Yesterday, I cashed in on my wife’s Birthday present to me: a Bike Fitting at Atlanta Cycling, Vinings.

Before I dive into the details, let me explain what a bike fitting is and why they are a good idea.  Many people purchase bikes.  Road bikes, mountain bikes, time trial bikes, hybrids… all kinds.  The people who purchase them from mediocre bike shops should expect that the sales person will ask you your height and possibly the length of your pant inseam, if they ask you anything at all.  From this they will determine what size bike you should purchase.  Some places will even have you stand over the bike to determine the clearance between the top tube and your body.  Sounds good, right?  I thought so, too.  Fortunately, most good bike shops have competent employees that know at least the minimum measurements needed to purchase the correct size bike for a person.  But that is just getting the right sized bike…that doesn’t fit the bike.  A bike fitting is a series of measurements and observations that tell the bike fitter how to adjust both the bike components and you, the rider, to get a better, more comfortable fit on the bike.

The reason I felt I needed to get fitted was because my arms would fatigue far faster than my legs and my breathing.  Occasionally, my hands and my left foot would fall asleep during rides.  I stumbled upon someone else getting fitted at Atlanta Cycling and I watched for about 10 minutes.  I was sold.  I learned so much just watching someone else’s fitting that I knew I would greatly benefit from getting one of my own.

As instructed, I brought my bike, to the shop dressed in full riding gear.  After mounting my bike onto the bike trainer, Mike, the fitter, observed as I rode for about five minutes.  He asked me to make a few small adjustments to the way I was riding (i.e. hand placement) while he observed.  After he was satisfied that he saw enough, he explained that he was going to record me during some interval riding.  He started the recording and I rode for about 3 minutes.  He had captured my video into a program on his laptop.  Now he could do analysis of my riding posture in slow motion and using the program’s measurement utilities.  Once he established a baseline, he started to the first of the many changes.

Starting “from the ground, up”, he wanted to adjust the cleats on my shoes first.  He has me walk in a straight line, and the return to toe a line he made with masking tape.  Measuring off the natural position of my feet while standing with more tape, he used this information to adjust my cleats.  After he was done, I rode the bike again.  Using a tripod-mounted laser pointer, he pointed them at my knees.  We could both see that my knees now went smoothly up and down during each rotation.  Before the cleat adjustment, my knees made tiny loops at the top of the rotation.  This sounds like a small change, but I could tell a big difference.

Next he decided to work on getting my heel lower.  Apparently, I, like many people, “toe pedal”.  Toe pedaling is when you point your toes too much while pedaling.  After asking why this is bad he replied with an analogy.  Imagine that you were sitting on a balance beam with nothing to support you but a set of 2×4’s just close enough to touch with your toes.  This would be fine enough to take the pressure off of your perineal nerve until your toes and calves got tired.  Eventually, you would rotate back off of your toes and put most of your weight on your perineal nerve.  Not only does this cause discomfort, but could put a damper on future fatherhood, if one so desired.  Keeping the heel parallel to the ground for as much of the rotation as possible engages larger muscle groups in the leg and thus is more power and less fatigue.  He fixed the problem, mostly, with seat adjustment.  He raised my seat a total of about 2 inches.  Interestingly enough, the bike shop that sold me my bike said that I may have to lower my seat some more, but it would involve cutting the seat post since it was as low as it would go.  Initially, I could tell the difference of the seat adjustment, but it put more pressure on my arms.

Next he addressed the added pressure to my arms.  First he changed the stem of my handlebars.  It raised the handlebars significantly.  The pressure of on my arms disappeared, but I still wasn’t fully comfortable.  He measured my shoulder width and then my handlebars.  I didn’t realize there is a correlation, but my shoulders measured 44 inches and my handlebars measured 40 inches.  I wasn’t sitting natural on the bike because I was reaching inward two inches on each side of my body just to grab the handlebars.  Replacing the handlebars and the stem turned my Bianchi into a totally different bike. 

After a few more adjustments and measurements and a lot more observations, we were done.  I rode around the parking lot and couldn’t believe the difference that all the little adjustments made.  He then recorded me doing intervals again.  He overlaid the first, baseline, recording over the new recording.  You could see many differences.  One was my head placement.  My head was higher and it was more comfortable for me to look forward, so I did it more.  My heel position was lower to the ground and the angles were less aggressive.  I was able to sit up higher in the saddle.  One huge difference I saw was the raising and dropping of my hip during rotations.  Initially, they were so dramatic that you could see my biking being pulled from side to side as I strode.  Now it was minimized and the bike was stationary.

This was a great experience for me, and I would recommend it to anyone who is serious about riding.  I am sure that there are a lot of places that do this, but if you are in the Atlanta area, visit Atlanta Cycling’s Vinings store.  Ask for Mike, he’ll do a good job.

And there you have it.

Joe.

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