Saddle fore/aft positioning... and the Pros



danfoz

Well-Known Member
Apr 12, 2011
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I have been riding and racing a long time, since 1982. Conventional wisdon has had 'knee over the pedal spindle' for a typical road position as the baseline for as long as I can remember. Recently I see more pros using zero setback seatposts, and saddles that seem further forward than I'm used to.

Is this because handlebars are getting lower and lower, and racers are aiming to keep their hip angles open and avoid knee collisions with their chests, or is their a new seating paradigm I am not privvy to? I can't even get close to knee over the spindle on a zero setback unless it's jammed all the way back.

TXS!
 
I was watching the pro ladies racing this weekend - 8 crashes in the first 11 minutes. Not all that the pros do should be done by others.

If your seat position works for you, there is no reason to change it.
 
My position is fine, not sure how any allusion was made otherwise. Some old dogs like to try new things, the two are not mutually exclusive. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/wink.gif
 
When you have your bars set very low, which the pros do in order to be as aero as possible, you need to rotate your hips forward in order to keep your hip angle from getting too small. The way to do this is to move your seat forward (hence the UCI rule to limit this). Think of taking your own road bike position and rotating your whole body forward around the bottom bracket, lowering the bars and moving the seat forward. From a power point of view it shouldn't change much because your leg angles remain constant (but are rotated around the BB), and it makes you more aero. This is basically what the pros are trying to achieve.

Also, even holding the bars fixed a lot of people put out more power with less setback (myself included). My road bike is setup with 5cm setback, which is the UCI min. On my TT bike my bars are lower so I achieve the equivalent of about 1cm set back with a special TT saddle that is still UCI legal.


BTW nothing I've read supports KOPS as being at all justified as a general rule, so there's no reason to necessarily live by it.
 
Thanks Ianierb, that's what I was after, cheers!

This is essentially what I do with my road bike to TT conversion kit. seat goes up and forward, stem goes down and clipons forward. Everything basically just shifts around the pedal axis one inch forward and down with my original position largely intact albeit rotated somewhat.
 

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