What's the Best Stem Height for You? 2 Easy to Follow Bike Fit Tips

i often get people who come into the studio and they say hey coach i want to get faster please slam my stem that'll help me get aero boom and i'll keep up with everybody in my group okay in this video i want to not dispel that rumor not stop you slamming your stem but i want to give you some advice that i don't often see on the internet that may be the opposite to what you're thinking okay you are unique absolutely unique even if you have similarities in age height belly leg length what favorite color you share with someone it doesn't matter you are unique and you have to understand that every bite fit has to take on board that uniqueness so from your flexibility and that doesn't mean oh i'm old i'm not as flexible as someone who's young i see plenty of young people who have got the flexibility of the tin man or terminator rather than stretch armstrong it is about where you are today and what strengths you have and how these align themselves with your goals and your riding style and the events that you're going to do riding a crit is not the same as going out for a leisurely 100 mile ride with a group of friends so there are changes that you can make but i want you not to follow particular trends that you think oh well it makes them faster it'll make me faster you're ready to get into the video and show you okay let me get on the bike and we'll go through a couple of points that really do make a difference okay that was quite a big intro let's get into the video but you get a point yeah this is going to help now before i dive on actually i want to share with you a couple of concepts i want you thinking about now please this video is soft touch i'm going through things in a basic way but i want to give you some real value okay so hey if it does give you value hit that subscribe button over 70 percent of people that watch my videos aren't subscribed it does really help the channel and it allows youtube to talk to the rest of the world so help me out okay so first thing i want you to do is think of your hands and your head they form a triangle we all know what a triangle is and this triangle is going to create an area a surface area that's going to hit the moving air that's traveling to us and the fitter you get the faster you go the faster you go the more effect this air will have on you so don't give me all that oh i'm not really interested in getting aero or going faster yes you are because every time you turn up on your bike you're getting fitter and fitness is fastness fastness is that a word okay so be thinking about that the next thing i want you thinking about not whether your bum looks big in your lycra but everything that runs up the posterior chain the back of your body ligaments tendons muscles okay now you might shout at me and say oh i haven't got much flexibility coach i don't give a okay i don't care about your flexibility plenty of young people walk about like the tin man if i only had a no that's the line isn't it anyway you know what i mean it's not necessarily flexibility i'm getting back into that point that very few people talk about the unique you okay you are unique so you've got to understand what sort of range of flexibility you've got so triangle posterior chain okay right okay so now we're on the bike and we're thinking if we want to go lower so if we want to go lower with the stem what this normally does is it places people in a position where yes your hands are lower but what i want you thinking about now is the triangle what changes between the position of your hands and the height of your head great if you can get your head into a lower position but nine times out of ten i see riders they'll slam the stem go lower but the head stays the same they cannot reduce the height of their head and this is usually due to some flexible issues through posterior chain or the bike is actually too long for them and it is causing an issue yes certainly riding in the drops will decrease that reach but let's measure that triangle and here's how to do it i would always get my helmet on so pop your helmet on visor or glasses that's a preference that you can choose what indoors you naughty take them off right but get your helmet on now this is something that a lot of cyclists struggle with uh you need to have a friend okay you need someone to help you okay so what you're gonna do is you're gonna ride and you're going to start in your first position with your hoods in the normal height okay and what you're going to do is you'll look into the mirror and you'll get your friend yeah okay it could be the guy from amazon that's just delivered your special package and what you're going to do in the mirror is you're going to draw a point for left hand right hand and head and you're going to move around but get into the position that you ride at normally we create the triangle do the equation that'll pop up on the screen for the area of a triangle and there you've got your frontal area now what you then do move your stem down do your slime and start to measure and play around with it you might be surprised that you do not decrease that you actually increase the size because your head position okay now a couple of other things are happening there as well let me take off the helmet pop it down there now as we then go further down something really important happens with your arms when people slam and they go lower they usually end up with straight arms now these arms are like big columns now guess what i'm going to let you into a little secret new bikes have internal cable options aero bikes have them as well you ever wondered why that is thick and aerodynamics you understand that they're trying to make the bike more aerodynamic on the front end by hiding the cables mechanics nightmare behind the cables guess where your arms are now i know mine are only a little bit thicker than a cable but you might have big muscular arms by keeping them straight you create two huge pillars of resistance so no matter how much you're trying to hide in that wind sure your bar width is a big factor but that's another video you know what my thoughts are on bar with narrow okay but if you've got these straight arms because you've gone so low because there is no way that you can bend your arm now you're going to think about what is the most aero position on a bike well look for the fastest riders time trials time trialists they're in a position whereby the front end supports their arms their hips are sometimes 100 plus millimeters further forward on the train trial bike because we're supporting our arms can you get into position whereby you deflect air better by having a bent arm position so i will ride in a position whereby my bike fits me i'm 5 foot 10 i've never ridden over 52. 53 i can ride with with 100 stem but most people say oh i'm a 56 and i'm the same height as you your bike's too big it's too long you've got to be snug on the front so by having these bent arms and really loose remember the billy joelle fingers i can deflect air now here's a thought for you what a cyclist shave the legs okay why well that's because everybody else does you can hide your legs with arrow socks and you can tuck your legs in some people have got big muscular arms and they're heavier than a gorilla now i'm not saying shave your arms that's just going too far come on you've got a date you maybe just started tinder or something and you don't want to be going with shaved arms but what i'm saying is think of your arms as something that needs to get more aero okay so experiment with the area of the triangle okay this next part is quite complex and again i don't see this a lot on the internet it's to do with muscle contractions so i want you thinking of these two fibers the actin and the myosin they slide over each other and it's basically called sliding filament theory now the contraction okay when it hooks and holds this gives us this contractual strength so if you think about the sliding action let's say most riders are going to have a knee angle let's say for arguments say between 30 and 40 degrees it does change some pros are under 30 and some are much higher and it'll all depend on the width of your hip the strength of your gluteal muscles size of your calves your flexibility etc lots of factors let's not slow things down here but what i want you thinking about is if you go lower on the front think about what i said at the start with the posterior chain as we go lower what happens is no matter what the reach is we stretch the posterior chain so think about the contraction contact space that the muscle has by changing the angles we potentially have less contractual surface area think about that okay if it's like velcro we produce a weaker contraction or something that's not going to be allowed to give us more power so i see this a lot in riders they get sometimes i call it a dysfunctional muscle contraction through the quadricep through the gastrocnemius even through the glute they'll suffer from things like cramp or fatigue and one particular muscle and they'll say hey coach i didn't used to get this on my gravel bike i'm only getting it now on this new aero bike it's a front end decrease that stretching posterior chain and it's changing the angles and it's changing that muscle contractual functionality it sounds complex i'm trying to make it simple but if you think about it in your head as having large surface area for velcro harder to pull apart less surface area for the velcro easier to pull apart i see lots of riders jump onto a tt bike and tell me hey coach i can't actually produce as much power on my tt bike as i can on my road bike guess what they're suffering from yeah it's too low on the front end but they've mainly got their saddle in the wrong position so here's my tip for you try to go higher measure the spatial area on a mirror then work on your saddle position so i would often get a rider to get the correct height for the saddle the correct forward position and then decide whether you need a long nose or a short nose saddle the short nose shadow will allow you to roll off the front better in that aggressive form of position but think about the aerodynamics if you've got those straight arms you've got more exposure to your chest and it's this that's going to block and jam the wind and slow you down so the fitter you get you're not necessarily going that much faster because you're hitting that critical point where wind resistance is having a much bigger effect you are like a dog with his head out of a window okay so my overall take on it is over 90 of riders should be increasing the stack height they should be trying to get their hands and their head closer together this will allow posterior chain to be in a much more positive position to produce power and it will also increase comfort so bent arms more arrow closer to head straight arms like two bloody big pillars that are catching more wind than a windmill okay hey folks i hope that's helped if it's added value give it a thumbs up you want to know more about this type of content hey come and join me on patreon or join me on the live stream every monday night maybe get your question answered you shape the future where the channel's going and we are growing so get in on the party now hey folks it's been fun i hope that's helped don't slam your stem put it up and you might even go faster speak to you soon and remember anyone can train hard there's only a few that can train smart okay it's hot in here for a scotsman anything above 60 degrees is hot i think it's about 63 degrees in here oh super hot [Music] you

Channel: Bulletproof Cycling

Views: 211,867

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Id: KDfOcaPZYdQ

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022