Welcome to our comprehensive guide to mastering your bike’s saddle fore-aft positioning, a critical but often overlooked and misunderstood aspect of bike fitting, and more specifically your saddle position. The right saddle position is more than just a comfort factor; it’s a crucial element that bridges your body’s biomechanics with your bike’s ergonomics. This guide delves into the nuances of adjusting saddle fore-aft positioning – a process that balances biomechanics with your personal riding style and preferences. By fine-tuning this aspect of your fit, you can unlock a new level of comfort, efficiency, and even performance.

Perfecting saddle fore-aft positioning goes beyond generic measurements; it’s about understanding and adapting your bike to your unique anatomy and riding dynamics. Whether you’re seeking every ounce of performance or just a more enjoyable journey, this guide should help you get on the right track.

In this guide, we will walk you through:

• Setting Saddle Height and Tilt: Establishing a foundation for your bike fit.
• Baseline with KOPS Method: A starting point for fore-aft adjustment.
• Weight Distribution and Hand Pressure: Balancing your body on the bike.
• Torso Angle and Pelvic Tilt Assessment: Tailoring the fit to your riding posture.
• Comfort Test Ride: Testing and refining the position in real-world conditions.
• Fine-Tuning and Regular Checks: Keeping your fit perfect over time.

By following these steps, you’ll be on track to dialing in your saddle position for a better riding experience.

1. Start with Saddle Height and Tilt:

The journey to a perfect saddle position starts with the basics: setting your saddle height and tilt. This is fundamental because it establishes your leg extension. Correct saddle height ensures efficient pedal strokes without causing strain, while the tilt can significantly affect your comfort. Neglecting these aspects can lead to discomfort and even injury, making this initial step crucial for any cyclist.

Though you want to start by getting these both as close as you can to their final position, you should expect to revisit them if you make significant fore-aft adjustments throughout this process.

Saddle Height: Ensure this is set correctly. A properly adjusted saddle height gives you functional leg extension without overextension through the bottom of the pedal stroke, or restriction at the hip and knee over the top of the pedal stroke (crank length is also important here). It’s the foundational element of your bike fit that everything else relies on. For a more detailed explanation about saddle height check out this post on the subject.

Saddle Tilt: Start with a neutral (flat) or slightly downward tilt (no more than +/- 2 degrees) based on comfort. The tilt can impact how your weight is distributed on the saddle, which subsequently affects your perception of the fore-aft position. For a more complete guide to setting saddle tilt, check out our guide here.

2. Find Your Fore-Aft Baseline:

Before diving into the nuances of fore-aft, the Knee Over Pedal Spindle (KOPS) method provides a valuable starting point for your saddle’s fore-aft position. This traditional (though controversial) approach helps establish a baseline alignment of your knee in relation to the pedal, offering a reference point for further adjustments. While not a measure for success, KOPS is a widely-accepted starting guide that brings you closer to finding your optimal saddle position.

To do so complete the following steps:

• Position your bike on a trainer or have someone hold it upright.
• Sit in your natural cycling position.
• With pedals level (3 & 9 o’clock), hang a plumb line (weighted string) from the bony prominence just below your kneecap (the tibial tuberosity) on your forward leg. The string should intersect or be very close to the pedal spindle. Adjust the saddle forward or backward as necessary.

3. Understand Weight Distribution and Hand Pressure:

Achieving the right balance in weight distribution between the saddle and handlebars is critical for cycling efficiency and comfort. While the focus of saddle fore-aft positioning is often placed on pedalling dynamics, its ability to impact weight distribution on the bike is equally, if not more important. A poorly positioned saddle can lead to excessive hand pressure or instability, highlighting the importance of this adjustment in your overall bike fit.

• The Fore-Aft Balance: The position of your saddle significantly influences the distribution of weight between your saddle and handlebars. An improperly positioned saddle can result in undue pressure on your hands, wrists, and shoulders.
• Finding the Balance: If you find yourself leaning heavily on the handlebars, experiencing numbness or discomfort in the hands, your saddle might be too far forward, causing your centre of mass to tip forward onto your hands. Conversely, if you feel like you’re really stretching to reach the handlebars, but don’t have a particularly significant amount of weight on your hands, this could indicate your saddle is too far back. Adjusting the fore-aft can help distribute weight more evenly between the saddle and handlebars, relieving pressure points.

4. Torso Angle, Power, and Fore-aft

Your riding posture, particularly your torso angle, also plays a significant role in determining the appropriate saddle position. This part of the guide explores how different riding styles and power outputs, from aggressive racing postures to relaxed touring positions, require different saddle adjustments. Understanding your body’s posture on the bike ensures that your saddle position supports, rather than hinders, your riding style.

• In your typical riding position, note the angle of your torso relative to the horizontal plane. This is often called the back angle and will be labeled as such in your MyVeloFit fit report.
  • An aggressive forward lean, such as that found in a TT position or more aggressive road position, often benefits from a slightly forward saddle position to help the rider open up their hips over the top of the pedal stroke.
  • More relaxed and upright riding positions, such as those found on a touring bike, often benefit from a slightly more rearward position to help keep more weight off the hands.
• Power and position
  • An often overlooked element in the saddle fore-aft and torso angle equation is the power output of a rider. In general, the more power a rider is putting out, the more aggressive back angle and forward saddle  position they are able to maintain without placing too much weight on their hands. The more force being put through the pedals, the easier it is to stabilize your body in a broader range of positions.
  • You can experience this for yourself by simply experimenting with an easy effort and a harder effort and observing how stable you feel if you try to remove your hands from the handlebars. With a very easy effort, removing your hands will often result in tipping forward, whereas a hard effort will allow you to maintain your posture. Setting your torso angle and saddle fore-aft based on your current fitness level is an important step to success.

Based on the above, fine tune your saddle fore aft from the KOPS based position you initially established. It may be that you don’t need to move it at all, but you may need significant adjustments.

5. Conduct a Comfort Test:

Theory and guidelines only go so far – the true test of any saddle position is how it feels during a ride. This section emphasizes the importance of taking your bike out for a test ride after adjustments. It allows you to assess the comfort, identify any pressure points, and notice aspects like stability and pedal stroke efficiency, ensuring that your adjustments translate into a better riding experience.

• Go ride your bike. Target a ride that has varied terrain to get a good feel for your saddle position as your body shifts around on the bike. Monitor for pressure points, feelings of instability, or pedal stroke inefficiencies.
• Go easy. Making adjustments to your riding position can significantly impact the way your body moves and recruits muscles. This can take some adaptation, so don’t stress your body further than necessary while it adapts with hard efforts.
• Adjust and retest until optimal comfort is found.

6. Fine-Tuning and Regular Checks:

Bike fitting is not a one-time task – it’s an ongoing process. This final section underlines the importance of fine-tuning and regularly reassessing your saddle position. Changes in your riding style, flexibility, or even a new pair of cycling shoes can affect your bike fit. Regular checks and adjustments ensure that your bike continues to fit you perfectly over time, adapting to your evolving cycling journey.

• Even after settling on a position, periodically reassess, especially after any changes to fitness, components, or in the event of an injury. You can use the Fore-aft range in your MyVeloFit report to see where you are in your recommended range as a reference.
• As your flexibility, riding style, or physical state changes, minor adjustments might become necessary and shouldn’t be avoided.

To sum up, setting your fore-aft saddle position is a blend of art and science. After adjusting your saddle height and tilt, perfecting the fore-aft alignment ensures a harmonious interaction with your bike, maximizing both comfort and performance.