Real-World Bike Fit Session for Maximum Comfort and Performance

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Expert Bike fitter Neill Stanbury recently gave one of our RCA athletes, Glenda, a bike fit. Glenda has had a few problems occurring with saddle discomfort and asymmetry. Watch along to see Neill work his magic!

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Glender welcome to the bike food Clinic we’re here today to solve a couple of symmetry based issues you’ve got have a look at you on the bike what we’re going to be doing here guys is running you through some of the process of what we do in our fitting sessions just because

There seems to be a lot of interest in this stuff in the YouTube comments which I’m always surprised at people like watching me work for some reason so we’re going to try and solve some issues that Glenda’s got she’s getting a little bit of right VMO insertion pain so her

Medior quadricep on the right leg is getting overloaded and she has also noticed that her power meters she’s using for veros her power meter splits about 4852 sometimes out to 4654 so she’s getting these two issues uh a little bit of shoulder and neck discomfort but what we’re mostly

Interested in and we’ll try and get rid of your neck discomfort as well but what we’re interested in is the asymmetry here because this is always the most complex part of the bike fitting process so I’ll run you through our process I guess of how we would look at these

Things the first thing we’re going to do is look at glender off the bike in some detail and try and formulate some ideas after looked at you of what might be the trigger for this problem so we’re going to look for things like leg length discrepancies asymmetries in your muscle

Bulk postural issues flexibility problems anything like that so that when we stick you on the bike and we see the the the planarity issue in your pelvis or the overextension of one leg or whatever is going on we have some ideas about where to start fixing it yeah so

We’ll see what we find guys and hopefully this is an interesting case study for you and um yeah hopefully there’s some people out there that are interested in this stuff you might be ble to notice that Glenda has a slightly different vus angle on her right knee so

Basically the vus angle is a if you took a continuation of her femoral line down through her tibia this one flares out it kicks out slightly differently to the other one this leg is for all intents and purpose is a little bit straighter than this leg so this deviation of her

Right tibia I don’t know if that’s going to show up on the footage but that deviation could be a clue as to what’s causing the problem this could be the result of a bit of miniscus wear and tear on her lateral miniscus on the right or it could be a genetic thing or

It could be a bunch of other stuff but it is different on the right versus the left which will promote differential loads through the feet and also different muscle bulk and you can see that little bit of lateral deviation so it does flare out at the top a little

Bit at the very top of the stroke yeah and across the line of the pedal as you apply Force to the pedal probably a 20 mm deviation Y which is just enough to irritate your your medial quad okay so the bars are too high the reach is

Slightly shorter than it needs to be but that’s not a big problem the seats very fractionally further forward than it should be but it’s not bad let’s see if we can get a clue as to why this is happening the SE is a bit high so she just gets a little bit

Choppy through the bottom of the stroke as the load goes up so the seats just very fractionally too high I’m guessing on both Sid sides and the planarity problem in the pelvis does worsen as well so she drops her right hip forward worse under load go up three cogs and

Bring the Cadence down for me if you can glender so that you’re sort of grinding the gear out as if you were climbing a steep hill yeah now you can see it worse that lateral deviation of the knee out and across the line of the pedal gets a little bit worse under

Heavy load loc Cadence which it does for everyone so the question is why there’s a couple of possibilities for what this could be and I’m not sure exactly what it is yet but what we’re going to do is work our way through the different possibilities for what could

Be causing this one of them is Glend is her her Q angle increase as she’s got on the right side so she may require because of this different angulation of her tibia to her femur on the right hand side she may require a staggered Q factor to even that out which basically

Essentially means moving the right foot further away from the bike to keep the feers operating parallel to the center line of the bike we’ll test that theory we’re also going to look at arch support cuz this is one of the patterns that you see in an otherwise very symmetrical

Person if they’re dropping one hip forward with no particular logical causation behind it sometimes this is a foot stability problem so an arch support rear foot stability issue it could be that the cleat positions a little too far forward and she’s just not quite able to stabilize a dominant

Foot under heavy load but we’ll work our way through the possibilities Glenda and we should be able to fix this so we’d expect your feet to be very slightly different sizes and they are yeah left is bigger yep you can see Glenda’s met a tassel joint line on the left sits a

Little bit further back than it does on the right really characteristic of the asymmetrical load that’s been on them for a very long time so this foot which has been operating turned out a little bit when she walks because of the angulation of her knee because it’s been

Operating like this the foot comes under differential loads as it hits the ground so it rolls over and kind of the the the line of force goes medially or diagonally more across the foot than it does on this one so you end up with different wear and tear different

Stretching of the ligaments and so forth a bulkier first metat Taral joint on the left but then a lower Arch on the right so as her Arch has deformed like this countless times every time she takes a step the arch has flattened slightly over the years and hence this foot has

Gotten a couple of millim longer than the other one so that would have taken many years to get like that which further tells us that this knee was probably like this for a very long time so you’ve got the cleat set around 15 mm behind the ball of your foot the center

Line which should be fine that should be far enough back so the first thing we’re going to do is change the arch support cuz I’m this looks like it could be a foot stability problem cuz there’s more and more things I’m finding which are already correct in your position which

Are ruling out other possibilities for what this could be so you’ve set the cleats up nice and symmetrically you haven’t accidentally got one forward of the other or anything unusual which is great all the markings look symmetrical with the exception of the rotation probably a medium G8 with like

A level four the packaging look at this yeah look at that vacuum sealed so what you’re looking for when you’re setting your g8s up when you’re standing on them with half your weight on each foot roughly you want a little bit of distortion of this Center section typically of the

Arch module like you can see here it’s not quite crushed right down but it’s starting to distort a little bit and you’re looking for the size and the location of this Arch module which means that it’s curved along the whole length of the arch without any bias sort of

Forwards or backwards this will show you what it’s like when it’s too far forward so here you can see as her heel curves up here the back part of her Arch curls forward there’s going to be a big gap here there’s not going to be stabilization of the rear section of the

Arch and you can see how she’s distorting the arch module much further forward underneath her me head for cycling purposes that will be a bit unpleasant that won’t really feel right to Glenda it won’t stabilize her rear foot which is one of the most critical parts of the foot stability picture so

This would be definitely too far forward come back up off that again Glen and where we had it before for in her situation with the arch module in the rear most location this is probably going to be correct because it conforms to the whole length of her Arch doesn’t load up in

Any particular spot and just distorts a little bit in the midsection so what we’re going to do glender is basically change nothing else we’re just going to change these first throw you back on the bike and see what happens and if this is an arch support stability issue we’ll

Immediately see your Symmetry and improve mhm which will give us a clue as to where the problem’s coming from it’s going to make a horrible noise oh there it goes it’s substantially better that pretty much fixed it in one go see how sitting outside the line of

Your patella now so I basically have only changed one thing we did we dropped our seat and moved it back a bit but what we did was we changed the arch support and this is this is a really great advertisement for good quality arch support port and that sort of stuff

On a on a for a cyclist what it will prevent if it’s set up well is it will prevent asymmetrical compensation strategies from occurring and so essentially all we’ve done here is added high quality arch support in the form of the G to glender shoes and you can see

Already looking at her from the front the right knee is already sitting closer to the top tube it’s not flaring out at the top her pelvis is squarer to the bike much much much better so does it feel different yeah it does yeah so what’s less visible on the footage this

Is fairly easily visible but what’s less visible but potentially even more important is how she looks in her pelvis from above essentially what’s happened here is her right foot has stabilized itself enough that the foot is now inherently stable and happy on the pedal so her knee doesn’t have to dive across

The line her right glute is engaging properly which is then switching on her hamstring and calf symmetrically with the other side and her pelvis is squared up to the bike so when I look at her from above now she’s planer or or perpendicular to the bike she’s not

Twisted forward on the right so luckily for Glenda her only sign of of this planarity issue was this little bit of medial knee pain and a little bit of a power imbalance on the on the pedals but for a lot of people there’d be things like left-sided saddle SS left-sided

Lateral foot pain anything you can think of ITB issues on the opposite side there would have been a lot of potential possible you know issues that could come from this but in Glenda’s case her VMO her medial quad on the right was coping all of the load and that’s where her

Symptom ended up so yeah this looks a lot better and the knees are just sitting equ equidistantly from the top tube now we’re talking glender I like it so now we got really even glute engagement really good planarity of your pelvis your right hamstring looks like it’s controlling the bottom of the

Stroke a lot better than it was before with better fluidity it look absolutely wonderful from the front that’s about as symmetrical as anyone ever gets does it feel better as well with the Staggering yeah so when you when you get to a really high level of symmetry

Often the person can feel it if they’ve never had it before they go oh suddenly it feels like everything’s even for the first time and if you ever drift away from it again you’ll now know what it what it shouldn’t feel like as well but this is really high level symmetry

That’s about as good as anyone ever gets the seats come back around 10 mil and it’s gone down about 5 but that will help with your weight distribution you know from the loading of the muscles up here cuz it was a little bit forward and high

Yep but this should get rid of your knee problem awesome this is a beautiful example of what happens when they’re too high it’s not highly visible but if you’re looking for the right things you can spot it the rider drops their chest between their shoulder blades and

They’ll often do stuff like flare their elbows out to the side which you do a little bit as well and when they switch into the drops under the same level of load they’re having Glend is having absolutely no difficulty getting there whatsoever so this is a very good

Indicator that we might want to test going a little bit lower so we’ll probably drop it 10 maybe maybe even 20 mil come up here Glenda and hold the hood like that and then drop your elbows horizontal see she’s having no issues there the bar is clearly a little bit

Too high there as well so I think we’ll go down 20 and see how you look and feel and we’re also going to try a different seat because we’ve just found out that your seats not cause you know not the most comfortable saddle for you in the

World so we might measure you up for an SQ lab seat and just see if you like it or hate it this is going to give us a very very very rough indication of how wide your isums are so scoot forward a bit there that’s it yep and then sit

With your back really upright and just stay there for a second while it squidges down now I must emphasize this is an extremely rough measurement there’ll be a lot of people out there going that’s not an accurate measurement of this and it’s not there’s massive limitations to doing this no matter how

You do it the most accurate way of measuring your isum separation distance is to do a three-dimensional CAT scan of your pelvis but it irradiates some fairly important parts of your Anatomy the Medical Institution looks down upon me referring people for that and you know just for the purposes of

Choosing a seat it’s a little bit Overkill so what you want to do here if you’re if you’re getting a fitting done and you’re trying to find the right width saddle or the right shape you want to measure this just to give you a rough Baseline to know is this person really

Wide are they really narrow which five Saddles should I pull off my wall and try first second third fourth and fifth and and that’ll give you a really rough starting point but it shouldn’t be used for anything other than that yeah so jump up and let’s see what we get

So this is the snp’s measuring device it’s quite Nifty this little one and glender that’s pretty wide so Center to center it’s at least 145 mil close to 150 which is pretty wide so this is um we would aim for a wider than usual yeah

So that that is all you should ever use that number is just a rough approximation right most of your neck discomfort is not from the bars being too low most of it is from the seat being too far forward which was then loading your hands and secondary to that

The bar being a little high right we’re going to set it up so that it looks correct but then you’ve really got to test it on the road for 2 or 3 hours once you’ve ridden around on it a couple of times for a couple of hours and

You’re fairly happy that the bar height is good and your neck feels happy then get it cut but whatever you do don’t rush home and get it cut straight away cuz once it’s cut it is what it is so what’s happened there is it looks as if

We’ve raised your seat a bit when we put the new seat on despite it being a very sort of slim low profile saddle yeah so what that typically implies is that your isums the two points of your sit bones are actually on it and they’re elevating

Up a bit higher which is lifting your pelvis up so does it feel quite different to the other one yes good bad bugly I think it’s good good it clears the center section with pressure quite well yes it does spin harder and change your hand position a bit so drop down a

Bit switch into the drops come back up on the hoods and just alter your pelvic rotation a few times on it to get a bit of a better feel for how it how it feels in multiple different angles and yeah we got to drop the seat about 3 mil maybe

Four what sense do you get out of the the feel of it relative to the sitting platter at the back on these points yeah that’s what we want there’s a lot less contact in the midsection out to the sides yeah go that 3 mm so that’s back

At the seat height where we had it before you feel the difference between the two pedal Strokes definitely that’s only 3 mil of seat height that’s how accurate you have to be with the seat height for things to be just right and when it’s when it’s perfect versus when

It’s slightly too high almost every customer every person can feel it like it just doesn’t feel as smooth and stable and um yeah the range is quite tight metat tassle joint sits here we got to get the center line in her case to match her other Shoes 18 mm behind

That point which as you can see this Center Line has got to go back another 10 or 12 mm and there’s definitely not enough play available in the base plate to do that so what we’re going to do instead is use an extender plate to pull

This back a little bit we’re going to use one of um the form fitting products extender plates which are a UK based bike fitting business which do all sorts of cool extender plates and things we just use a pair of their extenders to basically pull the cleat back further so

This is a good one so these are two physique shoes this is why you got to check your cleat positions rather than just referencing off the three bolt locations on the bottom of the shoe and just like pulling them all the way back when you’ve got a new pair of shoes and

Hoping that they’re the same you’ve really got to measure it for this reason because you can see here these are both physique shoes this is a Tempo and a what do they call this one the venti both really good shoes I love them they suit certain foot types really really

Well really well made but look at the bolt location differences so we’ve got this white shoe on the right here bolts there look at how far back they are on the black shoe even when the shoes are lined up next to each other so a huge difference in the three bolt locations

And you can see why on this shoe we’re having trouble getting the cleat far enough back to suit Glenda’s foot so we’re going to have to use an extender plate here this shoe is her second pair of shoes set up on a trainer bike at home which happens to be using Speed

Play cleats so we’re going to set these up differently but we’ve got a reference off her first metat tassal joint to replicate the cleat position exactly but that’s a good reason to measure your cleat this way rather than just relying upon where the bolt holes are yeah so

They’re totally different all this is one of those things where we can all look at it and go far out that’s way better and I bet you on the footage it looks exactly the same and you might be able to tell any difference I bet you

See that front end looks right that just looks it does doesn’t look difficult anywhere it’s a really nice neutral shoulder posture slight Bend in the elbows but it doesn’t look like you’re having to kind of reach or project or do anything funky with it so yeah that I

Think is a happy medium we’ve got 10 mil under 10 mil on top temporarily yeah that’s the kind of shoulder and wrist and elbow posture that you want to see in anyone so leave it like that for a little while glender and test it and if you get the

Impression that your neck just doesn’t quite to at that extension because of that old injury that you had there pull it back up 10 mil again and the cost of that will be that you’ll have a little bit more weight on your hands but if it’s better for your neck and that’s the

Main limiting factor stick with what feels the best yeah yeah one of the things you might notice because you’re sitting really Square to the bike now is your left VMO the muscle here which has never had load on it before can feel it so even now after 20 30 minutes of

Riding this because she’s PL with the bike she’s parallel perpendicular to the bike the muscle groups that haven’t been engaged in particular the medial quad on the opposite side is copping a lot more load than it has before so just the first few rides zone two a little bit of

Zone three here and there but just take it easy for a while worst case scenario if you do something really overtly hard in the next three or four rides you can actually inflame the insertion of the muscle a bit and then it’ll take a while to settle back down yeah so just ease

Into it after this you won’t have enormous adaptation problems but if it’s going to be anything it’ll be the left VMO and maybe maybe maybe the right glue yeah which will also now it’s actually functioning properly so you may cop a little bit of extra load on your right

Glue but yeah looking really neat you’re super symmetrical your knee’s tracking vertically it’s not flaring at the top of the stroke you look great Glenda thank you very much so we’re going to measure this position up now and record it take a whole bunch of Dimensions off

It so that we can replicate this in the future if glender ever buys a new bike or anything but most of the important stuff is taken up in your shoes with the arch support and the cleat stagger and that’s where you know the solution to your problem will always stay there as

Long as you keep your shoes set up the same way yeah looks awesome okay