 So this is easily the most requested bike fitting topic I've had from you, the audience. And that is, can you get Neil, the bike fitting expert, to share his knowledge and wisdom about how to set saddle, setback, or fore and aft? So that's coming up. So welcome back to the 25th edition of the RCA Training Tips Show where today, I'm joined again by the bike fitting expert, Neil Stambry, who's been fitting road cyclists for 10 years in conjunction with being a sports physiotherapist. In this video, Neil provides a fair amount of context up front, sharing with us all the indicators of your saddle being too far forward and then too far back before outlining a method you can use to set your own fore and aft position. Now, I wanted to front load this video with something that Neil said after we'd wrapped up the conversation. You see, he didn't mention the famous method cops, which is knee over pedal spindle, which has traditionally been a method used by many bike fitters to set the right saddle fore and aft position. So this is what Neil had to say about why he didn't go there. The plumb ball, the plumb ball, yeah. That's a classic one, that one. If anyone can explain to me the logic, a very logical biomechanical explanation for why that's a good idea, let me know. Right. Yeah, definitely. It's a starting point, you know. Because it depends upon your cleat position, the length of your tibia, the length of your femur. There's all these other things which are, like it's just no correlation. There's too many possibilities outside of that really basic static measurement of the plumb-bob knee trick. Even the position of, like the shape of your knee. If you've got a tibial tuberosity that sits up or down, your setback might change by 10 millimeters, you know. So there's just so many problems with that idea that it's just not even worth trying to explain. That's why I didn't mention it. Now, before Neil shares his wisdom with us all, I wanted to remind you that the up-level road cycling course for cyclists keen to take their performance to the next level is reopening at the end of October, and I am welcoming in 50 members only into what I'm calling a beta program because it's a brand new course. So I'm looking for people not only that are keen to take their cycling performance to the next level, but are also willing to share their thoughts and feedback with me as they go through this brand new course. And in return, you'll get the course for a discounted rate. So that's coming at the end of October, but in the meantime, you can download my free book for road cyclists, which I'll link to below. So let's get into it. If I was to just stick it on my bike. Yeah. That's what I go about doing it. Yes, yeah, this is much more complicated and difficult to enunciate clearly than like the seat height video that we did. Right. The reason, it's because when you, a client of mine once described, I was describing this to him and he said, I said, oh, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. And he said, no, no, a better analogy is that it's like a spider's web. You tug on one end and everything else changes at the other end and bike positions are like that. So let's say, for example, that your bars are way too high and the stem's too short. Figuring out the seat setback when the front end is a long way off where it should be is almost impossible. So you have to have all of the other components pretty close to optimal before the seat setback can be kind of isolated out as a single thing to change. And then if you're trying to set it yourself as a rider sensing those changes when everything else is in the right position, you can do it. But if the bars are weight, if the reaches 20 mils too short or too long and the bars are 40 mils too high or too low, figuring out the setback will be really tricky because you tug on one end of the thing and the other, everything changes. You know, you lower the person's bars, they roll their pelvis forward, they sit further forward on the seat. So the effective seat setback or the effective pelvis position relative to the crank center line changes. So you change one thing. It's a nightmare. So I'll try and sort of make it as simple as I can, but there'll be, there's rabbit holes within rabbit holes here. And anyone that's watching this and I fully recognize this will be able to pick holes in this argument based upon any particular other thing being wrong. And that's fine. So saddle four and a half. Now, what happens when the seat's too far forward? Let's start there. When it's too far forward for the rider, their pelvis is too far forward over the bottom bracket. On the downstroke, they will tend to not unload their upper body as much as they otherwise would. So this comes into like, essentially when the seat is really far forward, they tend to just stomp down on the pedal using their quad. They can't pull up across the back of the stroke very or across the bottom of the stroke very effectively with their hamstring. So when the seat's way too far forward, they tend to get less hamstring control of the bottom of the stroke, right? Which then loads their hands. So when the seat's a long way forward, the main thing that you'll notice if you're pedaling even at a 20, 30 minute threshold, you know, FTP type load, is that there'll be a lot of weight on your hands. Now the caveat here again is that if the bars are too high or too short or whatever, you get the same effect, right? So this is a nightmare trying to describe this. But if the seat's too far forward, you'll load your hands. The second thing you might feel if the seat is too far forward is assuming that the seat height and the cleat position are correct, you may also feel a lot of quadricep burn when you're doing a hard VO2 max effort and no hamstring fatigue at all. Okay. Because of the disengagement I guess of the hamstring across the bottom of the stroke. It's just not controlling the stroke. So quad burn, too much weight on the hands if the seat's too far forward. If the seat's too far back, like a fairway too far back, you might get unusual things happening where your feet go numb because you're having to tow the pedal really aggressively. You might get stuff like, you know, upper hamstring pain on both sides because the hamstring is acting over such a large duration of crank rotation. You might find that your quads don't really feel like they're burning up much unless you're climbing a hill, you know, sitting forward on the seat. So you'll get an uneven spread of load going back the other way. So the posterior chain will get overloaded and the quads will do less. There are some people, however, who actually experience the exact opposite of that. It just depends on how their physiology reacts, right? But if the seat's too far back, you'll also notice that the reach out to the bars becomes a real problem. And again, if the reach is too long anyway, you have the same effect. So you might find yourself having to project your scapulas forward and reach out to the bars. You might find that there's no weight on your hands but you're having to lock your elbows out just to get out there. So you may feel like you're too light almost on the hands and everything's too far away from you. So those are the basic consequences of the seat setback being too far back or too far forward. And all of that relies upon the seat height, the cleat position, the arch support, the cue factor, the front end height and the front end drop being roughly correct to feel those things. So how do you set it yourself? You must make sure all those other things are right first. Which is very difficult. You're very difficult. And then once you've got this isolated, your best bet is to do a similar thing to what we described in the video about the numb hands because this is highly tied in with load on the front end. In fact, the best kind of way of setting your setback is to ride as far forward as you possibly can with the seat before there is an increase in load on your hands. So set yourself up on the trainer, do that balance test that we talked about, Steve Hogg's balance test where you're riding at a 20 minute effort and you maintain that effort and then you swing your hands back next to your waist. And if you can maintain the position with just a slight propensity to tip forward or a slight increase in your cadence, but you don't feel like you're gonna face plant, your seat setback is probably pretty close to where it should be. If you're nice and light on your hands, it's probably fairly close to where it should be. I think it was Bernardino used to say that you play the piano. You can play the piano on the bars, on the bar tops. It usually means your setback is fairly close to where it should be. If the rider is really light in the upper body and they've got really good core strength, however, they'll pass the balance test anywhere. Yes. Like I can do it anywhere because I'm so light, right? And I'm reasonably stable. But if any kind of person who's got a bit more mass than me in the upper body, the balance test becomes more and more effective. But for really lightweight, strong riders who can stabilize themselves well, it's very tricky because they're fine anywhere. And that's when you've got to go to the load issue. Are you feeling excess burn in your quads? Are you feeling excess burn in your upper hamstring? And then tickle the seat setback to spread the fatigue as evenly as you can across your quad and your hamstring in particular. Yeah. And that's, you should basically ride as far forward as you can until you start increasing the load on your hands, generally, the caveat being that if they're too good, they'll pass the test in a way, yeah. So you can, the easiest way to do this is to experiment. It's not like there's a lot of experimentation to occur, right? True. There's only about 50 mils of travel on most. So how far would you, if you were going out and doing it, how far would you move at each time? So what I would do, if you wanted to experiment here, shove it all the way back, all the way back on the rail and go for a couple of rides. It'll almost certainly feel silly. You'll feel too stretched out. You'll feel no weight on your hand. Start creeping it forward in five millimeter increments. Five millimeter, okay. Yeah, ride for 20 minutes with it, five millimeters further forward and then get off and move it another five mils. And creep it through the range. And somewhere in that range, you will find a point where you think, oh, I'm doing some efforts here and I'm feeling my hamstrings engaging nicely across the bottom of the stroke. So while you're doing this 20 minute time in a specific position, you should do like a threshold effort for two or three minutes, something like that. Something like that. Yeah, like a 20 minute effort, a 20 minute load, sorry, for three, four, five minutes or something. You can do it on a trainer if you'd like. You know, it's a bit easier on a trainer, although it's better to mimic it in the real world because in the real world, your saddle is never, the four and a half position is never static, right? Because if this is your crank centerline and here's your seat, if you're on a one degree incline, Yes. Your seat moves back 10 millimeters. If you're on a one degree downward slope, the seat moves forward 10 millimeters. So how often is the road perfectly level? Almost never, right? So this is where it gets kind of tricky. There's a good case to be made here and I've had this conversation with a few other bike fitters that and I believe this product exists. I think FSA made this is an on the fly adjustable setback seat post. So if you're doing a lot of climbing, move the seat forward 10 millimeters, right? Because as the road goes up, your pelvis will actually go back 10, 15, 20, 30 millimeters. Depends how much the road tilts and it depends how high your seat height is. If you've got a really low seat height, the effect is lessened. If you've got a really high seat height, the effect is magnified. So this is why when you're climbing at high intensity, a lot of people creep forward on the seat because you're unconsciously trying to get their pelvis forward over the bottom bracket when it's been pulled backwards as the road is changing. So yeah, you can try and do it that way. It's best done over rolling terrain with subtle, subtle up-down variations on the road, preferably. Get off every five minutes, move it four and a half and eventually you'll find a position, hopefully, if everything else is roughly in the right spot, you'll find a position where your balance feels the lightest on your hands. You're getting smooth control of the bottom of the stroke. You don't feel like you're just chopping with your quad doing all the work and that is probably a pretty close place to start for your seat set back. Yes, okay.