WHAT'S NEW IN BIKE FIT?

Getting correctly set up on your bike can make a big to comfort as well difference as performance. Phil Burt outlines the latest developments in the art and science of bike-fit...

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Like your riding position, the practice of bike-fitting evolves over the years. Since riders began taking a scientific approach to their set-up in the 1980s, biomechanists, physios, coaches and riders themselves have learnt a lot about how geometry affects comfort, performance, efficiency and durability. Some of these improvements grew out of deliberate research, others from chance discovery during trial-and error experimentation.

I worked as lead physio at British Cycling for 12 years, through three Olympic cycles, and saw the impact of many of these changes first-hand – and even played a part in a few of them. My first bike-fit book was published in 2014, and since then there have been so many important developments in the field that I knew a substantial update was due. The fully revised second edition was launched last year. In this feature, I want to share with you some of the headline changes in bike-fit over the past decade so that you can put them into practice, whether it’s to improve comfort, ease a niggle, or just to go that bit faster.

1. YOU MIGHT NOT NEE DONE