Thoughts on modern frame geometry trends? Steep seat tubes? High stack?

[Eddy_Twerckx]

A few caveats before I get started:

1. My approach to overhauling my bike fit was completely janky and unprofessional. It took 4-5 weeks of frustratingly making small adjustments to finally land on a setup that felt like "Hey I think we are finally on to something..." -  I would not recommend doing this without a professional bike fitter unless you plan to go full idiot mode like myself. There's gonna be days where everything just feels completely wrong. From a time wasted perspective it would have been cheaper to just go see a fitter.

2. Regardless of how I look on the bike from an outsider's perspective, how actually feel on the bike now has been night and day. I expect folks to have a strong opinion against all of this. And that's totally cool. There's always room to learn.

My starting point was based on @hubba @Sakizashi @Dark17 advice from earlier in this thread. In fact, I read Steve Hogg/Brian Mcguigan blog as was recommended. What a fantastic deep dive. The blog post really gave me the foundation and logic to methodically change stuff around. Even if I wasn't perfect.

What did I change?
-Moved my cleats back about 8-10mm. Where the ball of foot is rather than in front of it. 
-Moved my saddle forward around 8-10mm
-Lowered my saddle about 2mm
-Kept the cleat shim on my right leg (leg discrepency)
-Removed my insole wedges from each shoe. (Originally due to foot pronation)

What were the effects?
-Smoother pedal delivery and higher cadence in Zone 3 and above.
-Significantly improved power delivery
-Increased foot stability
-No more occasional or random foot hot spots
-No more inner thighs rubbing the top tube or seatpost
-Hip angle more open
-Sit bones FINALLY sitting sqaure and stable on the saddle. On the exact part of the saddle where the sit bones are supposed to sit. Not the nose   

Overall I'm about 90-95% satisfied with my results. Somehow all of this also fixed my foot pronation issues without needing my insole wedges anymore. Including no more "jumper's knee" fatigue on my left leg from being a one-foot jumper in college - Perhaps having more foot and hip stability improved everything up the stack. Could small tweaks be made? Of course. But being able to feel super planted and stable now on 4-5 hour rides without any small hiccups appearing around hour 3 has been splendid. I really want to thank everyone in here for your help.

Have a great weekend.

Slowly joining the dark side? Sounds like you had some big changes in fit and fit philosophy since your original post here where you wanted to push your saddle further back. I was similar. It was such a weird thing to slam the saddle forward. I moved mine about 4cm forward in total. Yes, 4cm. But it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done in my cycling career. More power. More comfort. It took some time getting adjusted but I’m fully on board with the progressive geometry.

[raisinberry777]

Slowly joining the dark side? Sounds like you had some big changes in fit and fit philosophy since your original post here where you wanted to push your saddle further back. I was similar. It was such a weird thing to slam the saddle forward. I moved mine about 4cm forward in total. Yes, 4cm. But it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done in my cycling career. More power. More comfort. It took some time getting adjusted but I’m fully on board with the progressive geometry.

I'm in the same boat. Both my bikes I'm on 0 offset posts with the saddle as far forward as it will go (74 degree STA on both). Never been more comfortable.

[JensenMacD]

I moved mine about 4cm forward in total. Yes, 4cm. But it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done in my cycling career. More power. More comfort. It took some time getting adjusted but I’m fully on board with the progressive geometry.

I am on the verge of moving my saddle 2cm froward and moving from 90-110mm stem. When you did the 4cm move, did you do anything with your cleats?

[klindsey00]

Spend time in any Reddit Bike Fitter thread and you'll see that not even two professional fitters can agree. So I chuckle when folks speak in absolute terms about another rider's fit. Perhaps they are plenty comfortable and are still achieving the results they're looking for.

From my reading around I've found that to be the case, people can't agree. Some fitters will try to get things to be in numerical ranges vs just trying to get the person comfortable on the bike.

[Eddy_Twerckx]

I am on the verge of moving my saddle 2cm froward and moving from 90-110mm stem. When you did the 4cm move, did you do anything with your cleats?

No, but that’s because I’ve been running my cleats slammed rearward for close to a decade now. It’s funny seeing it pop up more now because that was something I got told to do years ago. I remember seeing those modified custom shoes with the cleat in the middle so I experimented with moving mine back as far a they could go. That was around 2017.

The only other change I’ve made is getting longer stems.

[Dark17]

With the topic of seat setback/fore-aft, don't just put your saddle as forward as you can as it can be very dangerous. Here's a very nice read regarding setting your saddle fore-aft position.

[Sakizashi]

I feel like a lot of Steve Hogg content seems logical, but the more you think about it, the more you start to see that he makes some assumptions that generously states are reflective of his own physiology and lifestyle.

I will never forget reading a long-winded thing about why midfoot cleats might be interesting--and it came down to "you walk up stairs not on your forefoot but evenly with your whole foot, which = midfoot loading. Not only does that not make sense, but I also walked stairs for like 30 minutes trying to figure out how Steve would have come to that conclusion and decided it had to be that he has never paid attention when walking a staircase barefoot and made assumptions based on how a typical sneaker (not running shoe) supports a foot, which is not the same thing as how loads are managed by the foot.

There are shades of that here too. The premise is balance, but static balance on the trainer is different than balance in motion, as moments matter. Balance when accelerating is going to be different than balance when climbing. How often are you actually going to be going at a constant speed on a straight, flat road with no wind or external forces? For what percentage of your riding is the scenario outlined in the post relevant? 1%? 2%? Balance might take effort; holding yourself up might take effort, but if the goal is less exertion for speed, I think most people will find the idea of static balance on a trainer rather irrelevant in the face of aero concerns.

IME, I can move my saddle all the way forward on my Kickr bike with no adverse effects, except for changes in muscle recruitment between my glutes and quads. There is a saddle position where I can feel my glutes work when I do intervals--to me, this is where I like to be as primarily an endurance rider thinking about yet another Unbound 200 or some equivalently long event. It's got nothing to do with balance, and it's still really far forward--I would guess it's ~4-5cm forward of where I was in 2018-2019 when I started to question this stuff. (going from 15mm setback on a 74-degree STA bike to 15mm forward on a 75-degree STA bike)

But what do I know? I am not a fitter.

[SLockwood]

From my reading around I've found that to be the case, people can't agree. Some fitters will try to get things to be in numerical ranges vs just trying to get the person comfortable on the bike.

I had a fitter who did just that, pretty much turned his back to me to look at his computer and only turned around to make changes to the bike that fit in the angles the computer wanted. I was on a bike where native stack/reach was already 560/390, he added an additional 45mm of spacers and put me on an 80mm stem, and saddle almost fully pushed back on the rails. I said its painful but didn't seem to matter.

I'm 5'9" or 175cm with an inseam of 32" or 81cm. I went to a new fitter and she did't look at numbers or angles a single time until I was in a comfort zone, now I'm on a QuickPro AR:One size small with a slammed 110mm -17 stem, and 25mm offset seatpost. So over 8cm difference in stack height between fits.

I struggle with the modern progressive fit because a higher stack loads my hands and wrists. With anterior pelvic tilt and a good amount of flexibility i need saddle to bar drop to be high to get hamstring and core engagement and unweight my wrists.  It seems the more forward I move the saddle the lower I need the handlebars to be.

[gribs]

Ben Cathro did an interesting piece on cleat position in mountain biking a couple of years ago. I've personally aways run my spd cleats as far back as they'll go and did the same when I got some spd-sl.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/video-the-science-nehind-cleat-positioning-with-ben-cathro.html

[patliean1]

I will never forget reading a long-winded thing about why midfoot cleats might be interesting--and it came down to "you walk up stairs not on your forefoot but evenly with your whole foot, which = midfoot loading. Not only does that not make sense, but I also walked stairs for like 30 minutes trying to figure out how Steve would have come to that conclusion and decided it had to be that he has never paid attention when walking a staircase barefoot and made assumptions based on how a typical sneaker (not running shoe) supports a foot, which is not the same thing as how loads are managed by the foot.

  I was just mansplaining to my wife earlier this week about my new bike fit. She's not a cyclist. So the stairs analogy was the best I could think of to explain it to her. Hilarious in retrospect.

We live on the 3rd floor. And I used to experience minor fatigue just below my left knee when walking up stairs after 2-3 hour rides. In regular shoes that is. But since moving my cleats back that discomfort and post fatigue has completely disappeared.

I'm learning that all of this is really about stability through the entire stack.

[Merry]

I had a fitter who did just that, pretty much turned his back to me to look at his computer and only turned around to make changes to the bike that fit in the angles the computer wanted. I was on a bike where native stack/reach was already 560/390, he added an additional 45mm of spacers and put me on an 80mm stem, and saddle almost fully pushed back on the rails. I said its painful but didn't seem to matter.

I'm 5'9" or 175cm with an inseam of 32" or 81cm. I went to a new fitter and she did't look at numbers or angles a single time until I was in a comfort zone, now I'm on a QuickPro AR:One size small with a slammed 110mm -17 stem, and 25mm offset seatpost. So over 8cm difference in stack height between fits.

I struggle with the modern progressive fit because a higher stack loads my hands and wrists. With anterior pelvic tilt and a good amount of flexibility i need saddle to bar drop to be high to get hamstring and core engagement and unweight my wrists.  It seems the more forward I move the saddle the lower I need the handlebars to be.

This has been exactly my experience to a T as well. I'm of similar height and inseam (173cm 76.2cm inseam) and have actually gone with the AR:ONE too (to be built soon), coming from a CAAD10. I'm a guy with longer arms and torso than legs. So my bikes often don't have as much exposed seatpost, but has a lower front end to compensate for that.

Both run 20mm setback seatposts, slammed saddle forward (I found my favourite saddle to be the new Fizik Arione - I plan to buy another copy in the future for my CAAD, gonna poach that one for the new build) and 100mm stems (-7 and -8). CAAD10 is slammed with a 5mm headset cover but I may try getting lower with the AR:ONE since it has a lower stack. Ever since I got lower and got the saddle position in range, my back, hand and ass pain has COMPLETELY gone away on long rides.

[Sakizashi]

I had a fitter who did just that, pretty much turned his back to me to look at his computer and only turned around to make changes to the bike that fit in the angles the computer wanted. I was on a bike where native stack/reach was already 560/390, he added an additional 45mm of spacers and put me on an 80mm stem, and saddle almost fully pushed back on the rails. I said its painful but didn't seem to matter.

I'm 5'9" or 175cm with an inseam of 32" or 81cm. I went to a new fitter and she did't look at numbers or angles a single time until I was in a comfort zone, now I'm on a QuickPro AR:One size small with a slammed 110mm -17 stem, and 25mm offset seatpost. So over 8cm difference in stack height between fits.

I struggle with the modern progressive fit because a higher stack loads my hands and wrists. With anterior pelvic tilt and a good amount of flexibility i need saddle to bar drop to be high to get hamstring and core engagement and unweight my wrists.  It seems the more forward I move the saddle the lower I need the handlebars to be.

Most people who have spent a lot of time working on progressive fit and the bike designs don't support the idea of a higher stack. Just look at the Ridley Noah Fast 3.0 and the Factor One. It's a half-truth popularized by influencers.

I would say that positions are more stack-sensitive because you really want to minimize the back angle and then drop the arms more or less straight down, or very slightly forward, then have your forearms parallel to the ground in the aero-hoods position. This is to manage triceps fatigue and lower the frontal area.

[Merry]

Most people who have spent a lot of time working on progressive fit and the bike designs don't support the idea of a higher stack. Just look at the Ridley Noah Fast 3.0 and the Factor One. It's a half-truth popularized by influencers.

I would say that positions are more stack-sensitive because you really want to minimize the back angle and then drop the arms more or less straight down, or very slightly forward, then have your forearms parallel to the ground in the aero-hoods position. This is to manage triceps fatigue and lower the frontal area.

Can confirm this. The only modern trend that made a huge difference in my power output and comfort on the bike was shorter cranks, but that makes sense already cause I've got a shorter inseam. 170mm to 160mm cranks literally gave me at least +15W based off my training history - especially in Zone 2. My heart rate was lower for the same effort. I don't know the science behind it but it's clear that longer cranks were making me uncomfortable.

After the length, stack and reach change - I was able to do the aero-hoods position really comfortably, and I'm at the point now where I can hold it indefinitely.

[Eddy_Twerckx]

With the topic of seat setback/fore-aft, don't just put your saddle as forward as you can as it can be very dangerous. Here's a very nice read regarding setting your saddle fore-aft position.

Pretty dated article. TT and Tri guys have their saddle way further forward. They don’t seem to have any issues. If anything, since I slammed saddle all the way forward I’ve had less discomfort than ever. Opens up the hip angle. More power, more comfort. I think more people should at least try it.

[FrostedDyslexia]

I think more people should at least try it.

So, considering a typical road fit, how did you guys adjust the bar position as you moved the saddle forward if at all? One would assume you also bring it forward buy maybe that's actually a bad idea in terms of shifting weights on the hands / triceps fatigue.