WHAT'S NEW IN BIKE FIT?

Getting correctly set up on your bike can make a big to comfort as well difference as performance. Phil Burt outlines the latest developments in the art and science of bike-fit...

Like your riding position, the practice of bike-fitting evolves over the years. Since riders began taking a scientific approach to their set-up in the 1980s, biomechanists, physios, coaches and riders themselves have learnt a lot about how geometry affects comfort, performance, efficiency and durability. Some of these improvements grew out of deliberate research, others from chance discovery during trial-and error experimentation.

I worked as lead physio at British Cycling for 12 years, through three Olympic cycles, and saw the impact of many of these changes first-hand – and even played a part in a few of them. My first bike-fit book was published in 2014, and since then there have been so many important developments in the field that I knew a substantial update was due. The fully revised second edition was launched last year. In this feature, I want to share with you some of the headline changes in bike-fit over the past decade so that you can put them into practice, whether it’s to improve comfort, ease a niggle, or just to go that bit faster.

1. YOU MIGHT NOT NEE DONE 

Not everybody needs a bike-fit. That can be a controversial thing to say among my fellow biker-fitters, but it’s true. There is no exact ideal position for each rider. Instead, there is a bike-fit window – a tolerance range that some riders stumble into by chance or instinct. Some people’s windows are narrower than others, depending on their particular injury history, biomechanics and the demands of their cycling. That said, everybody stands to make some gain from having a quality fit – you don’t know what you don’t know!