Just bought my first road bike and put it on a trainer for the winter. Still tweaking the saddle and such for a more comfortable ride but I’m not there yet.
Old thread, but a mix of saddle position, saddle height, and saddle type. Sometimes playing with the tilt of your bars, too. And grips can make a huge difference.
My city ebike has a mid stock saddle, but after moving it back and adjusting the tilt so that it’s like a 1 degree decline, it helps make it a lot more comfortable (male).
My mountain bike had a terrible stock saddle that made my groin fall asleep. I switched to a saddle from these guys:
Which is rock hard, but has good scalloping for my bones and blood flow. So even though it isn’t plush, I can ride it for ages or back to back days without going numb in an hour. Granted, you aren’t on the saddle much for downhill, but it’s great for earning your turns on singletrack with lots of uphill.
I brought a hex key to adjust my seat and just went riding. Test, adjust, test, adjust.
Some of the things I’ve spent money on that has not done anything for my riding comfort is a seat dampener, so maybe skip that one if you were thinking about it.
There’s also a break-in period for any setting, I’ve found. My ass used to hurt a lot after riding a bit but now it doesn’t. Your body will adjust- the important thing is to make sure you’re not riding in position that puts unnecessary stress on your spine or something.
I’m a big fan of swept back handlebars which are very out of fashion in the US for some reason. Everyone has handlebars like they’re trying to win the Tour de France but unless you are the type to time yourself and beat some pace does it really make sense to trade comfort away to gain a small efficiency advantage? I don’t think so. If you bike leisurely or as a commuter, look into handlebars that allow a more comfortable upright posture.
My bars have a 400mm rise and a 90 degree sweep. There is no greater luxury.
I just replaced the standard seat with a bigger, more padded seat meant for a totally different kind of bike so I wasn’t just sitting on basically a metal wedgie device. Looks a bit funny having a beach cruiser style seat on a mountain bike, but IDGAF about its aesthetic. I care about my ass not hurting.
Next thing I’d do is probably replace the handlebars with a Y style one instead of the straight bar. I’m not tryna go hella fast that I need to bend forward to lower my resistance.
Unless you get a bike fit, it can take a long while, a lot of adjustments, and probably some new components (saddle, handlebars, grips, etc.).
Is there anything in particular that bothers you during a longer ride session? Hands? Shoulders? Feet? Ass?
If so, find what might be causing those issues (i.e. YouTube bike fitting videos), and then work from there.
When I was tweaking my road bike, I would literally go out on rides with some hex keys, adjust one thing just a little, and see how that felt. Eventually, I nailed it down, so even a 240km ride was quite comfortable.
Now, getting the same comfort out of my vintage mountain bike or folding bike hasn’t been so easy. LOL
and probably some new components
Especially saddles in my experience. Saddles are like shoes: even two different models from the same manufacturer can fit very differently. Posture makes a difference, too. I have a box full of saddles that I have accumulated over years of trial-and-error on various bikes.
The frustrating thing about saddles, I guess just like shoes, is that no review will let you know whether it will work for you or not.
I also have a collection of saddles, several of which are “the best saddle you can get” offering “extreme comfort”, yet they aren’t on my bike(s).
Then new riders get the idea that big, soft, cushioned saddles will make them more comfortable. For most people, this type of saddle just makes things worse. And those “skinny, flat, hard” saddles might actually be the best option for some!
I believe there are Selle Italia dealers who offer demo programs for their saddles. I’m sure other brands do the same, but it’s a very rare service. Honestly, more bike shops should do it themselves, because I guarantee they’d sell more saddles if people were confident they’d be able to find the right one without buying one after another.
Make sure your saddle is the right width for your butt bones. A bike shop can measure for you.
I did that and got a jcob. It feels great at a very specific angle but i guess i haven’t perfected it yet, or a childhood injury to my left arm just means I’m gonna be uncomfortable leaning on my handlebars.
Might need upswept bars or a taller stem. It can be bike specific - my MTB is more comfortable leaning over a bit more, my cargo bike is better quite a bit more upright.
It’s for sure a process.
That’s 50% of the battle. The grim reality is for some people, there’s only usually 1 or 2 styles of seats that will be comfortable for them, and it can be brutally expensive to figure this out if you try to do so yourself (not trying to push a fit, but…). Some people seem to be saddle ambivalent, I got a buddy like that, like you could stick him on a plastic 1970s banana seat and he’d be fine. But if you are like me, my butts pretty selective.
Case in point, I’m a stick of a person (6 foot, 165lbs), and for some unknown reason I have a crazy wide sitbone width, like my road bike saddle is something crazy like 168mm wide. Figuring that out was half the battle. But I still couldn’t get comfortable, and I’ve tried pretty much every manufacturer between my mountain bike and my road bike in the first half dozen years. My findings were for mountain bikes, my saddle has to be a WTB saddle, and it doesn’t really matter which one, but WTB or bust. It seems to be something with the general profile of the shape, not so much the padding. Whereas with my road bike, Specialized branded saddles seem to work best. Especially the ones with the Mimic insert, which are actually marketed towards ladies, but my bike fitter put me on one a few years ago and I swear by that thing now.
It sounds so cliche, but bike fit. It’s not even really an option on a road bike, at least in my experiences. Sure, on my mountain bike I can comfortably ride away like a slouchy gorilla flopped on the couch, but it’s got like 170mm of full suspension travel and this big cushy seat, and honestly you are always murder gripping holding on for dear life so you don’t even really notice anything about creature comforts.
That road bike though, I mean it looks awesome, but that thing is like riding a rock. It’s stiff as hell, everything is locked into place and there’s no give anywhere. Not to mention clipless pedals, and yeah, it’s uncomfortable unless someone slots you into that exact spot, at that exact angle, and I swear to god that magic spot must be like microns wide, we are talking human hair width kind of stuff, and no one will ever convince me otherwise. It’s like magic. You get someone to put you into that exact spot, and you could probably ride that thing all day long in your boxer shorts if you wanted to. Otherwise, it’s a death sentence for your genitals and your butt cheeks, not to mention all kinds of other soreness and unpleasantness.
Just go get a fit. They usually cost like a billion bucks, but there’s no cost too high for comfort.
Bike fit is the route I took. I got a report with optional measurements for me, which I’ve used to set up other bikes since the fit.
Outside of a fit, first check saddle height and angle. Checking the distance from saddle to handlebar is harder (well, measuring it is relatively easy, knowing what it should be for you is the hard part).
But after the fit, I definitely felt stretched out on my old bike that now sits on my trainer. I changed the seat post to a zero offset post, and that did help some, but I’d have to change the stem to get closer, and for sentimental reasons, I’m hesitant. When I had the fit done, I wasn’t using that bike much, so it wasn’t worth getting it fitted, but then a few months later I started doing indoor riding using zwift, and that bike is on the trainer. So, in hindsight, I wish I had gotten it fitted.
I got a new bike the other day. I got the handlebars set to match my fitted bike perfectly for height and angle, but after a ride, my wrist hurt (and still does a day and a half later). I think the saddle is too far back with the offset seat post, so I was leaning too much on the bars, making my wrist hurt. I’m surprised at how much it hurts, honestly. A zero offset seat post is on its way to me now (and lighter carbon fiber to boot).
My wife is suggesting I get a new fit done. Probably not a bad idea. But I think I’ll get it sorted with this seat post.
Sore wrists can mean your seat is a big too high too. Or your reach is too far. Try holding your bars 10mm back from your hoods for a bit, and see if your hands still hurt. It’s not always the stem either, sometimes bars can have too much reach as well, it kind of works in concert. But yeah pull your hands back for a bit and it’ll definitely feel kind of weird but just focus on seeing if your wrists still hurt after riding in that position for a bit.
If it’s better it’s your reach. If it’s not, drop the post like just a hair, and see if it’s better. It could be seat position too for sure, but I believe it’s usually reach to look at first if it’s in the wrists.
Oh I’m pretty sure it’s a reach issue; that’s where I was going with the talk of getting a new seat post. Everything else lines up almost perfectly. I didn’t mention that the two bikes have an almost identical geometry, within a millimeter or two in every dimension, so it was easy to compare them.
I really like Hobsen saddles. They’re easy to adjust and they keep the pressure in the right spots.
I gave myself nerve damage due to poor bike fit, thankfully it healed. After that I did a full overhaul of my bike fit. Flipped my stem up and raised it a bit with spacers. Removed bar tape and brifters, adjusted bar angle to maintain neutral wrist position in the drops. Installed brifters and positioned them for neutral wrist position on the hoods. I got a saddle with a large cutout and positioned it slightly farther back and down to put less weight on my hands. After that I could ride centuries or more without nerve damage to my hands or my perineum.
I also shifted the cleats on my shoes as far towards my arch as they would go and adjusted my seat height accordingly. This puts less stress on calves and Achilles and gives your posterior chain more direct connection to the bike.
Bike fit and all helped, but I’d previously used a tutorial to do it myself and that was good enough.
What really helped was getting a comfortable saddle, Selle’s TRK isn’t expensive and other cyclists have laughed at how much of a “couch” it is, but I rode that sucker from San Francisco down to LA along PCH, and it wasn’t my butt that got me stopping.
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