Bike Fit with Colby Pearce - my review

Equipment
1

So I just had an Integrative Bike Fit with Colby Pearce and thought I’d share my thoughts in case anyone was considering.

here’s a link to his site that explains the process. It was exactly as advertised: Integrative Bicycle Fitting - Pearce Coaching and Fitting

For those that don’t know Colby he has a podcast that covers various topics that are usually cycling related…everything from fitting to race strategy to equipment decisions. He also covers many health related topics.

He basically lives, breathes, and eats health related info, anatomy, and human performance / function.

One of his core philosophies is to help you become a well rounded athlete and he believes that will be more important than a perfect fit. He says if you move your cleats 2 mm and feel back pain, most likely the problem is with the athlete. (that said he was very precise when it came to the fit and measurements, etc).

So that said, we went for a ~75 min ride and he observed me and took some video. (watching him ride was actually incredible for me…I always ride alone so I’ve never seen someone handle a bike like that…i’m sure many of you have seen it. but when he kept up with my exact pace, turned his whole body to the right and filmed me for 30 seconds, it was pretty humbling).

anyway, I think he already had some ideas in his head from watching me ride…we went back to his study and did a movement screen. his screen is not ABCD. he has a huge library in his head of movements he wants to see from various trainings he has done meshed with his own experience. so he very quickly found a major weaknesses, a huge “flaw” in my technique, and how I compensate for it. (in a nutshell I am overly quad dominant, my hip hinge is subpar, and I overcompensate for that by over-rounding my thoracic spine).

so we spent the longest part of the fit going over how to correct those things off the bike.

the fit part itself was pretty fast and that was at the end.

I got a 20+ page document of his post-fit thoughts with general advice he gives everyone then 5 pages of things I should be doing off and on the bike.

We will have a follow up in a few weeks after I ride around a bit with my new fit so we can discuss anything that might need to change.

all in all an over the top service from someone with immense knowledge. super happy I went with it.

16 Likes
2

Thanks for posting this.

3 Likes
3

Thanks for the review.

I rode with a former World Tour Pro a few times, he also did a bike fit for me. When he got bored waiting, he causally bunny hopped onto a 7–10 cm wide curb stone and back several times while doing a track stand.

1 Like
4

Man, this is a major key. We simply don’t ride the same on a trainer as we do outside. And we don’t sit on the bike the same at the start of a ride as we do at the end. Major props to Colby for taking the time to watch you on the bike for an extended period outside.

Selling the man a bit short :wink:…mutli-time national champ, former US Hour Record Holder. He has quite the palamares on the bike.

And man, was he aero on the bike. He was on the forefront of aerodynamics (and tech - note the early SRM) back in the 90’s.

image
image1024×664 47.9 KB

2 Likes
5

This is my experience with many good bike fitters too. I’ve worked with several ones of varying level on my own position as well as observing countless fits while working in a bike shop and as a cycling product photographer. I’ve found that the most experienced fitters spend about three quarters of the allotted time discussing anatomy and technique, how to sit properly on the bike, and how the client can evolve with the position over time. An athlete will come in looking very “all over the place” and inefficient, but 8 weeks later upon returning look like a pro despite only very minor alterations to the bike itself. How you interact with the equipment is a massive part of cycling, and it’s hard to realise how much goes into “sitting correctly” until someone shows you what to do.

2 Likes
6

For everyone who calls gravel bikes with skinny road tires weird looking, this bike looks weird. But who cares, all that mattered was whether it was UCI-legal and it was fast.

1 Like
7

yeah totally I think most of the actual bike fit was done during the outside ride and his eyes.

I know this sounds absurd, but one thing he found in my technique is when I stand to climb, I sway my bike pretty good in one direction, then almost zero in the other. never noticed it…I just felt the bike sway back and forth. but I stopped on the one side. you’d never see that on a trainer.

i’m pretty sure he could have taken some wrenches to my bike just watching me outside and get it pretty close without the trainer. once he set it inside, he was within a few mm and took only 2-3 tweaks from his initial guess.

2 Likes