens when we are in an upright position on our bike. The stretched out racing position actually removes the need for active muscular stabilization because it aligns the vertebrae in flexion.

So what to do?
The obvious correction would be to set up a mountain bike in close to the same aggressive position that you find on a road bike, but few people want to have this position on their mountain bike because in the wrong terrain it can make it much more likely that you will catapult over the handlebars.

The better fix is a careful positioning of the seat. The tilt of the seat, is the biggest issue. You actually want to err on the side of having the seat level or even tilted slightly up. In order to keep pressure off the perineum (your softer bits) this forces you to rotate your pelvis posteriorly slightly which in turn creates some lumbar flexion, or at least a neutral lumbar spine. The overall reach of the bike should be such that a bit of lumbar flexion can be created without getting too far forward with your position (resulting in the aforementioned trip over the bars), and shouldn't cause your shoulder blades to protract significantly in order to reach the handlebars (you don't want a rounded upper back posture).

This seat positioning is the most important factor, however a very good way to ensure that you have less trouble with your spondylolisthesis is aggressive strengthening of the abdominal muscles. The abdominals are responsible for keeping the spine in a neutral position and preventing that lumbar extension.

So, thank you, for the great question, and please don't hesitate with more.

Stay tuned, as I am fortunate to have gotten my hands on a set of Zipp full carbon 404 clinchers. I will post about them in the next few days.

Why cycling and running/walking have almost nothing in common

2010-06-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

In response to the q-factor debate (some people believe that narrower is always better, others feel it matters little) I often hear someone spout that our stance width when we walk (basically how widely spaced our feet are as we walk or run) is only a few inches wide, and therefore a very narrow q-factor is mechanically the best.

My response to this is very similar to one I heard from Keith Bontrager once "I'm not sure what walking and riding a bike have to do with one another." And that's true really, but let's look at the similarities and differences.

Similarities:

First, they are both reciprocal motions, meaning that one leg moves one direction while the other moves the opposite.

They are both weight-bearing activities. The amount of weight-bearing can vary drastically however. Walking slowly may produce ground forces equal to your body weight while running can record forces up to 9 times as high. Cycling on the other hand often runs on the range of perhaps 10% of body weight for very easy pedaling, to usually 30-40% for spinning on the flats, to perhaps at or just beyond one time your body weight (think about the times you have been pedaling uphill and your cadence slows enough, where you have to push on the pedals hard enough that it nearly lifts your butt off the seat -- this is roughly one time your body weight).

I could manufacture more similarities, like the fact that the quadriceps and hip extensors are the prime movers for locomotion in each activity, but this is a bit mundane seeing as how they are also the cause in most other forms of forward movement (skateboarding, nordic skiing, blah, blah, blah).

This is about where the similarities end.

Differences abound, and as you might imagine, I come down firmly on the skeptical side of the narro q-factor debate in cycling.

Firstly, running has significantly greater impact on the skeletal system, and most of these effects are good, since this aids with bone density. Cycling studies in the last 10 years or so have shown some scary results in nearly osteoporotic cyclists at pretty young ages, because they have years of training on the bike which is a limited weight-bearing activity.

Mechanically there is a lot going on that separates running from cycling. In running, you have one foot in contact with the ground for a short period (we call this a closed-chain position), then neither foot contacting, then the opposite foot in contact (walking has a brief phase where both feet are touching the ground at the same time). Cycling, however has both feet fixed to the pedals. In walking/running, when we have one foot in contact with the ground only, this allows the pelvis to unlock on one side, since it is not fixed in a closed-chain commitment (so we can swing our leg freely).

On the bike this doesn't happen. What about the recovery phase of the pedal stroke, you ask? (Recovery being roughly from the 6 o'clock position to about 11 o'clock) In this position the foot isn't bearing down on the pedal, you say? Well, actually, it still is. A perfect pedal stroke would have the recovery leg pulling up on the pedal to assist the other leg in it's downward force, and while it may feel like you do this when you pedal, all the research to date has shown that even the most efficient pedalers in the world do not "pull" their recovery leg up. That leg simply can't move fast enough to get out of the way, and we are left with a downward force on the pedal on the back side of the stroke, so in fact we all actually exert a negative torque on the pedals.

If you've ever been on a Compu-Trainer and used their SpinScan you will notice that with most riders if you look at the polar or the bar graph of the efficiency of each pedal at points of the stroke, that often the right leg will appear to be less efficient in it's power phase (roughly from 2 o'clock to 6 o'clock). Now this could be because of some imbalance causing weakness in the right leg, but more often than not it has nothing to do with the right leg pushing down, and everything to do with the left leg not getting out of the way fast enough.

(Incidentally, this is a very common short-coming to the Compu-trainer technology -- the SpinScan is of very limited value because of it's lack of sensitivity. Whenever I see other technology based on the Compu-trainer's I have to cringe -- the most glaring example being the Dynamic Fit Unit (DFU) from Guru. Here is a machine that costs tens of thousands of dollars and the assessment tool it uses is the 15 year old software and hardware from Compu-Trainer.)

Without getting too much into it (because it could be a post or even a book unto itself) most of us are wired to favor or be dominant on our right sides -- even if we are left handed. Some people think this is because we talk so much and our talk centers are on the left side of the brain which is also responsible for right side motor control, and the talk centers stimulate everything and keep that side of the brain "lit up" -- I think that's a neat theory but I'm not 100% sure I believe all of it. regardless, this right dominance is something I see every day. It is certainly no coincidence that about 75% of us sit slightly to the right side of our bike seat.

So we've established that there are significant differences between walking and cycling in weight-bearing (or what could be thought of as total impact), the fixed foot or closed-chain nature of cycling is different as well. A third area of discrepancy is total range of motion. Walking/running involve moderate amounts of hip extension, while cycling has none.

One of the largest differences is one that I address in every bike fit I do, and that has to do with foot and lower leg mechanics. In walking, our bodies are built to absorb impact (there's that word again) by having the midfoot move and collapse towards the ground after heel strike in order to absorb the energy of the foot making contact with the ground. Cycling has none of this. Part of that has to do with the lack of "impact" on the lower extremity, and the other half is due to only the forefoot being attached to the pedal. Forefoot mechanics factor in heavily in cycling, and they are not very well understood.

(I believe this is the case even in professionals who handle foot mechanics for a living. I have tested dozens of sets of custom orthotics on the infrared system - made by orthotists, podiatrists, doctors, and therapists - and while some didn't cause any problems, many did, and none of them corrected any alignment issues that extended above the ankle. Some actually made the foot more comfortable in the shoe, and that's great, but rarely is it necessary to go custom, and spend $400 in order to accomplish that. I have found over-the-counter inserts to do just fine in these cases)

In cycling, if you can control the forefoot you often have the ability to make corrections at the knee and the hip as well.

So what about running you ask? Haven't you expounded on the benefits of forefoot running postures?

Yes, certainly, I am a believer in...well I wouldn't necessarily say forefoot running because that prompts many people to run on their toes...I would say I'm a believer in not landing on your heels. Does this amount to a similarity between running and cycling? Perhaps, but not a very strong one due to two previously discussed facts -- the much greater impact on the foot in running really affects the demands on the foot (this makes correction of lower extremity mechanics on the bike a bit easier and more subtle), and the fact that our butt is also attached to the seat (which makes correction of lower extremity mechanics on the bike much more difficult).

So, I think it's really difficult to make determinations of cycling mechanics by referencing walking/running. In fact doing so will likely lead you astray and compund problems. You'd really be hard-pressed to find two activities that are more dissimliar in some respects. So be careful, if you are getting bike fit advice, in a bike shop or in a clinic, and the person you're talking to starts referencing walking or running mechanics or studies. Cycling is different and deserves to be distinguished.

Sidi shoe and SPD-SL compatibility issue

2010-04-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

Ran into a problem with newer model Sidi road shoes (the last few pairs I've had this issue with are the Sidi Genius 5) and SPD-SL pedal/cleat system.

I need to research this further, but my guess is that Sidi, in an effort to continue to reduce the shoe weight and especially to decrease the stack height of the sole, has begun making the sole of the shoes thinner.

I do believe that this is more of an issue with Shimano than Sidi -- I don't have this problem with the Sidi shoes when I use Look pedals or Speedplays.

With the SPD-SLs it's even a challenge to get the screws to "bite", when you try the first-time installation of the cleat -- they just don't seem long enough. When I tried a 12 mm screw, however, it bottomed out before it could ever tighten down on the cleat and washer. Once you do get them fastened with the 10 mm screws it turns out you get only about two (2) turns on the fasteners until they are "tight" -- definitely not very confidence inspiring. Once you do get them fastened, if you need to remove and refasten for any reason, it's much easier the second time as it seems that the threads, which are pressed into the sole of the shoe, "pull out" slightly and seat themselves further toward the cleat side of the sole, which is a fairly common occurance with many shoe threads.

I have heard that there are 11 mm fasteners available to fix the problem -- apparently they "bite" easily when you first put them on, but, based on how early the 10 mm screws bottom out, I can't imagine that the screws that are 1 mm longer are going to tighten very well on the cleat either. Both the 10 and 11 mm should hold initially, but cleat fasteners have a way of unwinding -- anyone who has had a cleat come off mid-ride can attest to this.

I don't have this problem with the Look Keo system at all -- the rectangular washers are thicker, and the entire setup seems to have more leeway built into it, as I am able to shim and wedge the Looks, and I can always find a proper fastener length that works. When I tried to place a varus wedge under one of the SPD-SL cleats, I could not find a length of fastener from my whole trove that was a workable length.

I thought about using a thicker rectangular washer (possibly just substitute in the Looks) and a longer fastener to see if that alows for a bit more thread overlap, but I'm not sure that the fasteners won't protrude below the cleat and 1. contact the ground first when you walk and 2. it may interfere with the engagement on the pedal.

If anyone else has some experience with this combination and has a different, successful solution, I'd appreciate any feedback.

John

"How did you start doing bike fits?"

2010-04-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

I get asked this one nearly every bike fit I do. I can't believe I haven't just written it down -- maybe it would save me from repeating it 200-300 times a year. Not that I mind terribly; after 14 years of doing 1-on-1 client interaction you get pretty good at talking while you work.

So here it goes:

I have been into bikes since I was about 5. I can remember my first bike -- it was a hand-me-down (of course, in a family of 7 kids) that was rattle-canned copper by my Dad. My Dad and my older brother, Mike, taught me to ride and for the next 8 years or so that is all I did; how I got around the neighborhood; how we played in the "court" (the cul de sac, for you non-Mid Westerners) up the street.

On through high school and then into college where I used my bike to commute to class and eventually got into triathlons.

I graduated from Physical Therapy school and advanced into longer distance triathlons (up to Ironman) and then quickly into mountain biking as well and eventually 24-hour racing in my early 20's.

As you can imagine, I attracted a lot of training partners who thought as I did, that long races were fun -- especially when you weren't gifted with natural speed. When you are a physical therapist, family and friends frequently pick your brain about aches and pains they have, and I was happy to help, since turnabout is fair play -- free investing, home buying, and tax advice easily offsets the time spent on PT stuff.

Often, a quick test or two will reveal the problem with some joint or muscle, but with my cycling friends, they often only had the problem when they were riding. The next logical step? Well, we need to see you on your bike!

There is started, and stayed, for a couple years -- I would just help out a friend or 10 with biomechanical issues on the bike.

Of course, I went searching for help, and any existing information on bike fitting. I read everything I could get my hands on -- some of it made sense, most of it didn't ("So if I'm sitting on the bike and look down, my front hub should be obscured by my handlebar? Why?").

I quickly realized that most of the "rules" were arbitrarily set, and very little research had actually been done to back any of it up. When I first started, the static bike fit system were popular -- Fit Kit, Wobblenaught and the like. In these systems you take measurements of your body, like arm, leg, torso measurements, and plug them into an equation which spits out your fit parameters. You input you body's measurements and the "system" tells you how far to place your bars from your seat, how far behind the bottom bracket your seat ought to be, etc. etc. etc.

As a PT, where we consider pain patterns, strength, flexibility, age, level of activity, and about 50 other factors, this was distinctly unsatisfying -- and as it turns out, mostly useless in actual bike fitting. This became glaringly obvious when my first commercial (non-friend helping) bike fits were from Wobblenaught and Fit Kit clients who came in wondering why they hurt so much when they rode. I then realized that there was a gap in the market -- there were people that had many troubles with their bike fit and wanted help, and it was clear that the static systems weren't going to help and therefore couldn't fill this niche.

I said, why couldn't I fill it? I started off slow, and part-time, doing perhaps 20-30 fits that first year. I kept growing each year, though, and it became more and more of my business. About 9 years later, I bought my Retul system which helped growth further, as I began to get many more clients from around the state and from out of state, since people were looking for someone that had a way to measure their mechanics dynamically and accurately, paired with having the knowledge and experience to apply all this information.

And so here I am. I'm doing anywhere from 200-250 bike fits a year, building custom bikes:

Oh yeah, forgot to include that - I saw about 5 or 6 years ago that some of the custom bikes my clients had were not made for them very well. Not very custom, which is a crime when you're paying $8000. There were aspects I certainly would have designed differently to tailor the bike to them better and their riding style -- so I did! It is truly a pleasure to build a machine that is meant for that one individual to ride comfortably, powerfully, and efficiently for hours and enjoy it.

So that's it; how I got started. It was a fairly organic and seamless process. I would bet there are maybe a dozen or so people in the U.S. that have the background I have, have been doing it for as long and have the equipment available to them that's necessary for the accuracy desired, and I bet every one of them shed the same amount of blood to get to where they are -- and that's the point. You can't short-cut this trade -- there is too much to know and (still) too little good information out there.

Happy pedaling

John

I'm back; SI joint Part 2; orthotics and cycling

2010-04-24T06:47:00.001-07:00

Sorry again for the long delay -- this is such a busy time of year that I barely have time for anything besides bike fits and designing custom machines (and my family of course). This week, I purposely carved out some down time to catch my breath, and (gasp) even get out for a ride or two.

Of note recently: I had another client this past weekend with a clearly restricted SI joint (this time on the right side) and after a couple of tests, she too benefitted from treating that right side as a short right leg. A 3 mm leg length shim did the trick, and really allowed her mechanics to even out and she was sitting more equally on her seat as well. I will post the Retul files once I doctor them to block out her name, etc.

I've also had further reinforcement of my long held belief that custom orthotics do a very poor job of controlling lower extremity mechanics in cycling. I get a number of clients that have orthotics in their cycling shoes, and I routinely test them on the infrared with the orthotics as normal, and then without orthotics but with cleat wedges/shims as needed. I have never had a pair of orthotics do as good a job at controlling the mechanics as the cleat adjustments.

Part of the reason for this is that most people don't have two sets of orthotics made -- they have one set for walking/running made (because they're expensive). Walking/running orthotics WILL NOT help in cycling. They might not harm anything drastically, but they won't help -- the mechanics of running/walking and cycling have very little to do with one another. You can almost say they are opposite mechanical events of each other. Again, the orthotics may not cause harm, and they may even be more comfortable to the foot itself, because of the support it provides, but I have not found them to correct for much past that.

Even second sets of orthotics made (supposedly) for cycling have faired very poorly. My personal guess on this one is that most people making orthotics are not familiar with the mechanics of cycling. These health care professionals are educated in the context of gait training and evaluation. Walking is studying ad nauseum -- the micro-events that occur to the muscles during swing and stance phase, etc. (And, incidentally, they are often very good at assessing gait.) Some programs do not even spend a lot of time on running. The programs will acknowledge that there are significant differences between walking and running, however they often do not spend a lot of time on it. And cycling? Effectively "none" is my educated guess.

So my advice is to not spend another $200-$500 on cycling orthotics, when $30-$40 (max) of cleat wedges and shims is much more effective.

Anyhow, I will post some files to show this in a little bit, and I am making a concerted effort to post more regularly.

Stay tuned.

J

The wife's bike

2010-03-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

So any healthy relationship has to have balance. The past few years my wife has been in the enviable position of getting to ride a different demo bike every year, and sometimes having a choice of multiple bikes.

The downside is that in this situation, you don't get a perfectly fit bike most of the time (unless you're lucky, like me, and most size 54/55s are usually pretty darn close. She does have some shoulder problems, however, and that usually causes her to sacrifice her low back in order to maintain a comfortable reach to the bars. Suffice it to say that she tends to leverage a bit more through one side of her lumbar spine, especially when she climbs.

So, finally this year, I decided to surprise her for her birthday with designs for a custom bike "all for her." I decided on Seven's Axiom SL (double butted titanium), which is their workhorse model, a SRAM Force group, FSA K-Wing carbon compact bars, Selle Italia Lady Gel Flow saddle, and I had a pair of Zipp 404 rims lying around that I had Mike at Bigwheels (www.lacemine29.com) lace to some DT Swiss 240s hubs.

I don't have a great creative streak in me so I gave the Seven designers some themes to work with: Ethiopia (our kids are adopted from there), gourmet cooking (my wife, who is a Nurse Practitioner, loves to cook enormous meals on the weekends to the delight of our friends. The painters at Seven cam up with the scheme you see below:

there is an outline of the country of Ethiopia on the top tube, and there are two "Electric Blueberry" panels on the seat and down tubes that have a fleur de lis pattern on them. the fleur de lis has many meanings and references, but it is also the cover for Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I think they did well:

Seven Sola S single-speed

2010-03-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

I love how this bike turned out. You may have seen it in older posts when I was building it with my new dee-luxe headset press.

Briefly on the build:

It is a full Ti frame with slider dropouts, the brakes are Avid mechanicals (likely upgrade to their Mag CRs in a bit), Seven Kit, Truvativ Noir single-speed crankset, Chris King/DT 470 wheels, matching King headset, Kenda Karma tires, and last but not least a DT Swiss XMC 100 fork. The fork has a huge pricetag ($1400 retail!!) but I was blown away by the suppleness and features on the fork right out of the box. DT says it will "break in" after 20 hours of riding or so, but it felt pretty good on the shakedown ride to me.

Enjoy.

Seven Elium SLX

2010-02-24T18:39:00.000-08:00

So this is one of the prettiest custom builds I have ever done. I won't ruin this with too many words. I'll just explain the build:

Elium SLX frame and fork (this is a titanium and carbon mix - everything white is Ti except the fork)
Integrated Seatpost
Campagnolo Record 11 group (oh good God!)
DT Swiss wheelset
3T ergoNova Team bars
Custom Celtic Cross decal

BTW the Integrated seatpost has two seperate bolts to adjust tilt and fore-aft independently of each other -- which is phenomenally convenient -- and when you see the parts machine out of Ti, I can't help but think that there is no way that they make money on that part of the build.

Enjoy.

Who (or what) do bike companies build bikes for?

2010-02-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

The cycling world certainly has gone through a "carbon revolution" in the last 10 years. It is now possible to get a full carbon road bike for under (sometimes well under) $1000. These bikes have distinctive tube shapes, and paint to match.

So what are the upsides of having a carbon bike? Well, carbon bikes can be lighter than other materials. Certainly manufacturers have been able to make the average carbon bike lighter than the average steel, titanium, and possibly aluminum bike. But it is often not the case all the time -- there were many very light aluminum bikes in the day that still hit the 15 or 16 pounds mark. You paid for them, but you pay for these light carbon bikes as well.

Where carbon is supposed to have a leg up on aluminum is in ride quality, feel, road dampening; whatever you want to call it. I think in general it succeeds here. On very long rides, I have noticed less vibration on the carbon bikes I have owned and this, I believe translates into less fatigue. I think this has mostly to do with the central nervous system. Just as being stimulated with loud music or airplane noise can induce fatigue, so to does the buzz on a harsh road bike cause this "central fatigue" (ever notice how LOUD it is on an airplane even when no one is talking -- all that ambient noise has been shown to make you tired.)

This "dampening" quality is very dependent on how the carbon is laid up. In my experience, there are some carbon bikes out there that are just as uncomfortable as the harshest aluminum. If the layup schedule is too rigid or if the epoxy/resin content is not tightly controlled, it is my belief that it can negate the benefits of the carbon in this respect.

So why else do the manufacturers use it?

The main reason now is that it is cheap. You can get carbon fiber cheap, and have it molded into tubes or into a complete bike very inexpensively in Asia. You can teach a heck of a lot more people how to lay carbon material into a monocoque mold or how to wrap joints for tube-to-tube construction methods than you can teach people to weld a perfect joint.

What is being limited are the number of sizes.

This is partially a function of the molds they use to create the bikes. The molds are the expensive part, so if you can get away with 4 or 6 molds (and therefore sizes) rather than 12 sizes you are saving money right off the bat.

The other factor that has precipitated fewer sizes is compact or sloping geometry. With a sloping top tube many more people can physically throw their leg over the top tube to do the "standover test". It's not that more people can fit the bikes, it's that more people can APPEAR to fit the bikes. Back 10 or 15 years ago, before sloping geometries were common, the standover test would at least exclude a few people from being able to buy a certain frame -- their inseam was just not tall enough to comfortably straddle the bike. The standover test, then as now is an awful way to size a bike, but at least back then, there was a certain amount of restriction in bike selection.

I know it sounds like I am really "down" on the manufacturers of today, and...er...well, I am. I should be ecstatic, because as long as they keep doing what they are doing, I will continue to sell a consistent stream of custom bikes to clients who have no chance of fitting a stock bike (this pool of clientele continues to grow every year), as well as doing a few hundred bike fits a year to try and correct for ill-fitting machines.

It doesn't make me happy, however -- I just think about all the people that threw in the towel on cycling because they could not get comfortable on their bike. That stinks. That's not good for anyone's business.

I'm afraid that the story gets a bit worse. There is one more aspect of bike construction that is falling further behind as well. It has to do with the forks. Nowadays it is commonplace to have an entire line of bikes with 2 different offsets, and many are now going to only one fork offset (or rake).

The same reason applies -- a new rake means a new mold, so if you can build just one or two, you're saving money.

This problem is one that has come more to my attention in the few years I have been using the Retul system. After we do the bike fitting we can use the wand, which is called the Zin, and log in the exact dimensions and build of the bike. It is accurate to about 0.2 mm on most bikes and it not only gives you measurements to the bar and seat position, but also gives you the stack and reach of the frame, and the rake and trail of the fork, among many others. You see, you can't always look up the rake and trail of your bike make and model. Many of the manufacturers will asterisk (*) out the fork rake and/or head angle on one or all the models, claiming it is "proprietary" information. I didn't really think much of it until I started to "Zin" some of these bikes only to find out that the rake measurements that were asterisked out were actually the same as the size below it, where it was stated. If it is the same, why the need to hide it? The only reason I can think of is that they don't want you to know it's the same fork.

Why would they not want you to know? Well, we need to do a quick discussion about rake and trail. What is trail?

Trail is the distance between the following points:

1. if you drop a plumb line directly from the front axle to the ground and mark this spot on the ground - basically the tire contact patch

2. project a line through the center of the head tube, and at the same angle, of course, as the head angle until it reaches the ground; mark this point on the ground.

The way you manipulate the amount of trail on a bike is to alter the head angle and/or the rake of the fork.

A simple explanation holds that more trail means more stable (and more "cumbersome" in the extremes) and less trail means less stable (and more "twitchy" in the extremes). Lennard Zinn of velonews.com has written ad nauseum on all the variations in their technical Q&A section -- I definitely recommend reading some of those for more information.

In my experience, for a road bike, a trail measurement close to 60 mm seems to work quite well -- it is a nice balance between stability and yet still have easy to initiate turns.

So now imagine two bikes of the same make and model, just different sizes. The first bike is a 48 cm bike with an effective top tube of 49.1 cm, and the other is a 61 cm bike with a 60 cm effective TT. The smaller bike may fit someone that's 5'2" and the larger perhaps 6'4". When you think of the ways these bikes can be manipulated to fit these drastically different sized individuals you might immediately think of the effective top tube, the head tube length, and the seat and head angles. There are, of course more things to consider, but lets consider only these four things.

Of course the top tube and head tube measurements would have to be scaled up for the bigger bikes and made smaller for the smaller bikes, so we expect those measurements to change. Would the head and seat angles change?

I think it's safe to assume that, in a perfect situation, the seat and head angles would have to change some. Mostly to conform to the limits of 700c wheels -- some of these limits have to do with keeping the wheelbase down or limiting the amount of toe overlap with the front wheel, among other things. As you look on the geometry charts for all of the major stock bike (and by that I mean not custom) manufacturers, you can see this play out -- all of these variables change through the sizes.

Where this breaks down is when you see the fork rake listings (if they even show them). They are very often all the same or at best there are only two different rakes. So if everything about the bikes of different sizes is changing except the rake, and changing rake and head angle are the two main ways of manipulating the trail (and therefore handling) of the bike, then it becomes obvious that they are building the bikes to fit the fork, rather than to fit the rider.

They have excluded rake changes from the equation entirely so they are trying to manage the handling of the bike through the head and seat angle (I know many will say "chainstay length" as well, but have a look on the websites at how many of them change the chainstay lengths through the sizes -- nearly no one) while also making sure to manage toe overlap.

So who wins? Well, the bike companies do for one. But there are certain individuals who can buy these bikes and make out just fine. Generally the forks are made for the "in the middle" sizes -- the 54s and 56s mostly. You can see this bear out on the geometry charts again if they list the "Trail" on the bike you'll see that around the middle sizes the trail comes close to the magical 60 mm number and at the larger and smaller end of the spectrum, it diverges further and further away.

Now there are many out there who will say that no rider can feel the difference between 2 or 3 mm in fork rake and the perhaps 2-3 mm change in trail that happens, and for the most part I would agree with them, EXCEPT when the rider has had to alter the positioning on their bike. What do I mean?

I mean if you have a 25 mm setback seat post, and a 110 mm stem with 6 degrees of rise -- so basically your seat and bar position fall easily within the parameters for contact points that the manufacturer had intended, then changing the fork rake either direction 2 or 3 mm you will likely not feel like much. You are "draped" across the the frame as was intended (read as: your weight is distributed closely to how it was intended to be) and the gross affect of the rake change is muted somewhat.

However, if you had to apply a high rise stem (> 15 degrees of rise) or a particularly short stem (< 90 mm in length) or slide your seat nearly all the way forward or all the way back on the post, then you are more likely to fall near the edge or fully outside of the intended weight distribution continuum of the bike, then an ill-fitting fork offset will cause problems: speed wobble, twitchiness, inability to easily reach for a water bottle, difficulty arcing a smooth turn, etc etc etc.

So if you're having trouble with the handling of your bike, and you're not sure how to fix it, consider how your bike may have been constructed - take a closer look at the geometry on the manufacturers website. Look at your fit -- where are you bars positioned? seat? Hopefully, with some minor changes it can be remedied. If it cannot, dig until you find the culprit and resolve to not let that happen on the next bike.

Ride well.

J

Have a short leg?

2010-01-27T17:40:00.000-08:00

I had a really interesting client last week. Her Retul file was showing that she was sitting off to the side of her seat -- her sit bones weren't square on the saddle. That's not strange at all; in fact almost everyone I fit starts with some "skewed" sitting posture.

But with her all signs were pointing to her having a functional leg length discrepancy. A functional leg length discrepancy is when one leg "acts" longer than the other. We don't know for sure without full length leg X-rays whether someone has an anatomic leg length discrepancy, which aren't very convenient when coming in for a bike fit. Only in rare or severe cases do I insist on having this done.

A leg can *act* longer for a lot of reasons. Possibly a restricted hip on the opposite side, a rotated pelvis that manifests on the bike (not all pelvic rotations show up on the bike as well as in standing -- pretty interesting fact on its own), a curvature or scoliosis of the spine, and a number of others.

I ruled out all the usual suspects one by one -- her hips were fairly equal in their mobility; no pelvic obliquity (rotation) at this time (although this had been a problem in the past), and on and on.

Finally we found it -- one of her SI (sacro-iliac) joints was stuck. The SI joint is where the pelvis and the tailbone meet. Those little dimples you sometimes see on someones low back just above their rear end mark where the SI joints lie.

There is not a lot of movement at the SI joint but it does need to help the "pivot" to allow full hip translation as we descend through our pedal stroke.

Her left SI joint was not moving and didn't allow this translation -- it was almost as if her left hip hit a *stop* as she reached down to dead bottom center and her left knee was forced to extend much more than her right in order to complete the pedal stroke. But the damage was done at this point in the pedal stroke and all sorts of aberrant movements were forced -- left hip bobbing, knee lateral travel, etc. etc.

These things I know....pearls, Part 1

2009-12-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

There are numerous things I have learned by trial and much error over the years. As they pop into my head I will try to compile some of them and post them here. Tell me your little tidbits or pearls of wisdom.

- bike fitting: when considering saddle tilt, remember that a saddle is meant to flex and give some to relieve pressure as your legs pedal in a reciprocal fashion. just because a saddle is set level when it's built does not mean it remains level when you sit on it (and it then flexes). you need to consider the weighted tilt of the saddle.

- training: stay away from moderate duration and moderate intensity. If you're going to go long, GO REALLY LONG (and easy on the intensity). If you're going to ride very hard, then RIDE VERY HARD (and short on the duration). Beware of the 2 hour group ride.

- fitting: since the rider is 80% of the drag on the bike, don't sweat too much not having the "most" aerodynamic frame. what is "most" aero anyway is up for debate at times -- was the aero bike in question tested by itself or with a rider on it?; were the yaw angles where it tested well, typical angles you would see in real life anyway?; can you ride in the aggressive position that the bike is built to optimize?

- weight: when agonizing over a new light piece of equipment, remember to consider the weight savings as a function of the bike AND rider's total weight. For example buying a brakeset that is 100g lighter sounds great, but if you weigh 81 kg and your bike weighs 7.5 kg then that's not a 3.3% reduction in weight, but rather only a 0.3% reduction. Would you spend $200 on insulation for your house if it only saved you 45 cents a month on your bill?

- training: stretching is always a contentious issue. Some people

- equipment: clincher tires actually test with lower rolling resistance than tubulars, but only when expensive latex tubes are used. If you're using butyl tubes, the tubulars will roll better.

- want to make the most improvement of efficiency on your bike? 1. get a proper fit, 2. work on your pedal stroke, 3. upgrade your wheels to something more aerodynamic and/or with a lower rim weight

the ultimate tool

2009-11-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

I have never been a car guy. I never got into tools or working on cars (primarily because cars were and are nearly impossible to do any work on anymore, but oh well). Now, however, I really enjoy working on bikes. When you see a lot of clients, like I do, especially in the intense one-on-one nature of a bike fit, you are "on" a lot. It's like being an educator -- some days I talk all day long; or at least it feels that way. I love when I can steal away and quietly work on client's bikes -- it is pretty therapeutic.

So now I love really nice tools, and MC turned me onto Efficient Velo Tools, which is like a Toys'R'Us for geek bike mechanics like myself. I ordered the Smoothie Headset Press because it is the only one I've found that can press the sometimes long head tubes I build in the custom market.

The tool works like a dream, thanks in part to being able to get leverage at the bottom and top of the press (see the vise grip clamp at the bottom in the pics below), and a nice bearing underneath the "wingnut", which keeps the pressing action extra smooth.

The headset is my old standard -- a Chris King one and an eigth, in red with the stealthy Sotto Voce decals.

The bike is a Seven Sola S (full Ti)single speed 29er with slider dropouts (i'll post more on this bike when it's done).

the headset

the frame

The tool

cups on press

ready for action

finished

"Mid-Foot" running form and Newton Running Shoes

2009-10-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

Here at The Bicycle Studio we are known for our bikes and bike fitting. As a physical therapist, I treat all manner of athletes and in addition to cycling I run quite a bit (most weeks more than I bike), and I have been doing Ironman triathlons for about 10 years, and marathons for about 15 years.

Today I am going to discuss running. I have been studying running mechanics and research related to running form for about 15 years now. There is a lot of information out there, not all of it good, but here I will specifically go into running shoes.

I began running for fun and competition almost 25 years ago so as far as running shoes go, I began smack dab in the middle of the running shoe revolution. Shoe companies competing for the most cushioning, or motion-controlling, or energy-returning device available. A lot of gimmicks out there and hindsight being what it is, we are beginning to see that it was solving a problem that didn't exist. In fact, the research is bearing out that these shoes may be the reason for a number of common running injuries, like plantar fasciitis, achilles tendinitis, and generalized knee pain.

The issue with cushioning running shoes is that they alter running mechanics in a profound way. Simply, they make it easier to land on your heels, and in fact with most of these shoes they make it nearly impossible to land anywhere else. I won't get too far into this as there is a lot written about this topic already -- read Born to Run, Chi Running, Programmed to Run, and Lore of Running.

The basic idea behind the mid-foot running revolution is that landing on your heel makes you land with your foot in front of you. In order to progress to the next stride your quads have to eccentrically absorb that impact as your center of gravity then passess over your planted foot and then the quads, hip extensors, and calf muscles must push off in order to propel you forward. When that heel hits the ground in front of you, you have to decelerate first and then accelerate again. It's almost as if that heel out on front of you is STOP sign, repetitively slowing you down and requiring you to expend energy to speed back up every stride. There are a lot of impact forces associated with this running style.

When you land on your mid-foot, you have to land with your foot near or exactly underneath you, so your body/center of mass naturally carries over the planted foot on the momentum you have already generated. Your legs muscles do not have to eccentrically absorb each impact because the foot is planted already far enough behind you that this momentum is enough and less knee flexion/extension occurs. Running in this way, while foreign at first, will feel like you are taking smaller steps (which you are) and has a lighter more nimble feel to it. There is a break-in period where you have to keep re-training your body to stick with this new form. Some calf muscle soreness is normal, but with consistent work it becomes more natural. I can say from personal experience you will have less overall leg soreness and fewer injuries because you have significantly reduced the jarring effect of your stride. I have been a proponent of this running form for almost ten years, and now with the book Chi Running becoming so popular, it has really become more mainstream (there was a book released years before Chi Running called Programmed to Run which touched very nicely on the issue)

The Newton running shoes embrace this "mid-foot strike" running stride in a ground-up design of their shoe to make landing on your heel less likely. It has a lower profile heel and pronounced knobs on the front of the shoe (underneath the metatarsals). When I first laced these up, I noticed they make it nearly impossible to land on your heels, which is the idea, I guess. I did a number of runs on them and I would say they accomplish this task admirably.

But I didn't like 'em.

I think because I have been working on and using this form for years may have made my transition to these shoes less revelatory. In my experience, I found when I changed to shoes with less heel cushioning (lower profile overall) my form cleaned up very nicely and I was able to pitter patter my way around the trails much lighter and easier (and with much more enjoyment). The lugs on the forefoot of the Newtons

felt intrusive, and while they likely made a mid-foot strike more likely for a newbie to this way of running, they seemed to get in the way, or at least seem superfluous. I actually developed some 4th metatarsal soreness after using them on a number of very moderate duration runs.

And then there's the cost. The ones I used were $175. I know that running shoes are quickly working there way up there in price, but these were still in the deep end of the price pool. When I made the transition to lower profile, less cushioning shoes
Idea behind the shoe, one of the added benefits of these was the low cost. I run in the throw-back Saucony Jazz Low Pro

which you can get for under $50, so the jump to a Newton was quite a leap.

All in all, I think that Newton has the right idea -- running with more mid-foot form is better, but I don't know that the shoe is entirely necessary. It does solve the problem of heel striking, but I don't think it is the only way (nor the cheapest way) to go about it.

Guru Sidero Steel Road bike -- closeout sale

2009-09-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's your big chance. I am closing out this demo bike to make room for more stuff coming in. It should fit people in the 5'5" range in height.

It has never been ridden.

You can read more of the build and sizing here.

This is a beautiful steel similar to True Temper's S3 air-hardened blend, but Guru has put their own name to it.

Full SRAM Force build, this usually retails for just shy of $4000. I am listing it today for $2800 plus shipping. Payment by PayPal only, first one to fund it gets it.

Questions and PayPal taken at: john at thresholdsport dot com

Cleats forward? Cleats Back?

2009-09-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

Is economy of competitive cyclists affected by the anterior–posterior foot position on the pedal? J.R. Van Sickle Jr, M.L. Hull; Journal of Biomechanics 40 (2007) 1262–1267

When doing a bike fitting, changing cleat set-up is the keystone to a good outcome. While we have three contact points on the bike (hands, butt, feet) and all three CAN affect mechanics up and down the chain (i.e. if your left hand goes numb and so you hold it differently on the bar this can affect your shoulder position and induce a twist on the spine, which can affect how your sit bones rest on the seat....) the cleats/foot interface is always the most difficult to address, but also has the greatest gain associated with a correct adjustment. When you nail he cleat position it can often be a dramatic shift from a herky-jerky pedal stroke to a smooth elliptical rhythm.

The only way to truly read the necessary movements about the cleat is with an dynamic 3D analysis as is provided by the infrared systems (like the Retul). Video lacks the on-the-fly capability, is not taking measurements in 3 dimensions, and lacks the accuracy necessary to really make sound decisions. Prior to the Retul system being available, using the older methods of video, goniometers, plumb lines etc, we were just not able to address these small but, as we continue to find out, incredibly important factors.

So the article referenced above deals with one of the more coarse adjustments of the cleat -- the fore and aft positioning. This makes perfect sense because there is not much research out there about bike fitting, and specifically little regarding proper cleat alignment. (Incidentally the main adjustments to the cleats are the fore-aft, medial-lateral, varus-valgus wedging, and shimming for leg length under the cleat.) Marty Hull is one of the authors of this article, and if you're in interested in cycling and don't know who he is, you should. He has probably done more research into the mechanics of cycling than any other person on the planet. If you'd like to learn more about the ins and outs of cycling mechanics, you could do worse than reading his stuff.

In this study trained cyclists were tested at 90% of VO2 max with three different cleat positions: (1) standard forefoot placement (roughly under the metatarsals or "balls" of the feet), (2) midway between the rear of the calcaneous and the metatarsal heads, and (3) midway between 1 and 2.

They were tested on three separate days (with a rest day before each test day) and tested on all three cleat positions each day (in random order). They then measured how efficient each position was by way of how much oxygen was "used" (VO2) in the testing period of each cleat position. In simplistic terms, think of VO2 as the amount of oxygen that is used up (units in mL/min).

They found that there was no difference in efficiency with any of the cleat positions, so the more rear-ward positioned cleats were not an improvement in their cycling economy (more on why the rear-ward cleats might be more efficient later). So this seems to show that mounting your cleats further back on the shoe is not more efficient, but I, along with the authors, believe that there could be good reason why you would still opt for a "mid-foot" or "arch" cleat placement.

The first reason is Achilles/calf problems. When the cleats are further back on the shoe, the foot is "shortened" and so there is less of a lever arm about the ankle and so less muscular stabilization is required to keep the ankle relatively still as the main cycling muscles (quadriceps, gluteals, hamstrings) exert their force on the pedal. We do move our ankle while we pedal ("ankling") roughly 15-25 degrees, but the calves only provide about 7.5% of the total power output, so for many athletes with Achilles problems moving the cleat back can reduce the strain here and keep injuries away.

The next reason you may move cleats back is if you have foot numbness, tingling or pain issues. This may be because you have had prior foot problems (morton's neuromaor bunion, etc)
or maybe you are an ultra-endurance cyclist (the longer we ride, obviously the more pressure is exerted on our feet, but the feet swell slightly, making the shoes relatively tighter and placing more pressure on the nerves and soft-tissue of the forefoot). Many of the Race Across America (RAAM) competitors have been using mid-foot cleat placemen for years because when you push down on your pedals over 100,000 times a day for more than a week those tissues in your forefoot can get sensitive. If you aren't pressing through your forefoot, however, (and you push through the more hearty, muscled mid-foot) it cannot get sore.

You may also shift those cleats back simply if you have a hard time finding a perfect fitting shoe. Many "European" cut shoes are a hard fit for some. Poor fit can mean more pressure, and I've found that a slight shift rear-wards of the cleat can buy you some comfort.

The authors of this study were testing the theory that by moving the cleats back and having a reduction in the force requirement of the calf muscles, an improvement in economy (or efficiency) may be had. While an improvement in efficiency was not seen in this study, I think there is still hope, and the reason is motor planning. In my 14 years as a physical therapist I see people make improvements from many changes that we make to their mechanics, but those improvements don't become fully realized or don't fully coalesce until the person has mastered that new motor plan.

This process can take a few weeks or longer depending on how complex the task is. I have always believed that the pedal stroke is a lot more complicated than most people give it credit. Sure anyone can pedal a bike, but there are few people that can exert a nearly uniform force on the pedals for a majority of the pedaling cycle. In my research of pedal stroke analysis, I found early on that no one (NO ONE) can push/pull through the entire pedal stroke. Everyone, even the best pedalers cannot get their foot out of the way fast enough on the back stroke and so the put a "negative torque" on the cranks.

Then consider being able to activate the quads and hip extensors at that precise (and earliest) moment, to initiate the power stroke in the most efficient way -- the whole cycle, done well, requires a lot of coordination. Need further proof? Take 10 experienced cyclists and get them on a trainer for some one-leg pedaling drills. You will see many floundering individuals. Not withstanding this guy:

So given the complexity of pedaling a bike, with an uninterrupted block of time to adapt to the new cleat position, I think you will find that the improvement in economy would be seen. I have no hard proof of this, of course, just a hunch.

In my own personal experience I find that having my cleats back has prevented foot and heel problems when I was doing 24-hour races, helped me run better off the bike in Ironman races, and generally gave me the feeling of having very solid, consistent power output on the road bike.

It's not for everyone, but many people can benefit from this simple adjustment

Get a fit first.....please!

2009-09-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

I am begging anyone who reads this blog to do your friends, family, co-workers, arch-enemies, accountant a favor and tell everyone you know to get a proper bike sizing (by a professional) before they buy a bike.

It happened again -- I saw a client late last week that had just spent $3500 on a bike and it is the wrong size. They said that the salesperson claimed they would do a bike fit to make certain that the client got what they needed, but after some digging it appears the "bike fit" consisted of little more than watching the client ride around the parking lot and declaring, "Looks good!"

It can be difficult to know who to trust. My advice: Don't trust the guy (or gal) who is trying to sell you the bike in front of you. Especially if they don't spend at least 20 to 30 minutes figuring out what size you need. They should be asking you all sorts of questions about you and your riding:

How often do you ride?
How many miles per ride? per week?
Do you plan to road race? Triathlon?
What don't you like about your current bike?
Any injuries, related to the bike or otherwise?

And about 2 dozen more to boot.

At this point it'd be okay to get you on a bike or, even better, on your current bike (preferably on the trainer) and watch you ride. This is where I differ from most bike shops -- I don't think a "quick fit" suffices, in which they have you on the bike for about 5 minutes total. This is the time where the fitter should be asking a lot more questions while you are on the bike as they watch you pedal from multiple angles. I usually hook up the Retul and take a shot of each side to get more information. If you are on a bike less than 15 minutes, or if the fitter isn't asking appropriate bike specific questions you should be wary of the fit advice you are given by this individual.

Even if you are buying a bike for $1200 or less, it is worth getting a bike fit/sizing. I charge $250 for my bike fit service, but that includes a pre-purchase bike sizing session (which usually lasts about 45 minutes and even shows you how to measure the bikes you may look at to make sure they are the best fit for you, if you don't plan on buying a bike from me), a complete dynamic bike fitting (about 1.5 - 2 hours) and a follow up (again about 45 minutes) a few weeks down the line to put the final tweaks on the set-up.

But the bike is only $1000? And the fitting is a quarter of that cost -- that can't be worth it, right? Well, I've seen a lot of bikes in the wrong size, and whether it's $1000 or $7000, if it doesn't fit, then it can become a rather expensive coat rack out in the garage.

Sorry..

2009-09-02T19:24:00.001-07:00

...I've been away for awhile. Life happened, but I am working back into the swing of things. I've been playing catch up and have done about 25 bike fits in the last 3 weeks, so I think I will have some good ammo to put out there. I may even have a hand-made steel road bike to sell at a discount as well. Stay tuned...

The Womens Specific Myth

2009-07-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

I get asked a lot from my female clients that come to me for a fitting before they buy a bike (which is the right way to do it -- get a professional sizing done first, THEN buy a new bike and complete the fitting process on it) wondering which "womens specific" bike they should get.

First let me say that, certainly there are many ladies out there that are quite comfortable on their womens specific bike; and they can work out great. But in general, the idea that women need different geometry is a myth.

Let's start by looking at it from an industry standpoint. What are the major bike manufacturers doing? They seem to go one of two ways:

1. They take the men's line of bikes, eliminating the sizes over 57cm, stick narrow handlebars, 170mm cranks, a softer seat, and accent the paint with pink or purple.

A good example of this is Cannondale:

Compare the "like-sized" bikes and you'll find no difference whatsoever in their geometry; same effective top tube, head tube, angles, standover, etc. They use narrower handlebars, presumably a shorter stem or straighter (non-setback) seatpost because they tout a shorter cockpit length, and shorter cranks. (Also girlie colors.)

2. Others do all of the above and then shorten the top tube (and possibly lengthen the head tube).

The truth is that some women do well with option number 1 and others do well with option number 2 .......

........but so do most men.

Taking the 2nd option, where they actually change the length of a few tubes on the bike, assumes that relative to their height women have shorter torsos and/or shorter arms (and possibly less flexibility). While many women do have shorter torsos (and therefore are long legged) their numbers do not outnumber their more proportionate or long-torsoed breathren in great enough numbers to warrant a change in all their bike geometry, I think. Even if you accept that long-legged, short-torsoed women represent the center of the bell curve and have that large of a representation, then changes that the bike companies make to design a "woman's" bike are often not different enough to accommodate the women who actually need it -- on the order of a 1 - 2 centimeter shorter top tube and possibly 1 - 1.5 cm longer on the head tube.

Incidentally, this is the approach that Specialized, Look, Cervelo, among many others take when designing a "higher handlebar position bike" or one they tout to be used in Paris-Roubaix. These are designed for men and women. So it's good that they make these changes, but often I don't think they are completely filling the market niches -- which is why when I build so many custom bikes for people who don't fit these niches.

So I know, now it sounds like that first I was complaining that they make the changes at all and then I complain that they need to make even greater changes. But that's what I think they should do....

.....but they should do the same thing for the men's bikes as well. They should have two or three *grades* of sizing from more aggressive to more relaxed.

Some companies are doing this to a small degree, but, again, usually the changes don't go far enough. Or the more relaxed geometries available are built like Bradley Fighting Vehicles and don't come in a performance package at all. I don't think it's wrong for people to want to ride their bikes hard and have nice components and wheels WHILE being comfortable. Our cycling population is getting older, but a lot of these riders still want to compete or at least continue doing big rides.

So I'm okay with companies NOT changing the geometry specifically for their women's bikes. I'm also okay with them changing the geometry -- it just doesn't need to be "womens specific." Even riders with Y chromosomes need geometry adjustment to optimize their fit.

As long as the stock bike manufacturers continue to err on the side of producing bike geometry with a racing-inspired pedigree, this will continue to be an issue. Unfortunately many cyclists will be sold a bike that does not match their riding strengths, simply because it is all that is available.

Custom bike manufacturers (like Seven Cycles) should continue to benefit from this oversight, especially as the cost of a stock bike and a custom bike continue to get closer and closer together. (Take a look at Seven's Gateway Program and then look at some of the cost of Specialized's Tarmac line, Trek's Madone, Cannondale's SuperSix -- many of those stock bikes get up close to $10,000 in their higher iterations!)

So when anyone (man or woman) is looking for a new bike, find out first what size bike you need and if any special considerations to the geometry of the bike ought to be made. There may be a stock option out there for you. If you think your current bike and fit are pretty good take a look at the setup -- if you have a threaded stem that is set to the "Minimum Insert" line or your stem is short length and/or high rise, then you might be in need of some additional adaptations to your bike geometry.

Why not just have the high rise or short stem on there (or the saddle slid all the way forward or backward on the rails for that matter)?

The problem with making these changes is that the handling of the bike is not built around these set-ups. These changes can work to make the bike fit better and be more comfortable, but they can also begin to affect the handling and the balance of the bike.

It's bad enough that the big stock manufacturers make forks with only 1 or 2 offsets and rakes to use on all their bikes -- from their 62cm down to their 49cm bikes.

(SIDE NOTE: Very small bikes and very big bikes should have forks with different offsets, but this costs money, so there are very limited options in forks out there and the big bike companies try to make up the difference with the head angles of the bikes. When doing this, one end of the spectrum -- either the big or the small -- will have compromised handling. Some of the companies, when listing the geometry for different sizes will even list some of the fork offsets and not list the others, saying they are "proprietary". Having used the Zin to log in the geometry and setup of my client's bikes -- which gives you fork rake and trail among many other measurements -- I can tell you that many times the rake of the fork is not different from the other listed sizes, the manufacturer just chooses to hide the fact that it is the same fork.)

So then when we change the handlebar height or seat fore-aft significantly on these bikes the handling and safety can sometimes suffer.

So do some research, go see a professional bike fitter that can help you find what will work best for you, and if you plan to spend more than $3000, don't discount a custom bike if it suits your needs better than the stock offerings.

Ride well.

Felt B2 triathlon bike fit

2009-06-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

I'm just recovering from a weekend of doing bike fits out of town. Occasionally I do this -- mostly around western Colorado and eastern Utah. When I have 3 or more interested clients (that seems to be my comfortable threshold right now for a proper "driving time/fitting fee" ratio -- at least for a 2 - 2.5 hour drive) I will make the trip out to them and set up in a corner somewhere all my equipment.

The Retul travels quite well. It packs away neatly into (what I am told is) a gun case. The most difficult thing to plan for is to have enough parts and equipment for as many possible fitting changes as possible. Carrying a few dozen stems of various sizes is no problem -- it's the handlebars (because of their size), and seatposts (too many different diameters) that are tough.

So anyway, I was in beautiful Basalt, Colorado this Saturday and Sunday to see a number of clients. I ended up doing about 11 hours worth of fittings on Saturday and another 3 hours on Sunday, so you can begin to get an idea of why I am "recovering".

Lots of very nice people, ages ranging from in their 30's to the upper 70's. Yep, you read that right. There are some very fit folks out in this part of the country.

One client that was a lot of fun was Dave C. He is an avid long distance triathlete; he just finished a 70.3 in Boise the week before. He is very fit, motivated, and attentive -- your basic Type A triathlete. He listened very well and asked a lot of good questions - exactly the type of client I like to work with, because the more a client knows about what is going on, the more likely it is they will see the complexity of the decisions that need to be made in their bike fitting. This is a client who will see the process, as we do it, for what it is -- a service that is one of a kind and geared toward only making their bike work better for them.

So Dave is fit, but like all human beings who live on the modern world of driving cars, computer work, and tools that do our work for us, he has a few imbalances:

+ one leg is stronger and more coordinated than the other
+ he is asymmetric through his shoulder motion and strength
+ he has a small twist originating in his lumbar spine
+ somewhat weak intrinsic foot muscles and resultant pronation tendencies, etc. etc.

When you start to list all these things out, you get the impression that he's a wreck -- not so. This is very typical of what I find in my initial body assessment (he actually has fewer and smaller issues than many).

He has some neck discomfort when on the bike for a while; recovering from some knee pain, of the tendinitis sort, and some back pain on occasion as well.

Here are his first two Retul files that we took:

He had his (very well appointed and beautifully built) Felt B2 set up in the more relaxed seatpost position, and had also put on a stem of equal length to the original it came with, but now with more rise to raise the aerobars up some.

Many times I see people where their pedal stroke clearly has a hitch or hesitation in it, but Dave has spent too much time on his bike for that. His issue was more subtle. After doing this for ten years, I can see that his pedal stroke, while very practiced and relatively smooth, seems slightly disjointed. It's almost as if his upper and lower body are working independently of each other, rather than together.

After looking at the Retul files, it was clear his left side was getting sacrificed -- it had more lateral knee travel and the knee tracked at about an 8 degree angle, not to mention more hip motion.

I was more concerned with his angles at his elbow and shoulder, however. The angle at his elbows was almost 100 degrees and his shoulders were open and rather stretched out (the Retul takes two different shoulder or "armpit" angles -- to the elbow and the wrist). When your shoulders are stretched out like that a few things happen. First, your lats (latissimus dorsi) are lengthened and if they are pulled too far, they can exert a force on the lower thoracic and lumbar spine where they originate. This decreases the mobility of the lower half of the spine. Also, the shoulder blades, or scapulae have to move with our shoulder joints, so when the shoulder is flexed excessively, the shoulder blades must protract (move outward), thereby stretching the muscles that attach the shoulder blade to the mid-thoracic spine. Just like with the lats, this decreases the mobility of this portion of the spine. Take a look at this picture and you can see this with the "round-ness" of his back.

Also, note where the elbow and the shoulder dot are located, with the elbow being in front. In the aero position, we would like to support ourselves (especially the upper body) with as little active muscular input as possible, and if we need to use muscles, we'd want to use respiratory muscles (muscles we use in breathing) as little as possible. Often, when the elbow and shoulder have this relative position we are using excessive upper body muscular force to hold us up, rather than just "resting" on our skeletal support.

Corrections:

So to fix things I wanted to first address the upper body, lower body disconnect I was seeing. Dave's Felt was built with a two position seatpost, and he originally had it in the further back, relaxed seat angle position, so we changed it to the steeper configuration. We also made sure the seat was level (a huge mistake that triathletes make with respect to saddle position is to nose-down the saddle to reduce pressure on their perineum. This just causes you to bear more weight on your upper body as you constantly slip off the front of the saddle -- I always think of it as "tripod-ing" on the bike) and made a small seat height adjustment to accommodate the now-level seat.

This fit is proof that a higher handlebar position isn't always more "relaxed" or comfortable. Because we were rotating his hips forward and up over the bottom bracket, and because Dave has good fitness and strength in the right areas, we were able to lower his handlebars and in the process we put his upper body biomechanically where it needed to go. We improved his power, we reduced the muscular requirement to hold himself on his bike (he will have a front heavy sensation on the bike for a while since we brought his center of gravity forward on the bike, but this will decrease as his body begins to proprioceptively "get it") and improved his aerodynamics all with just two changes.

His left side was being sacrificed, as I said before, and we needed to get it in the game. It is less coordinated and not as strong, so we put a couple of forefoot wedges in his left shoe to improve that foot's contact with the pedal. Over time, this correction, will begin to re-train the muscles in the left leg and hip to get through the pedal stroke without inhibiting the right side.

Here is an after photo to compare with the previous one:

Look at how much more relaxed his spine looks. His elbows are tucked underneath him nicely, and because we've taken stress off the muscles supporting the shoulder blades (which incidentally also attach to the neck) he is able to move his head easier from side to side and look up. Go back and look at the first photo -- see the impression that his shoulder blade makes under the skin. No such impression on the after picture because that shoulder blade is resting more comfortably on the back of the rib cage rather than on the side of it.

The position is definitely more compact, and will take some adjustment time -- but luckily Dave is in a step-down period of his training, so he'll benefit from some moderate rides to allow his body to adapt. We may still make some minor tweaks in the near future, but I think he now has a good long distance tri bike position to keep him powerful for a full 112 miles. (But I'll let Dave himself comment here on how the fit is working, if he'd like)

Front of the knee pain, but first....

2009-06-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me a good question the other day:

By writing this blog, aren't you worried about giving away the bike fitting secrets that you've learned and inceasing your competition?

I guess I never really thought about it that way. To me, it's like an architect being worried that by explaining to his clients how their house is drawn up, then they'll use that information to finish the project on their own. There is just too much to know, and most folks, while they may find the information interesting (and I hope everyone does -- I know it can be a bit dry, but we are all nerdy cyclists at heart, and this is the stuff we love to read about), it's not likely anyone is going to be able to read my blog and open up shop on their own based solely on this information. I think it's important that there are practitioners of bike fitting out there that are taking the process more seriously, and treating it as it should be treated -- a very complex, biomechanics-based area of study, and not just a bike shop service.

So now onto the technical stuff.

One of the most common problems I see on the bike is frontal knee pain. Sometimes it is a force issue (just pushing too big of a gear for too long)

(brief diversion)
****I frequently get front of the knee pain (on the right) as I get back into riding shape. My seat height is good, I sit fairly straight on the saddle (see HERE); so what's the problem? As you can see from some of the biofeedback studies we did HERE, when I am not fit, my pedal stroke is not very efficient and I tend to be right leg dominant (like most of the population) AND I am very quadricep dominant when re-learning my pedal stroke. I am just pushing too much with my right leg and the choppy nature of my pedal stroke is requiring more of my quads, so my kneecap and patellar tendon are under tremendous strain.****

(and we're back...)
, but it can also be a patellar tracking issue, IT Band problems (and, incidentally, patellar tracking and IT band sometimes are not mutually exclusive), increased patellar compression/chondromalacia, or even referred or radicular lumbar pain.

The common "fix" you hear about with front of the knee pain is that your saddle is too low and raising it is necessary. Many times this is the case, but it becomes less likely when the pain is only on one side. (If you have a leg length discrepancy or your pelvis sits skewed on the saddle, the seat height may be too low for one leg and perfect or too high for the other leg; in this case you have to figure out why you aren't sitting symmetrically on the saddle first, and fix that)

So if your seat height is okay, where to next? One often overlooked area is how we toe in and toe out. In much of the research it is called inversion (toeing in) and eversion (toeing out) which on the bike is a little different than the motion we refer to as inversion and eversion in biomechanics. On the bike because of how the cleat fastens to the pedal the motion is truly just toeing in and toeing out, but in biomechanics-speak, the toes go in (medially) with inversion, but the bottom of the foot actually points in (medially) as well; opposite for eversion.

Generally when we invert our feet on the bike it drives the knee and increases what's called a valgus force on the knee (valgus = think of looking at the knee straight on and a force presses on the knee from the outside and forces it into a "knock-kneed" position). Conversely, when we evert our foot, we increase the varus force through the knee (think "bow-legged"). This valgus force at the knee essentially takes the ever-important medial quads out of the equation more. These medial quads (vastus medialis and a bit less correctly, VMO) are important because they need to be adequately active to keep the patella in between the two notches at the bottom of the femur. If the patella is not lined up then the underside of it gets dragged against the lateral notch and can cause cartilage damage and pain. The valgus force at the knee puts the medial quads at a mechanical disadvantage. Everting the foot a small amount may reduce this valgus force, and consequently allow the medial quads do their job and/or aid in patellar tracking.

All of this can be read in a great article by Gregersen, Hull, and Hakansson in the June 2006 Journal of Biomechanical Engineering:

How Changing the Inversion/Eversion Foot Angle Affects the Nondriving Intersegmental Knee Moments and the Relative Activation of the Vastii Muscles in Cycling by Gregersen CS, Hull ML, Hakansson NA

I have many clients who have front of the knee pain and the simple act of toeing their foot out (eversion) sometimes helps. Some clients can feel it "unlock" or "unload" their knee almost immediately.

So this is a good option to try if you are at a loss for your knee pain. Just keep in mind that like a lot of things in bike fitting, very tiny corrections are necessary most of the time. Also, remember that when you are changing cleat/foot position, you have to think in opposites: if you want to toe your foot out, you have to toe the cleat in.

But keep in mind that the consequences of toeing out (decreasing the "knock-kneed" force etc.) is what often, but not always, happens. Because we are all just experiments of one we cannot take this as the only consequence. I have, in fact, had some clients who show signs of an increased valgus force about the knee when they toe out. In at least one case it was due to some odd midfoot mechanics, but this cannot be discounted -- there are other people out their with these same mechanics and there are most certainly other movement asymmetries that could cause this eversion/varus relationship to break down as well.

The Big Ride

2009-06-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

Retul Bike fits

2009-05-28T09:35:00.001-07:00

If you've read my blog before you know that I use the Retul system of motion capture (www.retul.com). I get a lot of questions about it -- and a lot of business frankly.

I often hear,

"Wow, that must really make the fittings easier, huh?"

After using the system for a while now I finally have an answer to that. Does it make the fittings easier? The short answer is "No", unequivocally, it does not make the process simpler.

Blasphemy, right? Retul is definitely the most influential technology to come into bike fitting in, well, maybe forever, and here I am dissing it?

Well, I don't think it is a "knock" on the system because it doesn't make bike fits easier. People and companies (i.e. Specialized) have been taking a reductionist approach to bike fitting and it has done nothing positive to the process. The *Fit Kit", *BG Fit*, *Wobblenaught* among others have tried to take this very complex process and turn it into a nice neat, packaged "revenue driver" that every bike shop in the world can become an expert in.

I think it is actually a tribute to the system that it doesn't "dumb down" the process. It in no way tells you what you should do to take corrective action for the cyclist - it just provides a lot of very accurate data about the cyclist's mechanics.

For each of the parameters it measures -- for instance the frontal angle a rider's knee tracks at relative to the vertical, called Knee Travel Tilt -- Retul provides a range of normal limits that each one, in an ideal situation, should stay within.

The difficulty lies in the shear amount of data. If you focus on one measurement and make changes to the rider's position to "fix" just that one measurement, often other measurements that are also a problem, don't change or get worse.

So, no, my bike fitting process has not gotten simpler. But I'm not the least bit disappointed. Actually this has been the most productive and fun year for me with bike fittings (in my 12 years as a physical therapist).

My bike fittings have gotten better, and that's the important part. The Retul system has allowed a level of accuracy and confidence that is hard to beat. Plus when it comes to bike fitting, "simple" isn't always the best solution.

But "better" is.

Musings about credentials for bike fitting

2009-05-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

I get asked a lot by people out of state, My next trip to Colorado, I'm going to come in for a fitting. But do you know anyone in my area that can do a good bike fitting?

That's a hard one. I don't have a lot of names that I trust implicitly to do a comprehensive bike fitting. I think by endorsing someone, I am putting my reputation in their hands. Not many people out there I would do that for. There are a few, and if you live in their territory I will let you know who they are.

I am pretty particular about my fitting process, and I think too many shops out there are relying on the WOW factor of their gadgets, and their client's....I don't want to say ignorance, because that seems harsh -- after all, bike shops should know bikes, and many riders just don't have the inclination to learn about their bike and that's just fine. That's why you have a bike shop! But many clients do trust that their bike shop knows all things bike. Bike fit included.

Unfortunately that is just not the case. Most bike shops know bikes. They should. "The bike" is the easy part in the equation of bike fitting. Truly, anyone with a little time and motivation can learn enough in a short time to WORK in a bike shop. Every year thousands of high school and college age kids begin working at a bike shop and in pretty short order they are assembling and repairing bikes right alongside the "career mechanic." There are bike mechanic schools out there, but very few people building bikes in the United States are attending them. I think that's a shame. It doesn't say much for the person who is a career mechanic and it certainly doesn't help them earn a better living. When you have a profession that is unregulated, unlicensed, and requires no formal training, then you just don't have to pay those people that much. (and by "you" I mean the market in general).

Side note: A very experienced and skilled bike mechanic is an amazing thing. They are such a wealth of bike knowledge that at times is indispensable. I want to be clear how much I respect the true experts of this discipline. My point is that you likely won't go to you bike mechanic for a bike fitting just as you wouldn't go to your bike fitter for a question about derailleur actuation ratios or air chamber pressures on your rear shock.

So to get back to my point, the bike is the easy part to learn about. The variables are few and relatively fixed.

The human body, however, is exactly the opposite. It's not likely that you are going to be able to "apprentice" with a doctor, or a PT, or an exercise physiologist, and learn their trade in a few weeks or months. There are too many variables, and what's more, often these variables are hidden under layers of skin, muscle and fascia, so an intimate knowledge of their location, function, and physiology is necessary. (Again, in contrast, most of a bike's parts are easily seen and quantified.)

So you can see how it would be easy for a bike shop to alter your bike for you, but difficult for them to explain to you why you need it changed.

Some bike shops will say that they have been doing bike fits long enough that they know the 10 most common syndromes associated with ill-fitting bikes, and that that covers them for most cyclists. I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay someone hundreds of dollars in a fitting fee and more money for new equipment if they don't KNOW that it is going to help. In the last ten years I have done more fittings than most bike shops in the country, and I would estimate that fully 25-35% had some combination of mechanical issues that manifested themselves on the bike in a way I had not seen before, and about 50% fell outside of what I would consider to be the "10 most common bike fit issues". In these situations I had to rely on my education and experience with the biomechanics of the human body.

To understand all these differences it takes time and lots and lots of clients -- I call it the "Malcolm Gladwell Effect". In his fantastic book Outliers: The Story of Success, he explains that thorough research has come up with a metric for understanding why some people become experts at the top of the field, and the general threshold for this is 10,000 hours of practice. Bill Gates began programming as a "tween" at a time when only a handful of people on the planet even had access to a computer to program on. Michael Jordan out-worked all his competitors by spending hours and hours EVERY single day to improve his skills.

Similarly, a bike fitter only gets to be an expert when they spend every day working their diagnostic muscles. This is where physical therapists and other clinicians have a huge advantage over bike shop employees and other fitters -- we get to practice and flex those same mental muscles every day, even outside of our bike fittings as we treat 5, 10, 15 clients a day. The treatments are different but the "work" and knowledge gained and reinforced is the same. Typically even a busy bike fitter may see 5-10 clients a week -- this would be an awfully slow way to learn the craft.

This also brings up a point that bike shops are in the business of selling bikes and bike parts. Unfortunately with the boom in the number of shops offering "fitting services" many did so because their industry advisors were telling them how many replacement parts and accessories they could sell.

I'm not trying to make people paranoid or distrustful of their LBS. Fact is I think there are plenty of shops out there TRYING to do the right thing. I just think that they in over their head with the complexity of many bike fits.

The difficulty lies in the fact that many people experience discomfort or a decrease in power and if you just LOOK at them, they appear to be set up in a very typical road position.

Example:
I had a client recently come in for a fitting on a bike she had bought a few months before. She hadn't ridden it much because she bought at the end of the fall and she was not a cold weather rider. She got a "good deal" on the bike. The young salesperson helping her helped her find the bike, they set her up on a trainer and she pedaled the bike for 2 or 3 minutes. It felt "Okay" (her words) while she was on the trainer, but to be sure, they stopped the lone "bike fit guru" (who is also the head mechanic and part owner) as he was rushing across the shop in search of a part for another client, to have a look. He watched her sit on the bike and pedal for 5 or 6 pedal strokes and declared, "Looks good." And he rushed off. Sometimes the shop (but really the client) might get lucky and everything might actually BE good.

In this case, however, once she spent more than 5 or 10 minutes on the bike it was clear she wasn't comfortable. So they came to see me, and this is when she had her second chance to get lucky -- the bike could be the right size but just need some adjustments - maybe we could "make it work". Unfortunately, the frame was the wrong size and to have an appropriate reach on the bike she'd need to have the seat all the way forward on the rails (with a 0 degree setback post) and a 60 mm stem -- definitely not ideal.

So what is the lesson with that story? Again, not that you should distrust your LBS, because I think this shop was TRYING to do the right thing (admittedly a bit half a**ed). They are just not very good at it.

Luckily there are more and more bike fitters that have education in anatomy, biomechanics etc. AND have years of experience applying this knowledge. These two things are incredibly important and you should do some digging to find out about any bike fitter you intend to visit.

Guru Sidero - steel road bike Now on Sale

2009-04-18T07:10:00.000-07:00

So this is another Studio demo/floor bike. I decided to try out the new steel offering from Guru, and I must say, it turned out great.

I pieced the build kit together to match (as you can see) the bike's paint, and the result is striking, I think.

I order the demo bikes with my own Studio signature geometry -- basically I tweak the stock geometry provided by Guru so that it fits the cyclist(s) I think would be interested in such a bike.

Head tube = 14 cm
Effective Top Tube = 50 cm
Standover = ~73 cm

The bike is built with SRAM Force throughout, Ritchey Pro Alloy kit, and Fulcrum Racing 7 wheels.

The Fulcrum wheels were a nice addition. This year they changed the wheel from having red accents on the decals to the hubs, rims, and nipples all being fully anodized red. They really make the look of the whole bike.

I have again used the SRAM SuperLight bar tape -- this time in red -- it just has a great feel to it and it wears extremely well. I have two clients that I built bikes for a year ago. Just did a check-up on their rides and the tape still looks brand new; that is considering a lot of miles and a couple of trips overseas with the bikes.

This complete bike, for full custom geometry, is $3950 with a Force group and about $3300 with a SRAM Rival set up.

I think this is a really great pricepoint for a non-pricepoint bike.

What are our muscles really doing when we pedal?

2009-04-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

So my fit Studio is in a Physical Therapy clinic, which makes sense, because I am a practicing PT. My co-worker, and owner of the PT clinic, Rik is trained in a new biofeedback system. Biofeedback uses electrode patches placed over the muscles to determine how much these muscles are working -- how much, how soon they kick in, how long they stay "on", how they "turn off", etc. As you can imagine, this is highly useful with our clients.

So we decided to test a few cyclists and see what we came up with. We could simultaneously use the Retul, to pick up movement imbalances and then cross reference with the biofeedback to try and figure out what the muscles on each side of the body were and were not doing. We can even then use the biofeedback while the person pedals to "train" them what activating certain muscles at specific times "feels" like to help correct the underlying muscular problem.

First we have to test as many people as we can, to start to figure out common muscular patterns. Hopefully we can figure out what is "normal" but if my line of work has taught me anything, it's that there aren't many "normals" out there. That's why I think it's more likely we'll find common motor patterns that may not be symmetric, amongst many athletes.

Subject #1 : Me, 33 y/o, male, 5'10", 175#

I have a fairly symmetrical pedal stroke. If I had to guess I would think that I am a bit right side dominant, and probably scoot off the right side of my saddle because of it. But we don't have to guess, because here is a right and left Retul file from a recent test on myself:

Not bad.

Next was to hook up the biofeedback. This involves placing small sticker-like electrodes strategically over the muscles you want to test. Wires snap to the electrodes and run to a little processing unit that reminds me of a car radar detector.

The "radar detector" talks to the laptop via a BlueTooth connection -- the setup is pretty slick.

The software that Rik uses seems to have endless choices on how to set up the display screens so that you can simultaneously see what the

different muscle groups are doing.

When I was hooked up to the biofeedback unit we decided to test vastus lateralis (VL) (the quadricep or thigh muscle on the outside of the

leg -- this tends to be very pronounced in cyclists), vastus medialis (VM) (quad to the inside just above the knee, and the hamstring. We tested these muscles on both legs, so we could compare how much more the right or the left lateral quad was working, but we could also compare how much and when the medial vs. the lateral quad did work on the same side. We could also compare this to how the hamstrings worked.

We tested all three muscle group -- VL, VM, hamstring -- on both legs, of course at 150 watts and at 215 watts.

The printout from the biofeedback looks like this:

The lines and squiggles at the top half of the page are usually in color, but they are a bit above what we want to get into here.

Below are the printouts bottom half of the page. The colum to focus on is the one that says "Mean" -- they are basically the normalized mA that the electrodes pick up from each of the

muscles.

There are four sets of data: comparing VMO/VL at 150 Watts, VMO/VL at 215 watts, VMO/hamstring at 150 watts, and VMO/hamstring at 215 watts.

VM/VL @ 150 watts

VM/VL @ 215 watts

VM/hamstring @150 watts

VM/hamstring @ 215 watts

As you can see from the sheets, my right quads (medial and lateral) both work more than the left at all wattages. But when I increased from 150 watts to 215 watts my left quads increased their activity 18% while the right increased 23% (VL) and 29% (VM).

The next round of tests, comparing the VM to the hamstrings on both sides confirmed an 18% and 29% increase respectively for left and right for the VM when going from 150 watts to 215 watts. The hamstrings, which overall, were not very active increased 31% on the right and 38% on the left; this increase on the left might make one think that the left "evens out" at higher wattage, but I think it is still a bigger issue: the right hamstring was more active at 150 than the left was at 215. The fact that the starting point for the left hamstring was so bad made it's improvement seem more drastic.

What did we learn?

I think this first round of tests is encouraging and shows that we can, with good effect correlate what our mechanics are like (from the Retul data) and what the muscles themselves are doing. We should be able to explain why a cyclist may pedal with an asymmetry and whether it is due to a poor motor plan or if it has more structural origins.

I think we can safely say that one of the main reason that I sit a bit skewed on the saddle is because my pedal stroke's motor plan has a significant emphasis on my dominant right leg. I think with more data we will see that my current pedal stroke is poor in the efficiency category because I have not been riding as much lately and I am getting a very small contribution from the hamstring muscles. I am not "pedaling ellipses" but rather more up and down (and definitely more down than up).

Theory

I have a theory as well about the activation of our quadriceps when we pedal that has to do with left and right efficiency. I believe I am more coordinated (because pedaling is a coordinated task) on my right leg -- it's clear my hamstring are more active on the right and help to smooth out my pedal stroke. I am also more skilled at one leg pedaling drills on my right leg -- less "clunking" through the stroke and better cadence.

I think, based on some of the muscle activation graphs that I saw for me (and they would have been difficult to post here -- sorry), that our more efficient leg will see the quads activate later and relax earlier than the non-dominant side. So the non-dominant side will have a more consistent or longer activation patter than the dominant side.

This to me seemed counter-intuitive at first, but after some thought I realized that because my dominant side hamstring were activating better, they would inhibit the quads sooner since the load was now taken up by this new group of muscles -- the more "normal" or efficient pedal stroke. The dominant side could more accurately and quickly kick itself on and off in time with my cadence and when it kicked on it could fire more motor units more quickly. I think this would have implications, of course, on negative torque values (when your quads are still pushing down on the pedal after it has passed the dead bottom center position and therefore exerting negative torque or power) but also in terms of fatigue. The non-dominant quad is staying "on" longer, even when it shouldn't and wastes unnecessary effort -- it fatigues quicker even though it is adding less to the overall workload.

Anyway, I should have more data coming this weekend and next week with a few more guinea pigs so stay tuned.

uber-commuter

2009-04-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

I had to post these pictures. I don't haul this much normally, of course, but today I had to bring a number of things in to work. This is why I love the Surly Big Dummy.

I had to get all of this onto my bike (well I could have driven, but that would be cheating):

And here is how I did it:

I love this bike

Talkin' bike seats

2009-04-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my last post that, for the average woman, and ideal seat design would be wide in the back to support the wider ischial tuberosities, but then needs to quickly narrow to avoid compressing the tissues distal and lateral to the sit bones.

This narrower space between the femur and sit bones that we tend to rest (which ends up being the proximal hamstring -- medially the semi-membranosus and laterally the biceps femoris) is not the only reason for this saddle shape. The woman's sit bones are oriented more in the frontal plane (more side to side) than a man's. The male sit bones are set more in the sagittal plane (front to back).

When you factor in the natural translation of the hips and pelvis downward at the bottom of the pedal stroke, you can visualize that the male sit bones can more readily follow this path of movement -- sort of like a knife blade slicing through the dirt. The female sit bones can't move as easily in this path -- imagine running the same knife through the dirt now turned to it's side a few degrees, like a plow. The amount of shear force (or at least the potential for shearing) is much greater.

Essentially, all the angles of the pubic and ischial rami (the structures that form the "loops" on the bottom of the pelvis, and that we sit on) are steeper and sharper and because of this, less contact with saddles is probable. I think this is the reason women often struggle with saddles -- more contact and shear forces -- and not just the fact that they have wider sit bones.

Saddle position

Of course, the right saddle is nothing without it being fit in the right position. Many cyclists are on saddles they are unhappy with, but the reason is that they are not sitting on the part of the saddle that is meant to be sat on. Most are scooted too far forward, even to the point where the sit bones don't rest on the saddle, but rather the saddle is squeezed in between them and the rider is resting more on their soft tissue -- this is a problem, obviously. A huge mistake I see all too often is having the saddle tilted down --- yes, even a little is generally not a good thing.

A bike seat needs to be in the right place fore and aft so that the sit bones can contact the wider, more cushioned portion of the saddle, and then it needs to be level so that the sit bones can rest on it. If you aren't perched on your bike seat, then you aren't effectively stabilized to make full use of your pedal stroke.

_______________

Think about this:

If you have a seat slid all the way back on the rails, so that the seatpost clamp is at the front of the seat, and it is level. What happens when you sit on the saddle? What if the rails are made of Steel? Titanium? What I'm getting at, is that a saddle has a static (or unweighted) position and a dynamic (weighted) position. The dynamic position is the only one that really matters. It has been my experience that especially with titanium railed seats if the seatpost clamp is to the back of the rails the seat will flex downward, if towards the front of the rails the seat will flex backward. Therefore I have allowed some seats to leave my Studio tilted up or down at times to accommodate.

_______________

This leveling of the seat brings me to my last point about a good seat -- for a man or a woman. The seat should have at least some portion of it's surface should be flat and not fully sloping.

This FSA saddle is a good example of when some seat designs can cause trouble for people.

The centerline of the seat is the high point and the cover slopes downward to either side. I am sure there are people who find this saddle comfortable, but I haven't met them yet.

I am intrigued by the new fizik Antares -- the entire saddle looks flat. I will have to try it out and get back to you on that one.

Next up : Some top secret stuff going on in the lab. Well, not really secret, but it should be pretty cool. We are combining the use of the Retul dynamic "mo-cap" with a very sensitive biofeedback system so we can see what exactly some muscles are doing when we pedal, and using all the information (and there is tons!) to try to determine what the leg muscles are doing when....say, a knee tracks laterally more then the other side.

From the preliminary findings, I think I can say that many will be surprised at what we are finding.

--J

"Influence of Gender, Power, and Hand Position on Pelvic Motion during Seated Cycling" Sauer et al 2007

2009-03-31T19:55:00.000-07:00

Sauer, J.L., J.J. Potter, C.L. Weishaar, H.L. Ploeg, D.G. Thelen. Influence of Gender, Power and Hand Position on Pelvic Motion during Seated Cycling. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 39, No. 12, pp. 2204-2211, 2007.

This is the first installment in some interesting research I have been kicking around and using in my bike fitting practice. I have decided to share a few bits here.

This first study took trained cyclists and they measured movement through the hips and pelvis at three different wattages (100 W, 150W, and 200 W), on three different saddles (Bontrager X-Lite 2006 mens, fizik Vitesse womens, and Bontrager Race Lite mens), and in two different hand positions (tops and drops).

It did not effectively determine much in the way of gender differences. I think they set out to find out if riding on the drops versus the tops caused more pelvic motion for males or females. Perhaps they were expecting more aberrant pelvic motion among females, I don't know. Overall I think they tried to make their scope too broad -- they were trying to figure out too many things at once. This, I think watered down their results a bit.

They fessed up to their short-comings in their Discussion, which is admirable but still doesn't help to improve the utility of the study. The short-comings they listed had to do with the fact that the women were tested at the same wattage as the men and therefore at a higher percentage of their maximum - so asymmetries would be more pronounced in the women due to a greater relative workload.

The women were also tested on the same handlebar (which had 145 mm of drop to it), and given that the women were smaller, they were forced to relatively lean further forward when they went in the drops.

One other thing I wish they had done, was to include more information and clear photos of the saddles they used -- it can be difficult to find saddles outside of their production year. And saddles can be changed often from year to year, so finding a 2009 fizik Vitesse may not be very instructive.

Things I learned:

The women's ischial tuberosities (sit bones) were (on average) 134 mm apart center to center, while mens were 115 mm. Nearly 2 cm difference in width of the sit bones -- that's significant.

What does this mean for bike fitting? Well, simply women's bike seats should be wider at the back of the saddle so their sit bones can rest on something properly, right?

Well, maybe. Remember, these are averages -- some women have hips shaped like a 13 year old boy, so we need to think individualistically. But also, this study found that the center to center distance between men's and women's hip sockets was NOT significantly different.

This reinforces to me a long-held idea I look for in women's seats (as it applies to a woman who shares these "average" proportions -- remember, we need to take things on a case by case basis): Yes, their seat should be wider toward the back to accommodate the wider ischial tuberosities, but it's my opinion that the saddle needs to narrow very quickly in the middle -- or as I call it, the transition --(essentially the part of the saddle below which the seatpost is clamped to the rails).

To get a visual on the anatomy, check out this link for a view of the pelvis. The bottom picture gives you a sense of where the femurs attach to the hip socket (acetabulum), so when you look at the male and the female structures above it, you can see there is a difference in how the femur relates to the ischial tuberosities.

Consider the fizik Arione saddles below. The little hash marks along each side of the saddle are part of their "WingFlex" technology. This is the transition area that I was referring to. In the case of the Arione, this is very effective for some people -- mainly men over about 165 pounds seem to benefit. Perhaps they are heavy enough to take advantage of the Wings and actually cause them to flex out of the way. I have not found as many women that are comfortable on them.

I believe this is necessary because the gap between where their sit bones contact the seat and the path the femur takes during the pedal stroke is narrower, which can put more shear force on the soft tissue just distal and lateral to the ischial tuberosity.

I feel many women would do better -- and, again, this is a generalization -- on a saddle more like:

Well, not this exact saddle, but it's female equivalent. Some of you may recognize it as a Selle SMP Stratos, and I think the fact that the saddle narrows down quickly (the angle of this picture does not do it justice) keeps the width where it is needed (in the back) and keeps material out of the way of those distal-lateral soft tissues by our sit bones. You can see the actual women's version of this saddle here.

Next post I'll talk about another reason that women's pelvic motions on the saddle differ from men's, since it can't be explained by hip joint or ischial tuberosity widths alone.

Cycling Research?

2009-03-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately there is not as much science entrenched in the culture of cycling. For years, Euro pros abstained from sex before races because it was feared that it would rob them of some essential power, for god's sake. (Although Mario Cippolini worked hard to make us think he did not follow this logic.)

Certainly this is changing, what with pro teams and amateurs alike making use of physiologic testing, wind-tunnels, and accurate power data.

The arena of bike fitting has had a few stabs at this, but many (like Specialized's BG Fit) are tainted by a corporate and retail driven focus.

So I guess fads and marketing need to be treated with some apprehension.

In the realm of physical therapy and sports rehabilitation, certainly there are fads and marketing within the industry, but good therapists tend to use what works -- which is, most often, sound exercise regimens and manual treatment techniques -- not the Tony Little Gazelle, the Ab-Lounger, or that electrical stimulation belt for 6-pack abs.

For this reason, I tend to default to good old published research, whenever I wish a fresh angle on some idea. It's more work - information isn't already broken up into sound-bite worthy tidbits by some marketing department, it's not immune to corporate influence (many studies ARE funded by corporations with an angle to support), and some studies are just not set up very well, so they may or may not really tell us anything with any degree of certainty. But that is why getting good information from them is more satisfying - because it does take a little work and you have to be discerning in your reading.

So as often as I can, I will share some of the more interesting things that are out there -- I think many will be surprised (I know I am constantly) at what some of the research shows. Here's a taste:

Did you know that a study was done about 3 years ago looking at the most efficient crank length for trained cyclists? They tested riders with crank lengths varying from 130mm up to 220mm, and found no significant difference for even some of the most extreme differences. Granted the test was a very short and intense (I believe it may have been as brief as 3 or 4 minutes) but the fact that a cyclist could score anywhere close with 130mm cranks as they did with 200mm cranks, on any test, is amazing. It certainly puts into perspective how futile the hand-wringing regarding 175 vs 172.5 cranks, that many cyclists do, may be.

Custom Studio Build #1

2009-03-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

This year I decided to try something new with my "demo" bike fleet.

Generally, manufacturers work with their retailers in the late summer and fall to plan what bikes and how many the retailer wants to have on the floor that year. Most manufacturers (especially the big guys) require very large orders, and offer terms or a grace period before full payment of the inventory is due. I am extremely fortunate to work with custom builders who understand intimately the needs of a Studio my size.

My studio works on a different business plan then most (larger) shops. I am not about selling a whole bunch of stock bikes -- in fact I don't really sell but a couple the entire year. Almost all of the work I do is full custom, and as such, it doesn't pay to have 20 stock bikes laying around as inventory or demos.

In past years, I have picked a couple of common sized bikes of varying "bling" between the builders i use and placed an order with a good parts build and one of the basic paint schemes. This has served me well. The bikes I order, represent the builders well (which is the point after all) they look great, and I can sell them pretty readily throughout the year.

This year I thought of really making each of my floor bikes unique. Custom paint. Better kit. Better grouppo. Better wheels. I even steered away from the "stock" size that these builders provide for floor model bikes and customized the geometry in a way that I have found fits a wider range of individuals better -- especially in my market.

So with that in mind, here is what my first "Custom Studio Build" looks like:

Here is a breakdown:

Custom sized Seven VII in "Cue Ball White" paint, bare carbon decals, and raspberry hibiscus accents. Custom Seven 5E fork (rake matched for geometry, of course).
SRAM Red group, except for Force substitutes in the brakes and the front derailleur. Compact crank with an 11-26 Red cassette.
Oval Concepts R910 Aergo road bar, matching Oval Concepts stem, and r900 carbon seat post
DT Swiss Mon Chasseral 1450 wheels
Alpha Q carbon water bottle cages

I can't say enough about the frame. It is clean and precise. Every bike I have ever gotten from the good folks at Seven has been flawless. The paint is exacting, and it is 100% ready to build right out of the box -- I like that.

I am a big fan of the SRAM Red, but I have started doing the Force substitution on the brakes, for a modest cost improvement, and no compromise on function, and the front derailleur --again for a modest cost reduction, and the fact that I think the Force front derailleur is a little snappier in it's shifting. Possibly due to it's aluminum and steel rather than aluminum and titanium construction.

Weight penalty for the derailleur? 1 oz.

The DT Swiss Mon Chasserals may be one of the best deals out there. The wheels are light (1450g), strong, and have the most bomb-proof hubs in the world. Included in the cost are padded wheel bags and DT Swiss' RWS skewers. Best of all, they're assembled right here in Grand Junction, Colorado.

The Oval Concepts kit is a relatively new addition here at the Studio. I like the ergonomics of the Aergo handlebar, and the strong feel of the stem. The reverse bolts are a mild pain in the butt to get some wrenches on, so on-the-ride adjustments could be tedious. Really the only thing I took issue with is the complete lack of instructions or torque settings. I don't appear to be the only person to belly-ache about this, as I found a few fellow sufferers during a quick Google search. If a bar manufacturer REQUIRES the use of their stem to maintain the warranty on the ($365) bar (which Oval Concepts does) then torque settings (at least!) should be supplied.

The bike turned out great -- I couldn't be happier. At a recent Open House, this bike garnered much "oohing" and "aahhing" in the gallery. I don't think it is long for the sales floor.

Snow Bike Fit - playing with q-factor is fun!

2009-02-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

One look at the bike above and you know this won't be a "normal" bike fitting.

I'm certainly not new to the world of snow bikes: I've worked and ridden with Mike Curiak for the better part of the last decade, so I've certainly been subjected to a few cold "over-night" rides on the groomed surfaces of the Grand Mesa. I have consulted with Mike (BTW he owns the record for the fastest human-powered traverse of the Iditarod Trail, by bike of course, all 1100 miles in a little over 15 days), as well during this time for certain aspects of his training, any time he gets a wild hair to try something that should be nearly impossible by human standards.

I've seen the numerous iterations and changes made to his current snow rig -- the indomitable Snoots made by the good people of Moots Cycles in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. So I vaguely know the ins and outs of a true snow bike.

To say that this bike is "custom" is an understatement of the largest order. Every single tube, feature, and add-on has been painstakingly developed in a partnership of ideas between Mike and master welder Brad up in Steamboat (Brad has his own snow bike as well). I think the low five figure price tag Curiak has estimated is exactly that -- a very low estimate.

A quick rundown of the features:

The whole bike is (in Moots tradition) built of titanium
Only the front rack is on there. The rear rack has been removed for simplicity during the bike fit.
The tires are 4 inches wide (Surly Endomorphs) built to snow-specific rims, of course.
The cassette and freehub body are 9-speed but only 8 gears are on there due to space requirements.
The rear hub is 165 mm spacing instead of the normal 135 mm for mountain bikes.
For that matter, the front hub is also spaced 165 mm so front and rear wheels are inter-changeable.

The bottom bracket (a Phil Wood square taper) is 155 mm end to end (instead of ~110 to 120mm for road and mountain bikes).
In some of the pictures you will see brass fittings on the bottom of the bottom bracket and the back of the fork legs -- these are pet-cocks for fuel dispensation. The fork legs and the seat tube (along with the big "box" above the crankset) hold fuel for his stove.
Custom made bar ends grace the cockpit, but they are usually hidden under large hand covers called Pogies to protect hands from the severe cold

All told, the bike weighs.... well, a lot, even unloaded.

So for obvious reasons, Mike wanted to check out some position issues that had come up in a 300 mile "shake-down" race. I mean, when your going to be pedaling and pushing a bike for three straight weeks, peace of mind is a big deal.

So now to the fitting....

Numerous problems presented themselves. First, I had never put a bike with that large of a rear-axle spacing on the Compu-trainer stand. A 150mm spaced tandem was the biggest up to this point. After lining things up and having the right skewer on there, it was clear that with a little finagling it might JUST fit, but the enormous tire would not clear any part of the flywheel. So we decided to remove the flywheel completely and we could set resistance on the rear wheel by dragging the rear disc brake.

With this settled, I began to work on the flywheel, only to find that it requires a T25 torx wrench for one side (fine, I got that) and, more problematic, a 4.5 mm size Allen key for the other. My complete Park Tool Allen kit does not have a 4.5 -- UGH!!

Such is the frustration one frequently encounters with a Compu-trainer: Spotty software compatibility. Ear-clip heart rate monitors. When you really have no competition I guess you just never have to work to improve anything in your product. Hopefully, someday soon, someone will come up with a better set-up and I can ditch that thing on Ebay. Cyclops? Anyone, please?

So on to the next idea. Curiak brought an old set of rollers with him for just such an occasion.

This, I thought, was going to be interesting: 4 inch wide tires on rollers.

For safety reason we did away with the handy Retul platform that rotates -- no need to introduce more potential energy into the situation -- and set the rollers up, quite literally, in the corner of the Studio. This way Mike had an "out" when it came to balancing and trying to stop - he could just lean into the wall. Also, placing the front wheel in contact with the wall in front, compensated for the bikes desire to run itself right off the rollers, especially as he tried to start pedaling.

There was plenty of inherent resistance in the tire/roller interface, so we were able to leave the tension belt off the rollers completely.

With the logistical hard part out of the way, all we had to do was hook him up to the Retul LED harness and test him out. No problem here except at the feet. Mike uses Lake winter shoes that are 8 sizes too big and puts in extra liners and vapor barriers (the funny looking loose gray "socks" you see in the pictures).

Finding landmarks of the ankle and toes was next to impossible, and the water-proofing gunk ("schmeg" according to Mike) all over his shoes made it difficult for the LEDs to stay in place.

(Wood screws help with traction when pushing a 150 pound bike into a headwind on glare ice)

Everything held up and after two back to back scans of his right side, we moved the whole set-up to the opposite wall and repeated the scans for his left side

So what we found was quite helpful. Here is an example of the Retul file from his right side.

We actually performed 5 different capture periods to get all the information we wanted. I determined, first, that his seat was much too low -- I could actually just look at him pedal early on in the fitting and see this, but the Retul really helps to quantify the asymmetries that a trained eye picks up. What the system was integral in picking up was that Mike sits off to the left of his saddle and with the left hip scooted forward as well. It was not severe - I have seen much worse positioning, but it was certainly worth paying attention to.

As I expected, Mike's lower extremities were very "quiet" even when pedaling with some effort. His knees tracked very little in the medial-lateral direction, and they did so only at about a 1 degree angle off the vertical. His hips had only minimal to moderate movement vertically as well. No surprise, since he often races many days in a row and has only had mild issues in the past.

After doing some further measurements on the bike it was determined that Mike's pedals were spaced unequally - his q-factor was increased on the right by a few millimeters. This was feeding into his current left-skewed hip position.

(Incidentally, Mike also noticed his rear wheel was 3 mm out of dish - this determination I left to him, since he is a master wheel builder and has built every wheelset I currently own. By correcting this, his bike will track better in the snow -- every little bit helps especially when the bike is loaded.)

Normally, given the deficits noted by the Retul system, I would think about spacing the clients left pedal out temporarily with some washers to provide for a better proprioception to both legs. ("Temporarily", because I don't believe in purely compensating for a functional deficit [Read here] ) Not a great idea for Mike's purposes - when you are riding for this long under the extreme cold conditions he'll face, you want to have as much interface with threaded surfaces as you can.

In this case, though, we are able to space the bottom bracket spindle back to center.

****

A brief detour.....

As the bike industry strives for narrower and narrower q-factors on their bikes (just about to the point now where it can be a detriment to the average cyclist), this bike fitting reinforces to me that we sometimes have to ask ourselves "Why?". Is a narrower q-factor better? For everyone? For anyone?

It is helpful to some, but my experience has been that about 3/4 of the cycling population does not benefit and are often harmed by it. You have to ask yourself,

"How does placing my feet closer together affect my back, hips and knees?"

"Are my ankles going to act differently?"

"In what foot position (off the bike) is my hip flexor going to be the most coordinated (to get out of the way of the downstroke of the opposite leg)?"

There are a number of proposed reasons for having narrow q-factors out there (on the inter-web and otherwise) and they smack of the same type of reasoning that has pervaded (and perverted) bike set-up and fit for years:

When we walk our feet have a narrow step width (they track in line with one another) then so should our feet on the pedals ..... the problem with this reasoning is 1. normal step width during gait is actually between 2 and 4 inches and 2. during gait one foot is completely unattached to the ground for slightly more than half the cycle.
measuring between the iliac crests (bumps on the front of our pelvis near the belt line) can give you an idea of what q-factor you should look for in a bike setup ..... we can't even guarantee an accurate seat height based solely on our inseam, so this one doesn't hold much water. It's like determining spoke length for a wheel by measuring the diameter of the rim -- it might get you in the general ballpark for the correct length, but there are numerous other factors to consider (like hub flange diameter, hub spacing, lacing pattern, etc)
most of the references I have read begin, "Logic suggests...." or "...it seems intuitive that... a narrow q-factor would be optimal." .... As someone with a scientific heart, I really cringe when I read pronouncements like this.

There is no research out there to tell us what is optimal, but what my years of bike fitting have taught me is that when we do get the research it will likely be very similar to the crank length argument (some articles show improvement with much longer cranks, some with much shorter - translation = everyone is different and needs to be addressed individually). Many asymmetries see improvement with spacing the pedal out - I see it help every day.

One point I will stipulate is that a narrow q-factor makes pedaling out of the saddle easier since you don't have to leverage the handlebars as much since less bike "rocking" is necessary.

A narrow q-factor often "pinches" the biomechanical cycle, rendering many cyclists more inefficient. The simple case of Mike's (and many other's) bike, makes a simple argument that you shan't spontaneously combust if you have a wider stance on the bike. (It may even help.)

****

A computational error when he was outfitting the bike with a new seat led to the low saddle height, and when we changed both these things, his symmetry improved significantly.

All told, it was a worthwhile endeavor -- the changes we made were small (as they so often are), but 10 years of doing this has taught me that even small changes can make a dramatic difference for a "normal" cyclist. For Mike, dialing it's absolutely critical.

We were finished, and none too soon... within a 48 hours the bike was broken down, packed up, and on it's way to Alaska.

Happy riding (and pushing) Mike.

Bike Fit: change the bike or the body?

2009-02-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

I am writing this to elucidate further my thoughts on bike fitting and how it can successfully be accomplished. I always learn anytime I write.

Undoubtedly, this whole post (along with my entire thought process with regard to fitting bikes) stems from my education and clinical work as a physical therapist.

When I browse the internet or talk with bike fitters (from all over the world), most of the time I am a bit surprised that most bike fittings are approached as static events. A rider comes in, position is assessed as "off", position is altered to make them "neutral", said rider goes off to ride their bike happily ever after. I have just found this to not be true to how the human body acts or how cyclists progress (or digress).

First of all, we all have asymmetries. Some greater than others. Bicycles, if constructed well, are nearly perfectly symmetrical. So if you try to take this asymmetric person and plop them on a symmetric bike, the ball of twine begins to unravel. Obviously the bike doesn't move much -- a seat may become depressed on one side from increased pressure of a sit bone, for example -- but our body drapes itself on the bike any way it can to exert maximum force through the pedals for the longest period possible.

A common demonstration of this is when a cyclist's right sit bone sits too far right of center on the saddle and it also sits further forward on the saddle than the left. This leads to the right knee being further forward relative to our pedal, meaning this right leg "acts" longer while the left is now functionally shortened. The body wants to keep the head facing directly forward so a counter-rotation occurs through the spine, and since the hands are forced to be in the same place the left shoulder blade has to elevate and the left shoulder is flexed to a greater degree.

The above is a common and very clean demonstration of how an asymmetric sitting position can translate up and down the body. Unfortunately things aren't always this "clean." At times a body part may not be oriented how you'd expect it (i.e. if both knees sat in opposite positions to those described above despite hard evidence of a right anterior and lateral sit bone position), but this is another post for another time.

So now you have assessed all these joints and how they are positioned, it's important to try to figure out where these alignment issues are coming from. If you don't know what the root cause is for them, you can't correct them. Many people do have structural or "fixed" deformities -- a longer right tibia, an anteverted hip, a scoliosis in the spine -- but I have found that most are quite small -- less than a quarter of all leg length discrepancies are greater than 1 cm.

(Incidentally, the ONLY way to get a true measurement of a leg length difference is to have full length leg X-rays done and have the radiologist take measurements off that. Anyone who looks at you in standing or takes measurements with a tape measure and then tells you with certainty you have a 2.2 cm leg length difference is blowing smoke - it can't be done; not well at least.)

More often than not, most of the deficits and asymmetries I come across are functional in nature. This means they aren't related to underlying bony deformities. For example, most of the leg length differences I find are related to tight hip musculature, or a tight sacro-iliac (SI) joint. Differences of up to 2 inches can be perceived with the standard assessments, but it is clear from further investigation that the femur or tibia are not off by this large margin. If we correct the underlying problem -- by mobilizing their SI, for instance -- often their "leg length difference" disappears. This same phenomenon can be seen in just about any joint in the body:

- one rotator cuff can be significantly more restricted than another causing a discrepancy in how far that arm can reach in a given direction,

-one hip flexor may be inhibited (neuromuscularly) causing a difference in step length during walking.

The possibilities are endless.

So you might think, "what does it matter if a difference is functional or structural. It's still a difference and should be adjusted for." I can appreciate this line of thinking. It does make some sense....until, you realize that a functional discrepancy can be CHANGED. It can get better. If you are willing to work at it a little bit then it can cease to be a problem .

You have a functional leg length difference due to a tight psoas muscle, and this causes you to sit unequally on your bike. You lengthen the psoas through a stretching regimen and over time you can begin to sit squarely on the seat again (and get rid of that saddle sore in the process).

The other problem with adjusting or compensating for a functional difference is that, left alone, they will get worse. When we have a deficit, say a tight right hip flexor, it affects how we do other tasks, like while running it can increase the amount we rotate our trunk to the left to balance ourselves as we stride. This becomes a functional deficit in trunk right rotation. These patterns develop synchronously and they feed into one another. Meaning, one leads to another, one worsens and leads the other to worsen.

Long story short: if you take a functional limitation and leave it alone (you don't stretch or strengthen the area appropriately) it will get worse.

This may be a good time to explain the difference between Correction and Compensation.

A correction is taking the deficit or underlying problem and working to fix or remedy it to return the body to a previous standard of function.

A compensation is accepting a deficit and working on other avenues to work around the deficit and return the body to as close to the previous standard of function as possible.

For example, when a right-handed person has a stroke leaving the right arm paralyzed, the rehabilitation therapist has to make a decision: should they work on returning function to the right arm (correction) or work on teaching the left hand to do all the things the right hand did (like eat, write, drive etc.)?

So to get back to the realm of bike fitting....

Again most of the deficits that present themselves during bike fits are functional, not structural. They can be corrected to at least some degree.

Most bike fittings done are adjusting and tweaking the bike to correct for these functional deficits, which is fine except almost no attention s payed to how the rider can affect their body to help it fit their bike better.

So most bike fits are compensating for (rather than correcting) functional deficits. The glaring problem here is that these functional deficits are likely to get worse and the changes made to tghe bike will no longer be adequate.

Without working on our problem areas, we fit our bikes worse every year.

So, what's the answer?

I think it's clear that we need to adjust the bike to make it more comfortable during a fitting, but equal time needs to be paid to instructing the client on how they can ensure that their bike will fit them well for years to come.

New technology

2009-02-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

In the past year I have invested in some new technology for bike fitting. It is the Retul System from the guys in Boulder. This is the same system you have seen on www.cyclingnews.com and velonews.com showing fittings of various athletes (like Christian VandeVelde, Tim DeBoom, and Craig Alexander among others).

Prior to this I had been doing very comprehensive (they really resembled physical therapy evaluations quite a lot) bike fittings, but the Retul system added a very important aspect: objective measurement.

You see, when you evaluate movement in a dozen people a day (or more) for 10+ years you get really good at picking out asymetries. (I was told in PT school that it would take about 4 years to REALLY begin to know what you were doing and what you were looking at - and they were right - but more on that later) I can't help it anymore, it is second nature to me, like it is to many therapists, that I watch everyone walk and I evaluate their gait. It's like a reflex now. I'll be riding down Main Street and, there is a lady with a weak hip abductor, there's a teenage girl with hypermobile knee joints; that guys left hip flexor is too tight -- you get the idea.

With the Retul, I can take all those things I can *see* - like a knee doing a small figure-8, a mid-foot pronating,a shoulder elevating, a hip dropping or just sitting too far forward - and it quantifies them for me. It tells me *how much* for just about every measurement I could ever want or need. This really takes the guess-work out of deciding how much to correct (how many cleat shims, how much to raise/lower the seat, and more importantly, how much the client needs to do [read as exercises] to help themselves to continue to fit their bike.)

The best part of the system (for me) besides the fact it is so accurate, is that it does nothing to tell you how to fix the problem. To do this would be an attempt at turning the whole process formulaic. Yuck! Especially to a physical therapist, *formulaic* is a dirty word. I firmly believe that individuals are just that...individuals, and what may be acceptable for one person may be completely inappropriate for another, and vice versa. I realize that many people doing bike fits do not feel the same way - something to tell them what to do is exactly what they are looking for and what they would invest in. This tells me that they don't know what they are doing and/or do not have the background to make sound decisions on an individual basis.

Rest assured, you will hear more and more about the Retul system in weeks and months to come. I will share specific examples and data when I'm able.

Thanks for reading.

-J

The Commuter

2009-02-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

This is the commuter. It's a Surly Big Dummy. It weighs 52# - unloaded - but it lets me carry everything I need (up to 200#). I can even transport other bikes. Sweet.

The Statement

2009-02-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

I thought a while before deciding to start this site. I don't want this to turn into a bunch of verbal diarrhea where I spout vitriole or mundane daily occurences. (I had enough of that in the cycling forums)

My hope is that I can use this as a cathartic documentation of the things I have been passionate (in my professional life) about the last decade or so. Those things are:

Bike fitting
physical therapy and training
bicycle commuting

I am a physical therapist by trade and have been performing bike fits for the better part of the last 10 years (I have been a PT for 12 years).

Some things (about bikes) that I believe:

Bikes should be a primary means of transportation. Period.
PTs, ATCs, Biomechanists (MS or higher), sports medicine physicians are better equipped than just about anyone else to properly fit you to your bike.
Stock bike manufacturers are dropping the ball with respect to bike fit when they spec the geometry for their frames.

More, of course, on all of this later. But welcome and happy riding.