A Cyclist’s Guide How to Adjust Bike Saddle
So, here’s what you need to be careful with when you are changing saddles. By bringing the height of the saddle down, it ended up.
Me and the dogs are about to go on a bike ride inside on the trainer with Zwift and it’s about time that I start trying out these Cobb saddles. So, right now, I’m gonna show you how to change out a saddle and make sure that you got the measurements dialed in and basically, you’re set up in a way that gets you to a starting point that you’re not gonna have major saddle sore problems, ie, sore bum problems. It’s gonna get you in the ball park of comfort. So, here’s what you need to be careful with when you are changing saddles. Take a look at this Physique saddle that comes stock with the bike.
Compare it to this Cobb saddle, there are a few major differences. Number one, the width of this is a little bit different I think this one is a little bit wider. Number two, the rails are set up a little bit longer and we’ll talk about why that is after. So, it ends up being a higher, wider saddle and it might even be a little bit longer.
And that said, we’ve gone through the entire saddle setup, pressure mapping system at Alter Ego Sports to make sure that I was dialed in with this, but I wanna get this basically into that same spot. Now, that’s a little bit trickier than just saying, “Okay, well I’m gonna loosen up the bolts, take this off and then swap this on”. Because, as you can see, the structure of it is different. So, you take two measurements before taking off the first saddle.
I like to use the stem cap, because even if the handle bar turns a little bit and you’re a little bit off, you’re still pressing into basically the same spot, because it’s just rotating in the same point. Measure from that to the front nose of the saddle. Second place that you measure from is pedal one of the sides down to the bottom of the pedal stroke and go up, not to the underside of the saddle, because that can change with the thickness of the saddle, but you measure to the top of the front of the saddle. So, basically, right there, right as it starts leveling off and then you try to match those up by going forward and backward and up and down with the seat post.
So, what you’re gonna have to do is you’re gonna have to go back and forth a little bit In my case, I did the reach first and then I did the height of the saddle next. By bringing the height of the saddle down, it ended up skewing the reach, so you gotta kinda keep everything loose, that’s why I’ve got the torque key here, make sure you use a torque key, torque wrench to make sure you’re not over-tightening and cranking. Cranking? Oh Cracking the carbon, and you keep each one just a little bit loose, making sure that that measurement is right and then as you get that right, you’re not throwing off the other one.
Downside to having a smart trainer, if we wanna do all this Zwift stuff and have a Wahoo Kicker connected, we gotta be at the mercy of everything else in our life, like internet service. I just started working up a sweat, I think I biked 20 minutes, and I might still have time to finish that work. Well, 25 minutes of riding, two phone calls and still, no working internet and Bluetooth later, I ain’t riding, I’m out of time. If this were in the middle of the season, Taren would be upset.
Tell you, in 25 minutes of riding and 30 minutes of being on the phone with the internet company later, I can tell you that the Cobb saddle ain’t bad Couple of things to note here with the Cobb saddle versus the stock Physique saddle, the Cobb saddle sits a fair bit higher than the Physique The rails on the Physique saddle here don’t nearly have as much height as the rails on the Cobb saddle here and what John Cobb says is that he actually makes these rails higher, so that they’ve got a little bit more shock absorption. Now, also, this isn’t the case on these two saddles, but John Cobb says that, on average, he tries to make the amount of room that you can move a saddle back and forth on these rails a fair bit longer. He wants athletes to have more play with how far they can move the saddle to make it comfortable one way or another.
What he said is that by making these rails higher, so that they’ve got more give and longer, so that they’re more easily adjustable. Then it adds about seven grams to the saddle but he’s like, “You know what, if we’re adding seven grams, but likely making a rider more comfortable”. That’s a trade off he’ll make all day. Here, there’s a little bit of a channel in the Physique saddle, but there’s an entire channel cut out in this Cobb saddle Apparently, what John Cobb did when he started making saddles that they still kinda hold true to today is they’ll start with a mold of a saddle and as rider’s ride it and testing happens, they’ll start asking the riders where pressure points are and where problem areas are and where those problem areas are, that’s where they’ll start shaving down material.
And what they get to, is they get as stiff a saddle as they possibly can keep while shaving off as many of they problem areas as they can get away with. This saddle is a fair bit larger than that, so this is gonna weigh a little bit more. The Physique saddle kind of slopes down while the Cobb saddle ends up kind of tilting up, it’s at a higher angle so as you put on a saddle, you wanna make it as level as possible or just slightly down. You don’t wanna go down too far, ’cause then you start sliding and bad things happen to your undercarriage. So, there you go.
If you need to change your saddles, you can do that. If you wanna use the same saddle and you’ve gotta move it, you can take a sharpie marker, mark the spots on here and on the seat post, you can mark the post where that needs to be, but if you’re changing saddles altogether, you wanna get those measurements, so you can at least get close to where you know is gonna be alright. Now, de-grumpify myself, I’m gonna get away from this bike, just forget it, I’m gonna forget it, and I’m gonna go see acupuncturist.