How do I know if my bike fits without a bike fit?
We would always recommend athletes get a proper bike fit to reduce the chance of getting an injury. However, if you haven’t had the opportunity to get a bike fit or don’t have the funds to invest in one just yet, here are some top tips on checking your fit and bringing it close to the right ball-park area.
A bike fit is probably one of the most critical impacts you can make for cycling training. A good bike fit will optimise comfort, the ability to put power through the pedals and aerodynamics. Those three parts of a bike fit can be optimised and changed, but you can’t always have all three; you have to make some concessions. Furthermore, a bad bike fit is one of the most common ways athletes can get injured. For many beginners, the aim would be to improve their comfort, how much power they can put down, and then, finally, their aerodynamics. For many athletes, safety and comfort come hand-in-hand; sometimes, bike handling skills can be improved by making an athlete feel more comfortable, making them faster!
How do you know if your bike fits properly without having a proper bike fit?
Bike fits can be pretty basic or very expensive and high-tech. Throughout the ages, people have tried to understand and identify methods or recommendations based on percentages of leg length, ideas of heights and all sorts of other different techniques, including more modern ones identifying limb angles and speeds. In reality, a good bike fit is only as good as the person doing the fit and as appropriate for the individual as they are prepared for it. Nevertheless, there are some excellent tips to ensure it is a good start and avoid injuries.
One fundamental way of knowing if your bike fits well is if you haven’t got niggles or injuries. This could be by accident rather than by design. However, it is a great way to make sure that your bike is at least comfortable. The key areas to consider are the saddle area, the shoulders and neck And the wrists. And the knees. If you have pain in any of those areas, it is worth considering why you are getting pain. For example, knee pain can commonly be caused by overloading the quadriceps muscles. And can signify a range of different potential bike fit issues. So, assuming you haven’t got any pain and are comfortable reaching the handlebars and brakes effectively, your bike is probably set up well.
However, if we know you will be increasing your time on the bike (for example, at a camp), here are some speedy ways of checking the touch points you interact with: your cleat position, saddle position and handlebars. This advice doesn’t undermine the effectiveness of seeing a local bike fitter who has experience working with athletes like yourself, but it will at least get you in the right sort of areas or fine-tune the position you have:
1. First, check your cleat position is in the right place.
2. Second, check your saddle is at the right height (work with the saddle in the middle of the runners).
3. Finally, check your handlebar position.
Getting a good bike fit is probably one of the most critical things riders can do to ensure they have a comfortable position, which allows them to handle the bike well, effectively push the pedals and ultimately enjoy cycling more. Therefore, it’s probably one of the best investments you can make to experience the most fun when cycling.
Philip is the founder of Tri Training Harder LLP. He’s a British Triathlon Level 3 coach, and has been coaching for over a decade and is involved with mentoring and developing other coaches.
Philip has have coached athletes to European and World AG wins, elite racing, many Kona qualifications, IRONMAN podiums and AG wins.
Alongside the conventional development through many CPD courses, he has also been fortunate enough to work alongside experts in the fields of Physiotherapy, Strength and Conditioning, Nutrition, Psychology, Biomechanics, Sports Medicine. Putting this knowledge into practice he has worked with thousands of athletes to various degrees, from training camps in Portugal and around Europe, clinics in the UK and online coaching.
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Tri Training Harder are one of the leading Triathlon coaching providers in the UK, using our wealth of experience to unite scientific and technological research with already well-established and successful best practices, to create a formula for triathlon and endurance coaching that works.
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