I’m tempted to give this tool a shot. How are people taking the videos? Webcam and long usb cable to control via your computer? Cell phone (but how do you stop/start recording?)
Just cell phone and crop the video for start/stop
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There’s a timer that you can choose time like 15 seconds or 30 seconds that delays the recording to allow you to get on your bike and it will record then stop once the time is up. So you don’t have to do anything. I haven’t gotten too fancy with setup. I make sure it’s level(it shows you) and I use my laptop usually but have used my phone as well. Just make sure you are in the frame and the background light, if any, isnt washing you out.
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Great tips…thank you!!!
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I have this. Under $20. Has a Bluetooth remote. You press button to start video then press it again to stop.
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This. I’m a little OCD, so I bought a phone holder that mounts to a camera tripod. And high resolution videos actually work against you (it just makes the analysis once you upload the file take that much longer). I downsample all clips to 720 before uploading them. So hi resolution is a thing you don’t need to worry about.
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For anyone who has / is using MyVeloFit, does it take into account position from both sides? Or do you pick your left / right side only? What about head on / from the back?
You pick a side right now. I don’t k ow if I dreamt it but I thought an update was coming about using head-on as well but right now it’s just a single side
Thanks. Here’s hoping they add front / rear to optimize for overall position and not just one side.
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Do not buy. Terrible. Will just send your saddle so low you need a trike.
Terrible.
Interesting, not my experience at all.
For those interested (and I’m not sponsored or anything), it’s 75 usd for 12 months of unlimited bikes and measurements, and much cheaper for a 2 week trial.
Give it a go, and if your seat is too low you can not renew.
Worked well for me on 3 bikes thus far. I use it to get “close” then tweak on my own based on feel.
My neither, it had me increasing saddle height at least 2cm (as well as increasing reach)
@berto2cj
I will say it had my saddle lower than my “professional” fit. On the website it does say it errs on the lower side. That being said it is a range that you can play with. You don’t have to aim to be in the middle of green
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For recent posters, feel free to share how the proposed adjustments affected your bike fit geometry (current and proposed).
One thing I found out what that if MVF is proposing lots of adjustments, get the saddle position dialed in first before doing anything with reach/bars/stem, etc. I THINK this is reflected in their ‘order of operations’ but not entirely sure offhand.
I’ve used it over the past couple weeks to help dial in a new gravel bike. I found it helpful, but it still requires some trial and error. My initial results instructed me to lower my saddle 5mm which turned out to be too low even though it was in range. I feel like I’ve gotten it in a good spot now which to their credit did include lowering my saddle slightly from where I originally had it while also moving my saddle forward.
I did have some sessions where it kept telling me to move my saddle forward 5mm. Every time I’d move the saddle forward I’d still get the same results and recommendation even after moving the saddle 10mm from where it was initially. Increasing the saddle height by a few mm is what finally did the trick. So I do think it’s important to keep in mind how all the different components work together when making changes.
Having done 3 retul fits in the past helped me understand what “good” feels like. I think it’s best used with the expectation that it’s a tool to get additional feedback, but it’s likely not going to spit out a perfect result the very first time.
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Lower saddle 5mm
Lower saddle 20mm
Lower saddle 10mm
At that 3rd go I threw in the towel, I have a seat mast and I’m not cutting carbon. The 5mm felt too low for me but I trusted the tool. The 20 was insane. The 3rd recommendation was just too much.
Each of these recommended the reach to go out 10mm as well.
isn’t there an option to critique or notify them of an error?
yeah but its additional $$
Well, I decided to take the plunge and try myvelofit premium. TLDR: I felt like I got zero value from it.
For context, I have had a Retul fit 5 years ago on a different road bike. I also feel like I have a very dialed (self) fit on my gravel bike. But I have a new road bike and it’s more aggressive stack and I’m running shorter cranks (165 mm) and a much narrower bar (33 cm). Riding the bike outdoors, I could tell the current setup wasn’t quite right but I was unsure what the issue was. So I felt that I could use another “opinion” on my fit.
Well, I did the flexibility evaluation and got good to moderate on all criteria. Then I got to fitting the bike and selected a performance-oriented fit. Uploaded my videos and … it felt everything was good, no suggestions. Huh.
So then I purposely started messing with seat height and setback to see how it would respond. It was happy with surprisingly high saddle heights. It complained about my back angle way more than had any relevance. I then tried to get to more optimal recommendations for the various angles, but subjectively my fit was getting worse.
I was being very methodical and only changing one thing at a time and then riding at 90% FTP for several minutes before taking the video and uploading it. This took lots of time to experiment with. It was getting frustrating.
All the while I was re-watching YouTube videos of Neil Stanbury (Road Cycling Academy) and James Thomas (Cade Media) to help guide me. Finally, I decided to give up on MVF and go purely subjective and use Neil’s guidance. I quickly settled into a better fit than MVF was giving me.
While I was testing out my last tweak, I came upon the below video that really hit the nail on the head of why fitting via video is not going to work well.
The summary is there’s three things that are red flags in bike fitting (he’s talking about in-person fits, but it applies to apps even more so):
- Relying on joint angle measurements. You have to judge the motion, not the angles. (What’s worse is MVF only looks at the side, not the front and back, so a lot of important motion is missing)
- Fail to conduct physical assessment. Although MVF does optionally have you do an assessment, it is really simplistic and can’t see any left/right differences.
- Disregarding a leg length discrepancy. Even 2 mm difference usually requires fixing via shims. MVF has no idea if you have a discrepancy and can’t address it.
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