Just get your bike, nobody ever really talks about what height you…
You just get your bike, nobody ever really talks about what height you should put your saddle at. But that's what I'm going to talk about today. Let's cue that intro. The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Roadman welcome back roadman to another roadman cycling podcast thanks for joining me today and i know you're looking at the toilet is podcast and you're like yeah cheers Anthony this is such a sexy topic saddle height but what i didn't say in the title is. Get in your saddle height right, it can give you an 8% yeah you heard that right, 8% increase in power. Consider an EPO or someone else crazy dope and shit. People are doing back in the 90s, it gives you about an 8 to 12% increase. Get in your saddle at the right height, this is gonna be worth 10 minutes of your time trust me. Guys before I get into the substantive part of this podcast, like I've been appealing to you every day on the podcast, I'm not sure how many times you need to give a message before someone takes action, but I'm going to keep asking in the hope that you reciprocate. The podcast is funded from user generosity over on patreon.com. The link is in the bio. It's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. COVID is hit different people differently and it's tough financially for a lot of people. And if you can't afford to contribute to price of a beer once a month, no hard feelings or see out on the road, maybe you'll catch me down the line. But if you're getting some value from this, if you're understanding some of these concepts, if it's helping you increase your low-first cycle, and if you're learning some tips, sharing with friends, I ask you to head on over to Patreon and please reciprocate. I'm big into that power of reciprocity. I give in the hope that I get back. So guys, please head on over to patreon.com, make a small donation. In return, I'm going to record for you this private secret podcast once a month, which I'll be dropping in the coming days. patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. It's gonna be weird when I get an actual show sponsor pod sponsor for the podcast and I'm gonna be like hey visits pattybar.com or visit maulbrelights for your long health. Maulbrelights the best carcinogenic cigarette in the game. Is that the Famichry? Nah, you know what? That's the nice thing about having in that legal background. If I remember true statements earned to Fometry, guys today I wanna talk to you about saddle heights. And you can improve your power output, like I said at the start there, but up to 8% by having this saddle height correctly. If you're 5 centimeters off, you're typically giving away in the 6 to 8% power range, which is absolutely huge. But also I know from working with clients since, I've been coaching through A1 and now we are a new vehicle roadman, the rebrand since 2012. Can you believe that? Eight years. I can't wait for 10 year anniversary. But the biggest or the most common injury, biggest makes it sound like someone was attacked by a bear. That's the biggest injury I've ever seen. The most common injury or the most prevalent injury I've ever seen. And I continue to see is from cyclists with knee injuries and their knee injuries mainly resulting from incorrect saddle height. Think about how many rotations per minute. We're riding that Acadian's at 90 RPM for one minute and we're going out for a four-hour cycle. That's, I have no clue. You might have thought I had the answer to that math question, but I don't. I just know it's a big number. It's a lot of rotations a minute and it's resulting in a lot of knee injuries. The studies are categorical on power drop off knee injuries and numbness around the groin area and even erectile dysfunction. If you're a guy and your girlfriend or partner won't thank you for coming home with a bit of erectile dysfunction from your new cycling hobby, they won't be supportive of that. So saddle height is of absolute paramount importance. Now I came to this late but I'm lucky my old biology teacher in school actually showed out to Fergus Ryan got me into cycling really and he's the one you have to thank for a lot of my ramblings.
He was definitely someone I leaned on early on bike position because…
And he was definitely someone I leaned on early on bike position because I didn't have a clue and maybe he knew some of these techniques that I got to know later in life but definitely what he had was an appreciation of how a rider should look on the bike. And I took that for years to just be able to eyeball stuff and go, no, that looks wrong. That looks right. And later years I got the chance to work with David Miller from our World Time Trial Champion and I'd been to wind tunnels and I'd been to velodromes using all these crazy arrow gadgets and then I talk to the former World Time Trial Champion, one of the greatest time trialists of a generation. And he comes out with this parallel wisdom, talk about oversimplification or the idea of you need to learn all the complicated stuff to journey back to the beginning. And it's only like when you make that journey and come back full circle that you actually know for the first time that starting point. If that makes sense and Miller said to me, you just need to look at a rider and if it looks fast it is fast. And that was in reference to position to saddle height to posture on the bike. If it looks fast it is fast and I definitely talk that and I think, for example, my old biology teacher definitely instilled that into me that if it looks fast there's a way you should look on a bike and you see that from watching thousands of errors of cycling. But that's no use to you if you're listening to this and going well I haven't watched how to do errors of cycling so where should I put my saddle height? Well there's three main methods, and through the years that I've picked up from books, from research, studies, and from sort of all wives' tales, they're really the Lamont methods and that's the idea where it's 88.3% of the insane, so you measure from your bottom bracket to your saddle and it's 88.3 or you have the crank-based method, which I actually intuitively makes a lot more sense to me because it takes into account different crank lengths, so you measure from the pedal insert to the top of your saddle and the height from the pedal insert to the top of your saddle should be 109% of your insane. That's probably the one I would go with if you're looking to ball practice and 109% of your insane from the pedal insert to the top of the saddle. Or else you have the old-scale heel method which you see a lot of people don't steal and the heel method is just you sit on the saddle obviously get some of the hold you so you don't fall off and crack yourself and you put your heel onto the pedal and your leg should be a full extension when your heel is on the pedal. All of these will give you a rough ballpark. I think the crank method gives you the best ballpark, but the heel method works pretty well as well. Never rated the Le Mans one. Having a high saddle is definitely worse than having a low saddle. All the studies have seen, power output and injury chance. Power output decreases and injury chances increase to how your saddle goes up. So if you're looking at a range and you do the crank messes and you do the heel messes and you're like it should be between this and this air on the lower side Because you're definitely gonna pick up It's fairly conclusive in the research that I've read that you're gonna pick up more injuries And you're gonna compromise your power output the higher the saddle goes But what I would recommend and it's very very trivial investment is to get yourself a goniometer now That's a big fancy word for something used to use in maths class. It measures angles GONIO meter, GONIO meter, GONIometer. Get yourself one of those on Amazon or eBay, you know, 10 bucks or the thing. And what you're looking for is to get an app. The one I'll use is Bike Fast Fit. And you're looking for knee angle. Knee angle is the best indicator of saddle height. So it's not actually those extensions we're using. So what I typically, if I was going to get myself set up, I'll use the heel method and I'll get myself close enough and then I'll get up and I'll do a little video and I'll use the bike fast, the bike fast fit and a goniometer to get my knee angle at 25 degrees.
25 to 35 degrees is the optimum knee angle but all the studies that…
25 to 35 degrees is the optimum knee angle but all the studies that I've seen 25 degrees close as you can get to that you're increasing all those key fitness markers, power output, cross endurance, threshold, VL2 max. It also diminishes your chances of injury the most aim for 25 degrees, but definitely don't deviate out so at that 35 degree angle. So to recap it, that's your best bet is to get this set up is to go heel-mept of the ball park and then doil it in with the 25 degree and that upper recommended bike fast fit or go neometer. Now you're going to feel like shit if you move it. If you're moving your saddle 5 centimeters you're going to feel like absolute shit on the bike. So what I typically would do, if I was moving at 5 centimetres, I'd probably do this over 4 or 5 weeks where I'd nudge it down every rest day on a Monday, I would nudge it down sort of 0.8 centimetre until I got to my desired height. Because as you move the saddle down, if you move down the 4 or 5 centimetres, you're going to feel like shit and you have a big chance of getting injured. Because even though you're in a poor position that's adversely affecting your power output and means you can't get hurt on and you can't pedal for shit. Even if you're in that worst position of all time, your body is going to adapt to that really shit position and it's going to become used to it. So when you do move into a better, newer position, if you move it all in one chunk, you're going to feel like absolute crap. So do it slowly, creep and changes and then over that four to five weeks, you should experience minimum disruption. You shouldn't, and you shouldn't definitely should increase your chances again injured. But it's just been a little bit smart around when you do this as well folks. Like don't go away to a training camp for the first time with a huge 40-hour week when you're normally used to running 10 hours a week and think I'll change the saddle height. So I just like this, or what I normally say to people is it's small adaptions over a period of time. And that's how we can kind of graded adaptation the phrase I was looking for there. Graded adaptation is the way to do it. Small little increments over a period of weeks. What a sexy topic. How to fit your saddle height, but it's important and for those reasons that I say it's super important. Guys, do us a favor. Trying to push hard on getting this shared around Instagram. So what I ask in everyone to do, wherever you're listening to the podcast, if it's Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, Screen Capture it, tag me over on Instagram stories at roadman.cycling and let me know what your favorite episode has been this week. Guys thanks for listening to another week of the Roadman Podcast and I'll be back with you again on Monday. Be safe roadman, enjoy your weekend. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. called a 14-day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's master's beginner, advanced, there's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything press pause on this audio and go to roadmancycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.