Bike fits typically have that one moment, where the rider experiences a big change in the experience of engaging with that bicycle. Pavan says, in his experience, it is often the saddle height and saddle position.
In Ashwin’s case, this turned out to be true. He tended to sit closer to the nose of the saddle. The saddle was also pushed too far back and was too low.
Ashwin also used one of our offerings – trialing a saddle before buying it. We offer some of our existing saddles for customers to test. They take a saddle they are decided on for a few rides, evaluate if it does for them what they had hoped, and then make an informed purchase.
As you can see in the images above, the saddle was changed, and the position and height were adjusted to suit Ashwin. That brought about a significant change in his riding experience, which showed up in his rides by way of increased speed and consistently bettering his ride times on his usual ride routes.
In addition to fitting the ride to suit the rider, we also find that recommending specific sets of exercises to the rider helps further contribute to injury-free and stronger rides.
To that end, we watch out for discomfort or pain reported when riding marginally outside comfort zone (long rides, for example, or fast ones). We look for the rider’s form on the bike and this leads to further checks on stability, core strength, strength of specific muscle groups. As the image show, recommending some glutes and hams strengthening exercises will help in engaging the glutes into the pedalstroke.
We also spoke about gradually reducing the weight on the hands, and engaging the core more mindfully while on the bike. The rider upped their speed output by an easy 4-5kmph and did his fastest 80k ride after the bike fit.
Crankmeister Bicycle Works 