Bike Fit Conspiracy

Cinelli 66 bars!

This is a bit of bro science, but I’m seeing slightly faster (solo) speeds on the hoods of my Tarmac.

Not as comfortable as my previous bike, but no real issues on 3-5 hour rides.

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Never heard of “pro vs amateur” fits.

I’d think the aim of your bike riding plays a big role, as does your age. When you’re 20, and your sole aim is to win bike races, you can put up with a lot more discomfort than when you’re 50 and your sole aim is to visit as many cafes as you can in a ride.

Also when you’re young, you likely don’t have many of those niggling injuries we all pick up over the course of our lives. And you recover quicker, so any tenseness you ended up with by riding in a weird position for 5 hours will be gone the next day, and not lead to a week of funny walking.

But I do think there is a weird trend over the last years where positions got more and more upright, saddles lower and bars higher, as if everybody would want to ride their bike like a Dutch city bike.

Can’t see any conspiracy though.

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The place I use does a physical assessment and takes a number of measurements and uses all that data combined with motion and pressure mapping to filter out an individual and unique position. My short torso relatively long femur, wide shoulders, good core, good flexibility, narrow stance, crooked as f pelvis, getting love handles decades of riding/racing generates a position on the bike as unique as my fingerprint.

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Seems to me that a bike fit is not an exact science with only 1 outcome.
Also, there are trade-offs between Comfort and Performance.
What is meant with pro vs amateur fit is that a pro fit is aimed more towards performance than an amateur fit.

But also as an amateur when you get a bike fit, the bike fitter will first sit down with you and discuss what your goals are. So if you indicate you want to go all out for performance you can get a pro fit just as well.

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