Bike Fit Notes #1 May 15, 2017

There's a lot going on at my YouTube channel, with new videos every week and lots of good questions and comments being posted. I have been trying to answer as many as I can but inevitably I find myself falling behind as other aspects of creating content for this site take precedence. So I decided to combine my efforts a bit and start to re-post some of the more pertinent questions and my responses here in a new "Bike Fit Notes" section.  I'll include a link to the video in question as well.The Women's Specific Bike Myth"a long time ago, the geometry used to be different. Women - in general - have longer legs and shorter torsos. So a female bike was taller but not as long because the reach was different. But now it is generally about the colours"The idea that women have longer legs and shorter torso is pervasive....and actually not correct when you look at anthropometric data. Women are different in many respects but this isn't one of them. There are some aspects of female metric data that you could make a case for changing the geometry (This is what Canyon bikes has recently done), but even then there are issues with trying to design a bike for women. Not your fault, this misinformation is everywhere. I am going to try to shoot a follow up video to discuss this a little more...

"I'm small (1,58 m), so I have a womens bike. I've been looking for a new bike, because mine is still a bit to big, but there aren't many choices out there. Canyon decided to put 650b wheels on the smaller bikes. They claim it improves bike handling. Could you give me your opinion on that?"

The smaller wheels do allow the manufacturer to build a small bike with fewer compromises to the handling. Usually when a bike maker has a true small or extra-small frame and they're still using 700c wheels they have to slacken the head angle and/or change the rake of the fork to avoid too much toe overlap, and both of these changes could cause the bike to handle really poorly. Additionally they often steepen the seat angle of the small bikes sometimes as high as 75 degrees which has other affects. Years ago 650c wheels were popular for a vriety of reasons (mainly it was thought that because they allowed the rider to be lower to the ground overall that they would be significantly more aerodynamic) especially on triathlon bikes. It wasn't a benefit to medium and larger riders, but if you were small, the geometry of your bike could actually be improved in a lot of cases. Just to clarify, 650c is different, smaller in fact, than 650b. This isn't exactly precise but think of 650b as splitting the size difference between 650c and 700c. The 650c bikes fell out of favor when they figured out that the smaller wheels actually didn't roll as well as their larger 700c cousins. The downside to having the 650b wheels will be a limited number of wheel, tire, and tube selections in the short term. The best course would be to go test ride one and see if you notice any improvements over your current bike.

Too Much Cleat Float?

"I have frontal knee pain on my left leg (for apr. 8 months now). I have tried many things, medical exames, and it did not show anything. I had bike fit 1 year before my knee pain started. Since the pain I had two reviews of bike fit, but pain still persists. Probably it is due multiple injuries in the past on my right upper leg (thight). Right muscles are way smaller, so I have to work on that. But I was wondering if perhaps cleat float might solve some problems. I have big pronation. Momentarelly I have 4,5° float. On the bike I feel fine and my feet (as far as I can sense) do not go even to the border with float (inwards or outwards). Does it then even make sense that I would try 9° float cleat? I would not want to make a mistake by puting the cleats in a bad position."

Cleat float may be an issue, and in a lot of situations going to as much as 9° is still relatively safe. For many cyclists, the only thing that will occur is they will either use the float or they won't. Excessive float can cause problems in some but most often with the unrestricted 15°-20° (or more) of float that we see with Speedplay pedals. To avoid putting the new cleats in the wrong position, simply mark your existing cleat before removing it -- plus moving to 9° also buys you a little leeway in setting up the cleats correctly.