Adjusting to a more aggressive geometry

[Phatboing]

Ride the fixie a lot – until your back starts to get mildly sore. Then lay off, and ride a different bike while you’re waiting for the pain to end. Repeat.

Also, I have no idea if it’s helped me or if I’m just spontaneously developing the ability to handle my fixie’s aggressive position, but at work, I use an exercise ball for ‘active’ sitting – move around a lot, stretch my back over the thing, always making sure that my back’s straight. Then the back gets tired after a couple of hours, and I switch to the chair for the next hour or so.

[KLizotte]

Perhaps a fit with Clovis at FreshBikes is in order. Or, else with this guy.

[hozn]

@Emm 115738 wrote:

When I struggled with this last year and had hand/wrist/elbow pain, the guy doing my bike fitting flipped my stem, making the bike a little more aggressive. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it forced me to actually engage my abs, vs putting so much weight on the hands/wrists. It helped alot. As did doing sit ups 2-3 times a week (kinda hard to engage your abdominal muscles when you have none…). Wrist/arm/elbow pain is gone.

This. (Well, mostly — not sure that everyone agrees on the value of sit-ups/crunches. Planks may be better? Or more complete core workout routine — more below.)

Pain on your hands means you’re not using the right muscles. Your choices are 1) build up core strength (esp abs) and flexibility or 2) get a bike/bike setup that fits your current level of flexibility/strength. Or there’s 3) just keep riding and believe the pain makes you stronger.

You should do the bike fitting, honestly. Do a fitting that takes an in-depth look at your flexibility; that is worth the cost of admission IMO. (I did mine at Sportfit Lab in Herndon, but I suspect flexibility/fitness analysis is a part of most good fittings.)

The fitting will tell you how to train your body so that it fits your bike. Of course, if you don’t want to train your body then you also have the option of making the bike fit (or getting a different bike). And there are certainly limits to how much you can adapt your body — and how much you can tune the fit on an existing frame. But either way, wouldn’t you like to know?

@vvill 115752 wrote:

If you get a fit they might tell you the bike itself is just too big and then you’ll cry.

How true. I just ordered a replacement frame for my road bike. I did my fitting with my current road bike and while I love it, it is indeed too large (as the fitting revealed). I can make it fit sliding the saddle all the way forward (function of slack STA) but then I have to use a 100mm stem and my knees risk hitting the bars when I’m climbing out of the saddle. So it’s just not perfect.

Luckily Chinese carbon is very inexpensive.

@vvill 115752 wrote:

My advice based on absolutely nothing but my own intuition: bend your elbows up to 90 degrees (engaging your triceps more, and letting them do the shock absorption), and also mix in a comfortable grip position where you place your hands on the bars beside the stem (the “tops” but even closer to the center) – which will be the least aggressive position on the bars for your back. (I assume this is how the fixed gear riders with tiny little flat bars ride all the time.) It’s weird, but when I first started riding on drop bars I used the hoods the most, but after getting used to them for a year or so I started using more and more hand positions. Try some others to see if you like them more.

+1 — Bending the elbows should also ensure that you’re using muscles and not putting strain on your hands or shoulders.

@jrenaut 115762 wrote:

The seat is a bit forward but I think it could go further. I realize there isn’t much I can do as far as the fit – I was hoping there were techniques for helping me be more comfortable given a static bike fit.

There is a right position for your saddle to put you over the pedals. I.e. don’t move your saddle to shorten your reach; do that with your stem. Take your various measurements and use the competitive cyclist fit calculator to find out the position for your saddle vis-a-vis your bottom bracket. This is probably the easiest thing fit-related thing you can get right. After your saddle is in position, then figure out where your bars need to be to give you a reach that is maintainable / comfortable. Or push your reach a bit and start working on your core strength.

I’ve stopped messing around with push-ups and pull-ups and am doing workouts from Tom Danielson’s Core Advantage (http://www.velopress.com/books/tom-danielsons-core-advantage/)

It’s too early to comment on the difference that is making, but I know I need better core strength to be comfortable riding in the drops for long periods. I do think the pull-ups/push-ups are helpful cross-training for MTB, but being slower on the single-speed (MTB) doesn’t bother me as much as my lower back hurting for 2 days after a 54-mile road race.

[mstone]

@jrenaut 115762 wrote:

The seat is a bit forward but I think it could go further. I realize there isn’t much I can do as far as the fit – I was hoping there were techniques for helping me be more comfortable given a static bike fit.

You can only ignore the fit up to a point. If you’re at that point, better to ditch the bike now than wank around with it for a couple of years before facing reality.

[hozn]

@mstone 115772 wrote:

You can only ignore the fit up to a point. If you’re at that point, better to ditch the bike now than wank around with it for a couple of years before facing reality.

Yeah, this is absolutely true in my experience too. So the other option is: ride less

I used to think “ah, what difference is a centimeter gonna really make”. Now I wouldn’t fathom buying a frame that didn’t fit; it’d just be a waste of money that I’d mess around with for a year and then ultimately replace. The funny thing is that theoretically I learned this lesson long ago, I just didn’t have a precise enough idea of what actually fit me, so I keep circling in closer and closer. I guess the upside is that I keep getting new road bikes; the downside is that they’re not free.

(I am a little less uptight when it comes to MTB, though; I feel there that there’s a lot more wiggle room as I typically spend a lot more time out of the saddle or otherwise shifting positions. I suspect a FG is probably one of the least flexible bikes in terms of needing correct position.)

[jrenaut]

It’s been a struggle to find time to ride more – that may be part of my problem. I spend a lot of time carting the kids around. During the week it’s school, then the weekends it’s soccer, birthdays, etc. The 20-30 mile solo weekend rides I used to do a little more regularly are now more likely to be 5-10 mile family rides.

[Phatboing]

@hozn 115774 wrote:

I used to think “ah, what difference is a centimeter gonna really make”.

This, sadly, is what happened to me with the Pompino. It has an ETT of 545. The bike it replaced was 525, too damn small. The Colossal, which came later, is 535, and is perfect. The Pompino fits well enough that I can ride it fixed without murdering myself, but even micro-adjustments make for a huge difference, and I can’t stop myself from the micro-adjustments, because I want it to fit like the Colossal.

(this is why I can never ever change anything on the Colossal that my body touches)

[vvill]

Yeah it’s amazing how much a little difference makes. Honestly I still don’t know what would fit right on most of my bikes (MTB, CX, SSCX/hybrid, folding bike). The road bike (and FG) are both roughly 540 ETTs and close enough in geometry (with my road bike closest to a proper fit), but given differences in riding styles, positions and geometries I do wonder if I could use smaller frames for some of the others. The CX bike is 550 and the hybrid billed as 560 but I run shorter stems on them (with a negative degree track stem on the 560). Still, they don’t feel as “glove-like” in fit as the road bike does, and sometimes I feel I would prefer a more aggressive CX bike with a smaller frame and longer stem (although the next size down at least in Kona’s sizing would be too small I think). (The MTB fits fine so far but I have < 100 mi on it. And the folding bike is just weird.)

[MattAune]

#24 replies and no one has made the only reasonable suggestion?

HTFU!

[jrenaut]

@MattAune 115805 wrote:

#24 replies and no one has made the only reasonable suggestion?

HTFU!

I was looking for the most constructive methods of HTFUing. I understand “no pain, no gain”, but “pain for no gain” is kinda BS.

[DismalScientist]

Pain for no gain builds character.

[jrenaut]

@DismalScientist 115809 wrote:

Pain for no gain builds character.

I work for the government, I have enough character.

[DismalScientist]

@jrenaut 115810 wrote:

I work for the government, I have enough character.

:confused:

[jrenaut]

@DismalScientist 115811 wrote:

:confused:

I know pain.

[dkel]

@jrenaut 115745 wrote:

But this is my beautiful lugged Italian steel bike. The way it looks is important.

So just stand there and look at it. Problem solved. :rolleyes:

[Author]

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