So if you're one of the people out there who feel like I don't, no matter how what I try, I can't get my crank my cadence up. Smaller cranks is almost certainly right. But then marrying it with the right positional changes. So if your saddle height's right, what crank length gives you the opportunity when you drop it is to get higher and further forward, you know, and over the bottom bracket. Now, what that does, the reason why I think it produces more power, and people regularly come back to me, and hopefully you I don't you didn't do, but uh I have people come back and say, "I just broken all my straa records, and all we did was change their crank length." And that's not me making them stronger. It's them being able to get the biggest strongest muscle, which is your glutes, into the game. If you're sitting too low and far back, which you have to do if you've got the wrong crank length on because it will just you can't get up and above it. But all of a sudden, so the analogy I often use, Anthony, sorry to go on, is like if I you stand there and I say, "Stamp on my hand over here." Yeah. You'll hurt it, but you're not going to break it. If I come over there and let you stand up, put my hand directly underneath your heel. You stand on it, you'll probably break it. Yeah. That's cuz that muscle's in the game. And that is pedaling, right? When British cycling, we used to do a test. It's like to find sprinters best position. It's just like keep putting the saddle up, keep pulling it forward until you find the most st because saddle height and forward is where power is. The limiting factor in getting there is crank length. So if I'm buying a new bike, for sure it makes sense listening to you. Like I got a new group set and I was like planning to get a new bike, new group set. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go 165s." I guess it's the person that's on the fence that's like has a 172 and they're like, "Oh, is this worth the switch?" How would you think about like a a mental model for them understanding if it's worth the switch? Like cadence is that like a test if you're struggling with cadence, would that be one of the things you look for? Yeah, but um I think if you if you get any low back pain, if you feel like you rock on the bike, if you get if you have suffer from a asymmetrical issues, if you have any sort of knee pain because the kinematic distance by dropping crank length, say from 170 to 165, you just the amount of loading that's not going through the hip and knee that was going there before, but is in a much more comfortable range for you to handle. All those things I think. So I view crank length about, you know, my philosophy on bike fit is there is no one ideal position. You came in here today and I went that is good and but we could we could change it. There's a window. There's a box around yourself. There's a box around that window gets smaller. People are if you're 16 you can jump on anything and luckily Anthony even though you're in your 40s now you jump on anything and make it work. All right. But that window starts to change and it starts to get smaller as we get older just because of the wear and tear in the body. If you drop crank length 5 mil the window gets bigger. Okay. So I would say anybody who's if you're like I've ridden 172. I don't know any reason to put someone on a longer crank. Put it that way. I definitely can give you 10 reasons that will to give one someone to drop crank length. I would caveat that with making sure that they hoover up the opportunity it presents and getting their position really good on top of that. Okay, I'm convinced. I want to go a slightly different direction. Um, durability is kind of a buzzword around cycling for the last few years and durability in a a training sense is my ability to produce power in the first hour versus my ability to produce power in the last hour, how much of a drop off I'm having. Do you think there's a durability component to bike fit as well? Even if I have a good bike fit, like you're talking about there's a range. So, I could be in this, I could be at one end of the range, but I start to experience problems in hour four, hour five, hour six.
What was good to you? Was salv problems, knee problems, back problems? Back problems. Yeah. Knee is because the knees, if you think about you're sitting on the saddles, so your hip doesn't have to do much. Your foot's locked into a carbon fiber shoe nor right. The knee is the joint that's left out in the wind, right? And it's the one that's transferring all the power, generating it and transferring it. So, in my bike fit philosophy, I start with getting the saddle position right because it's so important like knee health. You know, the the ironic thing is most common cycling injury is a knee injury. What's the first thing anyone does after a knee operation is they get on a static bike. They don't go running. So cycling is great for knees. People will cycle a lot longer with knee pathology where they need you got wear and tear arthritis. I would prescribe it for anybody but it is completely locked in. West take 90 RPM a minute. That's a lot of revolutions over two hours. Yeah. So having the you know spending investing a bit of time in like reading a book on bite fit or using my villa fit to make sure your knee position is in the right place or going to see a local bike fit can really just go well look I've had that check now I can go off and I can work as hard as I want. I know I'm working my quads really hard but my knee's in a safe place you know. So but my top tips on knee pain are move your cleat all the way back. If your foot foot forward we keep the knee safe from getting too far forward. Um, if you want like a duck, get loads of crank rub. Consider like speed pay pedals because they let you do what you want with your feet. Things like that. You know, the right pedal system can be a godsaver for your knee. Just that old school trick that I would have learned of clip out of the pedal, put your heel on the back of the pedal, and it should be a full extension. So, that's a good rule of thumb. It all breaks down when people have shorter legs, long torsos, injuries. They don't know about one leg longer than the other. But, I would that is a good place to start. At least you're getting in the ballpark. Yeah, absolutely. Back pain seems to be one that just plagues so many leisure riders. Like if I'm out with someone that, you know, doesn't ride their bike 10, 12 hours a week, you know, someone that jumps in for the occasional spin, they're almost always plagued with back pain. Whenever you get to the calf, you see them stretching out their back. I have one friend in particular, like he's absolutely riddled with back pain at the moment. He can hardly walk. Yeah. What's causing it? So, nearly always um I would re I'm going to give you three things, right? They're nearly always on the wrong. It comes back to that again. Um, so you know your hip flexors that we talk about, right? They if the back pain is the type of pain, you know, you see the guys get off the the cafe stop and they look like old men walking around, but then five minutes later they're better or they cut off the bike and stretch, right? That's not your back. That's not pathology, your bones to the back. That is the hip flexor, which is the ilio service muscle back over here on this skeleton. If me and you jumped in an old midi now and drove to the Jono. Yeah. and we didn't stop and got out, we'd look like those old men, wouldn't we? Right. That's cuz you've been sitting in a really closed pack position and your hips have got really tight. That's having too long a crank length on the bike. So, if you had me one go, I wasn't allowed to see the patient. I just said, you told me you had low back pain and I had I had to guess in the dark what would make the biggest difference. I would say drop their crank. So, there you go. Because they'll be able to move their pelvis forward. They'll be able to take the strain. often when the pel when the hip is really tight, the pelvis is fixed back here and you have to do all this lumbar flexion. I only know this because this is all I do all day long unless it only works every single time. It's not the only reason for back pain. The first thing we do is establish are you taking the back pain onto the bike, you know, if you've got actual physical things wrong with your back, then that that can obviously transfer to the back.
But if it only comes on with cycling, it be I think it' be crank length and then saddle optimization. One of the easiest things you can do with is having the right whip saddle. someone shifts back all the time. I often say to someone, "Do you find yourself shifting back all the time?" And they go, "Yeah, you got just need a wider saddle. They want they want the support and they're looking for it and they haven't got it, you know." And then the last thing, of course, if they're trying to ride like, you know, 55year-old office worker who's got Mark Cavish position, he's like, "Come on." You know, it's you know, that's a reason for back pain being far too low at the front. And that's what most people start off with and they back themselves off it. What we trying to do is if you want to maintain your performance position, carry on doing as well as you can. Well, I can either bring your front end up, make you less arrow, make you more in a touring position, or we can finally change the crank length and allow you to stay in the relatively arrow position and produce power better and look a bit more younger. We we're talking about physique a lot today because we're going I'm going to go with a physique saddle. When you look at the modern pelaton and you look at Pagacha's position, what do you see that's different about his position? because it looks quite unique. Well, he's quite unique, isn't it? It's like So, yeah. Um, it's really it so um my the saddle that he uses is the Argo saddle and we helped design that in this room. That was my first job after the British Cycling Team Sky. It's a real honor that he chooses that. It's really interesting he chooses it because it's more like a gravel saddle, right? But it has quite um has quite a wide nose. It's a short nose saddle, but it comes Yeah. offers a lot of support. If you look at his position, he rides with like quite a lot of saddle tilt. Yeah, it's quite tilted down. It's hugely tilted down. Like it's almost like a TT position that I'd be used on from a pursuit. Exactly. He He's that good. He rides a TT position on a road bike. And I think that's why he likes the 3D printed Argo because he can literally come to the nose of it. He's got all the support he needs. But he rides with about I would say it could be up to minus 6° saddle tilt, which is crazy. That's normally a sign that something's not right. But god, he looks good on the bike, so you can't say it doesn't look right, you know. Is there a benefit to it? Well, yeah. He's he's with um saddle tilt. I'm always all saddles are designed to be either used flat or slightly nose down. Um a little bit of um saddle tilt really opens up your hips and that helps you feel more comfortable and more powerful. I think what he's doing is you got to remember with the pros when we do saddle pressure mapping, you know, you talked about how many fits I've done. I've probably done more saddle pressure maps, been developing saddles and shamis and seen people with pros, you don't see saddle pressure because they're pushing so hard on the pedal. They the there's no weight going through the saddle. It's unbelievable, you know. So, when you try and map them sometimes, it's really really hard to do that. But I think he is number one, West Cav, he's a freak. He's he's I've never seen anybody do what I think it's amazing, you know. Um and but often bite fizz are a strange bunch to go, "Oh, look at that. That's wrong. How can you say it's wrong? It's like it's it's working for him. Could it be better?" No, I don't think I think he's just worked out a way that works for him. You hit them now. I think he rides time trial on a road bike. Every rider chases that feeling. The one where the bike just disappears. Where the pedals turn easy and the road hums beneath you. And for a few fleeting seconds, everything just clicks. No effort, no noise, just flow. That moment isn't luck, it's engineering. The coin that only comes from obsession. For over 20 years, Parley has refined the art of carbon. Every layer placed by hand. every angle tuned by feel and data until response, balance, and speed exist in perfect harmony. You don't notice it parly because it's flashy. You notice it because it feels right. Because every input, every climb, every corner happens exactly how you imagined it would.