From The Fit Studio: Ollie's Fit
Words by Stuart Jefferies, Saint Cloud Bike Fitter
Ollie races! Not sure he knows how to just ‘go for a ride’, it’s all about the efforts and following the plan. He’s also annoyingly young, fit and skinny! But I guess I can’t hold any of that against him?
His bike position is aggressive, the 140mm stem and the angle of his lever hoods are a dead give away! But there is always room for improvement, so we got him in the fit studio to take a look.
Ollie already has a well worn set of Cobra9 orthotics in his shoes, which he reports to give more stability and greater pedal/shoe feel under load. He really does need new shoes though, his current Shimano S Phyre’s are BATTERED, and a little too big. But overall there wasn’t much to do with the shoes apart from a small cleat adjustment, moving the cleats back and inboard to align his knees over the pedals on the down stroke.
Overall Ollie’s flexibility is pretty good, I mean he’s 12 so it should be! However he did mention that he gets left hip pain when riding hard and it often means he has to ease off. Looking at his range of hip mobility on the massage table, it was obvious that he has much less hip range and internal rotation in the left hip than the right. This is something he is aware of and says he is working on with mobility and strengthening exercises off the bike!
After setting up the Wahoo bike to match his current setup; it took me a minute to find a long enough stem. Ollie got to pedaling. Overall the position looked good, aggressive, but nothing that he couldn’t sustain. The one thing that did stand out though was a stutter at the top of the pedal stroke on the left side, this was caused by the tightness in his left hip. Not disastrous, but noticeable and almost certainly the cause of the pain and loss of power he feels when pushing hard.
There is a limit to what can be achieved through bike fitting alone, the work Ollie is doing off the bike will be the long term solution. However there are things we can do to help mitigate the current hip issues. The first step was the cleat adjustment, by bringing his feet inboard his knees tracked straighter on the down stroke, Ollie is slim with narrow hips so needs a narrower stance width.
The other change was more profound and will be a work in progress. Yes we shortened his cranks! Now there are a lot of reasons to shorten cranks but the one I am interested in here is the biomechanical effect. By shortening the cranks from 170 to 165 we created more room at the top of the pedal stroke. The knees don’t get driven up into the chest as much, so opening up the hip angle at the top of the stroke. The added bonus here is again better knee tracking and just more comfort and control through the pedal stroke.
At present we only have the ability to try 165mm cranks as the shortest option, but we have a different crank on the way that gives us the option to go all the way down to 140! The next step for Ollie will be when we can go to 160mm cranks and see how that works for him. The downside is possibly losing a little torque, but if he can push harder for longer without the discomfort that was causing him to ease up then that is a win. Performance through comfort!
The last piece of the puzzle will be saddle position as it relates to the shorter crank. If we go all the way to 160mm cranks this will mean raising the saddle and adjusting the fore aft. Every change you make to your set up will lead to some other adjustments that need careful consideration. Possibly changing the saddle as well, as the new saddle position may change the pressure felt on the saddle, but time will tell.
We didn’t change much on Ollie’s actual bike in the end, as all the bike adjustments we did on the Wahoo were around shorter cranks. Once we have decided on a crank length and swap to shorter cranks on his bike than the final adjustments can be made. This is a fairly common fit outcome, basic adjustments to saddle and bar position can be done straight away but often more profound adjustments require component changes that can’t be done on the spot.
Ollie is one of the mechanics at Saint Cloud, and is a thoroughly nice chap, so if your bike needs a little TLC come in, say hello and he will get your bike sorted.
