Do as your mother says and sit straight!

Bicycles are symmetric, carefully designed objects......sometimes as meticulously crafted as aerospace parts.  It is this symmetry that ensures they handle well and are balanced.    Most carbon bikes are made from moulds and so the integrity and alignment of the rear dropouts, the seat tube, and the head tube is maintained at all costs with these clamshell-like devices.  Welded metal bikes are assembled on expensive jigs that ensure the same alignment.  From there, fork steerer tubes, stems, and handlebars are equally symmetric.

All of this is done to make sure that a rider's weight is draped evenly over the bike.  That way the left hand is the same distance from the frame as the right, as are the knees, hips, and shoulders.

Balanced body makes for a balanced rider.  Makes sense, right?  It stands to reason that your body is bisected by the bike itself.  It sounds logical, but unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, it's not true.

The truth is that while our hands and feet are placed symmetrically on the bike (the right and left foot are situated on the pedals in nearly exactly the same spot on opposite sides of the center-line of the bike and same goes for the hands), roughly 75% of the population does not sit square on their saddle -- meaning we are shifted off to one side of the saddle, so effectively our hips, knees, and likely our shoulders are skewed to one side.  On-the-bike infrared measurements (Retul) make discovering this fairly easy as long as you know what you're looking at.

To further complicate the matter, a large portion of riders sit with one hip further forward, but that's another article for another time.

[I know there are some of you out there asking "a leg length discrepancy can cause that, right?...can't that be the culprit of this skewed sitting posture?"  Sometimes, but not as often as you'd think.  You see often (I don't have firm numbers on this one, but in my experience about 50% of the time) a rider's leg length discrepancy doesn't come through on the bike as you'd expect it to -- i.e. a longer right leg should "push" the rider to the left so that the shorter left leg can more easily reach the pedals.   Chalk this up to not being able to rely on simple mechanics when you're talking about pedaling a bike since no other task involves being attached to a machine in five spots as well as the more complicated neurological process mentioned below.]

How to remedy the derriere shift?

Since the bike won't accommodate us by having the saddle placed off to the side (moving the seat off-center so that it's under the skewed hips) we have to find a way to bring the rider back closer to being aligned with the bike.

In order to come up with a proper fix, we need to know why most of us can't keep our butt on the saddle squarely.  The answer lies deep within our brain, where our most basic motor impulses come from.  You see most of us, despite whether we're right or left handed are "wired" to favor our right side.  So most (in the ballpark of 60%-70%) of those riders shifted off to one side of their saddle are shifted to the right.

First inclination would be to just force yourself to sit towards the center -- if the infrared shows you're in fact sitting to the right then you could just consciously sit further to the left.  And off you go, right?  Well, no.  Problem is that conscious corrections really don't get you very far because you can't "attend" to this left-sitting posture for an entire ride and you'll end up gravitating back to the right especially as you work harder on challenging terrain.  You've done very little to change the motor plan and so the problem will persist.

No, the best and lasting way to fix this is to get the weak side engaged more.  Again, more of us are wired right-dominant and we're likely to never fully change this but if we can make a small improvement in the weak side's proprioception, strength, and/or coordination we'll make a dent in the problem.

Most of my client's leave their bike fit appointment with a combination of fixes to work on the problem.   Often these include some drills (on and off the bike) to improve the weak side's coordination -- even some dry land balance exercises can occasionally make an impact.  Flexibility work may help improve the ease of  the pedal stroke and make a small impact.  Most often, and in my experience most effective, are cleat position changes to improve the weak side's proprioception -- literally how that side senses and feels the pedal and pedal-stroke.

In all these ways we can engage that weak side and the result is then the rider begins to gravitate more toward the center of the bike.  The rider won't just pop right back to dead center on that first bike fit, nor should we shoot for that.  I usually shoot for a 30%-40% shift back toward center that first day -- getting more than that increases the chances of us over-correcting and creating a problem elsewhere.

A recent bike fit showed that the client was shifted to the right so their overall deviation from the center was in the 72-74 mm range (meaning that their right side was measured roughly 36 mm further from their centerline and the left side was around 36 mm towards their centerline.  After a few changes on the bike, including some cleat changes that 72-74 mm deviation was down to 47-49 mm.  Not perfect but better.  From there I can instruct the rider on exercises that are tailored to their particular deficits in order to keep the rider working on their imbalances.

Once the client leaves and does their first 10-12 rides in this position their affected soft tissues (muscles, tendons, fascia, etc.) will have an easier time progressively adjusting to this new posture because we didn't try to over-correct them the first time.

When client's follow up after about a dozen rides it's most common to see that they are now about 70% improved in their alignment.  Usually if they didn't make any progress from here they would still be in good shape....it's unlikely we'd make someone 100% symmetric on the bike anyway but negative stresses on the body are limited long before the 70% threshold.

If you have aches and pains on the bike and you're not sure where they come from or if you just want to make sure you're not losing any efficiency being off kilter, then come in to get checked out.

Sometimes you can see some of this shift just from looking at a rider's hips from behind.  Have any pictures that show you or a riding buddy sitting off-center?  Send them in here.

Musings about credentials for bike fitting

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.