How to Perform a Simple Bike Fit (at Home)

so welcome back to the 32nd edition of the rca training tip show where today i'm joined again by expert bike fitter neil stanbury who's been fitting road cyclists for 10 years in conjunction with being a sports physiotherapist in today's video neil is going to run through a complete bike fit as in if you were to try and fit yourself at home this is how you would go about it and look i've had a ton of requests on the channel from you the audience to do this video today as many people don't have access to good bike fitters in their area and also the covert situation around the world has made things a little tricky so neil is going to run through a sequence of critical bike fitting touch points step by step and while outlining each critical touch point i'll provide info cards that will pop up here so as neil is talking about specific topics so click position saddle height saddle fore and aft and also handle bars you can deep dive on those specific topics by clicking on the pop-up that comes on the screen here and i'll also provide links to those videos below now i do have some channel news to share with everybody and i wanted to do that in this video today but just sorting through some finer details i'm going to share this channel news with you just after christmas and before we get into today's video a few months ago i had a bit of a pipe dream to see if i could hit 100 000 subscribers on the channel before the end of the year i know it's probably not going to happen but they say christmas is a time for giving so if you get value from this video today i know there's a ton of people out there that watch these videos that don't subscribe please hit that subscribe button below and let's get into the video yeah yeah you want this to be a 12 minute video yeah 15 minutes max come back in three hours this is a tough one to condense it down so look the massive amount of caveats at the start of this one this will be a really oversimplified kind of process which i guess by necessity it has to be um because there's as a home sort of as a person who's trying to sort themselves out at home it has to be overly simple you just the degree of you know minita of things that we go into when you're there in my clinic for three hours you're never going to be able to replicate that at home but if you wanted to get yourself roughly close yes what i would suggest you do you will need a stationary trainer and your bike obviously if possible some form of video recording because it's not ideal to rely just upon what you're feeling humans of you know cognitive bias and and and uh you know self-awareness of body position and motion is not equal among everyone some people have got great body awareness and they can sense a two millimeter shim under their right foot and i met a bloke last night who couldn't feel the difference between no shim and a 14 millimeter shim underneath his shorter leg so you know it's um it's highly variable you know how how well the person be able to sense it so some form of video even if it's just your your other half with a camera phone is worth doing so there's there's three kind of areas like basic areas where you want to break this down you start with the things that you can control relatively easily off the bike which is the shoe start and so sort out the foot the cleat position primarily then the pelvis then the hands in that order yeah and i don't always fit people in this order if their drop is clearly 50 millimeters too low or too high that'll be the first thing i'll change right i tend to start with the biggest problems and work my way down to the smallest problems but if you're trying to do at home at home a sequence is a good thing to be able to work through first thing to do roughly set your cleat position right if the cleats too far forward on the shoe or way too far back or something like that it'll throw off other problems up into the position which you'll be unable to rectify and this we can do this before you even get on the bike so we'll use your little splice bit of footage from how i uh found your cleat position and and set it and measured it on the day but essentially find the joint line between your big toe and the rest of your foot just stick your fingernail into it once you've found it mark it with a pen use your right foot for this if your feet are different sizes don't worry yet that's a bit too far beyond the scope of this video but you use it base it off your right foot find the joint line mark it with a bit of pen and then tape a cable end or a little bolt or you know a little section of a pen or something to it so that you've got a lump which you can feel through the shoe slide the foot into the shoe and then put it i put a bit of tape over the shoe and just just mark it with a pen or a pencil so you've then translated where your big toe joint is relative to the shoe right take the cleat off the shoe and i know the cleat is still on this one but we're not going to dismantle your shoes for this take the cleat off the shoe and put it on a flat surface right so your shoe will be flat like that use a business card business cards are ideal for this because they're a set square which can bend to conform around the shape of your shoe so stick it on a level surface line it up with your mark that you've got and translate that mark using a pen just draw a line down on the on the tape that you've put on the shoe draw a line vertically down onto the sole of the shoe and you'll and it'll it'll you know come out somewhere there right and then use a ruler and figure out roughly how far behind that point the middle of your cleat position is now speed players have got a little line on the base plate shimano cleats have got a tiny little notch on the side of the clip you might have to show some footage there if you can find it if someone's zooming in a bit hard to find and measure how far behind the center of your cleat is relative to your big toe joint as a rough rule of thumb if you've got a size 38 foot aim for 10 millimeters if you've got a size 40 foot aim for 14 millimeters if you've got a size 42 which a lot of people will have that 42 43 44 range aim for about 15 16 17 millimeters with the center of the behind that mark right don't worry about the rotational position yet that's beyond the scope of the video okay even the lateral position is something that's not easy to you know it's all about q factors and so forth so bit beyond the scope set them up the same unless your two feet are totally different sizes in which case you may want the left and the right one to be staggered as a test if your right foot's five mil longer than your left you might want to try running the right cleat further forward on the shoe by five mils you can try it both ways half the people with a foot size difference will function better with their cleats staggered and half of them won't yeah so it's worth trying both ways just to see what the symmetry sensation is like so once you've got the cleat four and a half position roughly right rig up yourself on the bike clip in have a bit of a pedal the seat height and the setback are the next two things to look at the center of rotation of the crank here and your pedals going around like this how high and how far back behind the bottom bracket do you want the saddle to be this is this is one of those tricky things a good way of doing it is to set the seat height with a combination of two things one is using the techniques that we described in that seat height video lowering the seat and to to a very low position and then creeping it up until the pedal stroke starts to feel a bit choppy and strange on one of your legs or both of the legs and then just come very slightly below that on the video that you're going to shoot you know with your with your iphone or your camera phone you should see a smooth controlled leg extension you don't want to see the person's knee or your knee they want to see your knee chopping at the bottom of the stroke and losing control of the stroke you want to see a smooth motion of the knee back and forth sort of sort of almost like a metronome you want to see a smooth transition of the quadricep pushing down extending the knee and the glute and then the hamstring just controlling the bottom of the stroke smoothly and and those the transition between those two things should be smooth if it starts to get choppy the seat is probably too high so you want to stay just a little bit underneath that now mixed into there is the setback if the seat is too far forward you'll you'll you know yeah this is a hard one to judge because you don't know where the front end front end is yet if it's way too far out the seat will feel like it's way too far forward and all this kind of stuff um but you want to see you know that that old thing the plumb bob kind of trick if your knee is roughly over the center of the pedal um you know on the downstroke you're kind of you're in the ballpark it can be still 40 mil off right so i guess it's not it's a pretty it's a pretty big ballpark but what you then want to do is is once the seat height is pretty close to where you want it you think you've got control of the stroke start moving the seat forward and back and have a feel of what it does to your hands primarily and also secondarily to your pedal stroke when the seat's too far forward if it's at the right height you'll start to feel really quad dominant you know you'll you'll feel like you're way out over the pedal there'll be a lot of weight on your hands probably a sign that the seat's too far forward if it's way too far back you'll feel really light on your hands but you'll feel really hamstring heavy and the stroke will feel like you're not kind of getting over the top of the stroke and pushing down solidly on the pedal that kind of stomp you know that push down that should feel nice and strong you'll start to lose that when the seat is too far back so what sort of pressure should somebody be riding while they're testing these yeah that's good good question somewhere around your 30 20 30 minute it should be done at a decent tempo yeah if they're cruising along at 50 watts um it's it everything will feel heavy on the hands because there's going to be more weight on your hands when you're cruising than when you're going hard um so yeah you should be pedaling at a decent clip when you're doing this yeah and bear in mind you move the seat back the seat is getting further away from the crank so as it goes back you might have to you might feel oh the pedal stroke feels a bit choppy again i have to lower it a bit yeah or if it goes forward you might have to raise it a little bit and somewhere in a diagonal kind of plane there you'll reach hopefully some kind of equilibrium where the weight to the front end feels not too bad you feel like you're getting over the top of the pedal stroke quite well and pushing down quite strongly but you've also got full control of the stroke and you feel at a decent load you feel like there's a bit of hamstring load going on through the through the bottom section of the power phase of the stroke the hamstring is controlling the stroke quite nicely and you feel like you're in balance there's no number that you can use you can't say oh i'm this tall my legs are that long this is the number where i'm going to start just start with the seat low creep it up like we spoke about in the other video until it feels roughly right and then start varying it and trust in your judgment you know you go forward and you feel too heavy you're probably too far forward you know if you go back and you start feeling strange like you're not over the top of the pedal on the downstroke at that three o'clock position you're pushing down strongly it's probably too far back so trust in your judgment and use the video of yourself as well if you if you you stick it up on a big screen and you go wow gee i look way forward i've got i've got my elbows locked heaps of weight on my hands the seat's probably too far forward and you know you'll because because the people that are doing this at home haven't they don't have my experience of looking at a thousands of riders from the site they won't be able to immediately trust their judgment on what they see they're probably better off going off what they feel as a judgment call but if you've if you've got a good idea you know what what a good competent cyclist is supposed to look like on a bike you can use the visual indicator of the footage to say oh wow i look i look really far back you know i look really stretched out or something like that um but but that's fraught with danger because wha what looks good to one person might look bad to the next and so forth and that kind of visual ability to to troubleshoot a position based upon what it looks like in the first 30 seconds of looking at a person is something that takes a lot of experience so yeah it's probably best to go off what you feel but also then verify that on the footage so you've got a situation where you've got your seat height and you're set back roughly right and we're talking five millimeter ranges it's pretty close to where it should be the cleat position is pretty normal everything's going well you're feeling pretty good at this point you then judge the hand position right so you will have hopefully found a situation where your torso with everything in roughly the right place your torso is nicely balanced at that 20-minute load you've you've got a situation where you can cantilever your torso out from your pelvis with very little load on your hands or very little projection of your shoulders forward or you know shelves are being pushed up that kind of thing and then all you want to do is place the hood in a position and an arc of rotation so it can be either high and a bit longer or short and a bit shorter somewhere within an arc which can span it can be quite a big arc for some people but it's usually a 20 ml arc of of reach and drop somewhere in an arc there you'll have a situation where your hand is on the hood your elbow has bent you know 20 30 degrees it's it's relaxed is the point it's not locked out you look at this is where the video footage can help if your scapulas are being pushed forwards they're being projected forwards it often but not always means the bars are too far away okay so the rider will unconsciously do this to make their reach longer what you ideally want is a more neutral shoulder position if you're seeing this they're probably too far away so shorten them bring them closer to you once you start to see the weight and you feel the weight come off the riders hands their elbows are starting to bend at that 20 minute threshold load then start varying the height of the bars you know don't be afraid to just just go down just drop it all the way down and see what it feels like if you drop it all the way down and you think oh i've got a lot less weight on my hands there don't don't immediately assume that having the bars low on the bike on the front of the bike is is more aggressive let's say that you've got short legs and you might need you might need very little seat post extension out of the frame out of the frame because your seat height is quite low if you've got short legs and a long torso you may need to run the bars slammed on a race geometry road bike with possibly even a 17 degree stem just to get a reasonable amount of drop to the bars if you're highly flexible there's a pretty good chance you're going to need drop which will exceed 100 millimeters you know with the highest point of the seat down to the center of the bar so don't be afraid to drop it right down and just just try it if it feels lighter on your hands and balanced and happy and you and your shoulders are relaxed and your elbows aren't you know locking out it's it's not you know there's no reason not to ride like that if it's comfortable so the the drop number you know how high the bars should be relative to the seat it varies dramatically and there's you can't say well i'm this tall and and i'm that flexible so i need 120 mils of drop it just it varies too much and arm length varies so look for the weight on the hands look for the shoulders to not be projecting out if they're projecting up it often means that the bars are too high because you're trying to sort of unconsciously drop your torso down between your shoulder blades if you're really just heavy on the hands and they're pushing back it often means the bars are far too close to you right so play around with the front end um and and you know if if you find that you feel more comfortable riding in the drops it's probable that the bars are too high so don't be afraid to drop them down you know last last night for example i i met a 60 year old bloke who was pretty inflexible he you know he had bad posture all this kind of stuff the guy functioned best with 125 mils of drop to the bars which is quite a lot it's it's 30 mils more than i run 35 mils more than i run and i'm 20 30 years younger than the guy and more flexible and he had long arms and he he bent forwards on a bike relatively well deceptively well given his lack of flexibility so don't be sort of pigeonholed thinking i'm 60 years old i'll i'll have to run 50 mils of drop to the bars or you know i'm i'm a i'm a lean mean gymnast and i need to run 200 mils of drop to the bars it you know it's it's highly variable depending upon a lot of things which you can't measure and shouldn't bother measuring on the person like arm length and stuff like this you just have to judge it off the posture of the rider and how they feel you're looking for a relaxed elbow position no projection of the shoulders forward back up or down they should be relaxed and very little weight on the hands and and just experiment with it it's one of the easiest things to change just oh just drop the bars low you know take the top cap off lower the bars 20 mil and just see if it feels better or worse and experimentation with the front end once you've got the back end pretty close you should be able to isolate out the two to two different sensations you know because you drop the bars and it does change the position of the rider's pelvis and all this kind of stuff so if you make a huge change to the front end you may need to alter the rear end secondarily to that yes yeah so imagine you you you decide that you want to run your bars 30 millimeters lower because you found out that that's where you feel the lightest on your hands as you do that most riders will roll their pelvis further forward on the seat which brings the pivot point of the hip forward and down relative to the crank so the seat may need to go up and back slightly when the bars go down yeah so once you've got the front end pretty close go back and tweak the rear end using the same techniques that we just described if you've made a big change yeah if you've made a five millimeter change to the front end it's it's not going to be enough to make a big difference to the back but if you drop the front 30 mil you're gonna need to probably go up and back a little bit on the rear compared to when the bars were higher it's like a jigsaw puzzle it's all it's all linked yeah it's part of the fun yeah so look those are the three the three things and these this is like a dramatic oversimplification and there's so many holes in these things that i could pick even with my own argument but if you're trying to do it yourself you know judge it off mostly what it feels like but don't be afraid to use a bit of footage you know you get you get your other half to fill me and go gee i'm really losing control of the stroke there maybe i should try lowering the seat you know or or wow i'm dropping my heels ridiculously i should try running a more rearward click position here you can reference back to that video we did on cleat position yes um you know so you could you can tweak it within those within those uh parameters if you think if you look at your footage of yourself and think i'm a bit of an oddball i look a bit weird in that way or you know i'm way too stretched out it doesn't feel too stretched out but i look like i'm projecting my shoulders forward and locking my elbows try running a shorter stem 20 mil shorter just see if it feels better you know borrow one from your mate and chuck it on and see how it feels and um yeah hopefully with a bit of experimentation devote a couple of hours to it you know most people don't even do this is jump on their bike and ride and you know tweak it occasionally here and there but sit yourself down with a trainer and devote a bit of time to it because it is it is worth doing getting it roughly right it'll dramatically limit your chance of injuries and you know hugely improve your comfort if you're a long way off where you should be you

Channel: Cam Nicholls

Views: 943,757

Keywords: bike fit, how to perform a bike fit, saddle height, saddle fore aft, handlebar reach, cleat position, global cycling network

Id: vMmbXAWcgh4

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/BizNasty57]

Great video with a guy that clearly knows his stuff. Getting a true bike fit was some of the best bike related money I’ve spent.

[u/[deleted]]

Simple bike fit at home.

But then talking about watss... yeah I dont' think this is for folk who dont' have a meter.

Is there a better video aimed at folk who don't do any of that number watching crap and wanna just have a good fit?