Don't change your saddle - more on bike seat pain

Many people come into my studio to discuss their bike seat pain and one of the first things out of their mouth is "I know I need a new saddle." That's an understandable tendency to want to change something out that's bothering us on the bike. And saddle problems can certainly be irritating enough that it would be high on the list to address aggressively.https://youtu.be/H7JU1HcwQF8But changing the saddle often is the last thing you should do....literally. Here's why:I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating -- most saddle problems aren't caused by the saddle. There is an entire interaction of our feet, hands and pelvis on the bike that needs to be addressed before.  Here's the three most common causes of saddle discomfort, not related to the saddle itself:

• Poor bar placement. The bars being misplaced is the single largest cause. When the bars aren't placed correctly this can draw the pelvis into too much anterior tilt or draw it forward on the seat so that we end up sitting on a too narrow section
• not bearing enough weight through the feet -- if cleats are misplaced this can make it difficult to feel grounded enough through the feet. When we're not carrying weight through the pedal stroke through our feet then this weight has to go somewhere and the saddle is the next stop in line [bar graphs showing WBing at feet hips and hands and others go up when feet go down]
• hips too far forward -- this upsets the balance of weight being distributed and will often lead to an unstable pelvic posture. This will then create shear forces and pressure in the wrong places leading to pain. [pictures of 2nd law of cycling]

I can't emphasize enough that these factors all work together. A perfect example was a client I had in just last week. They had the trifecta for saddle problems - she wasn't bearing weight properly through her feet, her hips were too far forward, and her bar position was too long. But here's the thing, I know things sound terrible but her position wasn't that far off. How? We only needed to shorten her stem. Doing this helped to shorten her reachenough which allowed the pelvis tilt be at the right amount of tilt which made it more stable and helped it to rest back further on the seat. Once these two corrections happened, especially the stability through the pelvis she automatically felt more grounded through her feet.This rider was talked into buying a bike that was just a bit too big for her. To get her contact points she had to have her saddle slid forward on the rails and a shorter stem. She was having terrible saddle pain and even some numbness.After looking at her and running some measurements I found a few things. first her cleat position was off just a little bit. She'd done this part herself and had done pretty well, but I moved them back on the shoe a few millimeters as well as changing their lateral placement to put her feet a little closer together. She was getting saddle pain because she wasn't bearing enough weight through her feet. Her hips were too far forward and her reach was off -- a trifecta.What'd we do? I moved her cleats even further back on her shoe to get her feet ahead of her hips more. I shortened her stem even further. What we had done is moved the hips behind the feet by moving the feet forward and  altered the reach of the bike to better match her pelvic posture. Only then was she able to sit with a light stable pelvic posture because she was bearing weight through her feet and found good support from her handlebars.We left her current saddle on there for now and we'll assess how it's doing in a few weeks. If things improve but they're not 100% then we may start to experiment with different saddle shapes, now that we know we have the other problems fixed.