Glutes sore and tight after bike fit. Positive?

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1

I got a bike fit yesterday.
I knew I was in the ballpark as far as fit goes (because I didn’t feel anything wrong all these years. No pain, no injuries etc) but I was mainly interested to see if I have any weird mobility issues or unevenness or anything like that he could fix. Super reputable fitter btw.

The experience was truly great. I was right about being in the ballpark and he confirmed I’m the type of rider who can pretty much adapt to anything without noticing much of a difference.

He did find my knees didn’t track great, have a little bit of a hip impingement on my right side and my right foot didn’t have correct support. Also my q-factor could be a little wider. We added quite a bit of spacers to my pedal spindles to open it up. Added arch support soles to my shoes and lowered my seat just by 3mm. He was amazed that my knee was now tracking perfectly aligned with the laser.

He said not everything has to be perfect so if there’s any issues, I might wanna go back to the original soles (since I had no complaints). Straight knees are good to have but slightly off is worth it if it means I’ll have more comfort/fun riding. He also said my glutes were doing NONE of the work. Gave me a few mobility exercises for both glutes and overcoming the hip impingement and off I went.

Rode couple hours endurance after the fit. Soles were totally comfortable until last ~15 mins where they really started bothering. I’m determined to try them at least a week or two to get used to them so I rode through it. Today, they felt perfect on 1.5 hour FTP intervals.

Here’s the biggest change. My glutes are sore like I’ve never ridden before. Like… I remember being this sore 12 years ago when I first started riding.

I take this as a postive? Combined with the fact that FTP intervals felt great, overshot the target despite my fatigue and 95f weather. It just came easy to me.

Can it really be the case that just those changes are using my glutes more now? I’m just positively shocked so wanted to see if anyone experienced similar results after bike fit.

2

Did you do the glute exercises? Maybe it’s due to that, rather than the ride.

3

Soreness was there today after yesterday’s 2 hour endurance. I hadn’t done the exercises yet. I did them this morning and honestly they are so minimal (more mobility / stretch type work rather than strength. I’ll be adding strength stuff at the gym next week) so I doubt they had anything to do with. They were more focused on hip impingement anyway. I felt very tight at the glutes 15 mins right after today’s ride.

4

Lowing your saddle, will cause you to use your glutes more. The glutes will likely be de conditioned if you have been relying on your quads; unless you do squats. It will take a while whilst they adapt.

5

Yes it can. This all sounds good and normal. Give it time and ideally stay inside your volume and intensity capabilities for a week or two, to support and optimise the adaptation process. I’ve had many bike fits and they’re important for the way my body is. On the first bikefit I had, I got support put in my right shoe, and few other things for better knee alignment, I was staggered at how much better power transfer to the pedals was, when climbing.