Saddle causing imbalance L/R power and I kinda can't believe it. (A problem I've had for the last 2 years without noticing)

Sooo… Maybe some of you who’ve read my posts on assiomas or other power meters will remember that for the last couple of years, I’ve had a 55% - 45% on most rides. Up until last 2 years, I’ve never encountered this and always had 51/49 or a perfect 50/50.

First I blamed Assiomas. I was surprised because everyone who tries the Assiomas swear by them. I did static test and it was giving perfect numbers. I contacted Favero and they said everything looked perfect on their end.

I just refused to believe until I got a Stages Dual sided. It since crapped out on the right side but when it worked, it agreed 100% with Assiomas.

This is when I accepted that I’m just unbalanced and moved on.

Recently I bought a Giant Propel. It was scheduled to be delivered in September. In anticipation, I bought a top end Cadex Boost saddle to go with it as the bike was gonna be saddle-less on arrival. I installed the Cadex on my Cannondale Supersix to test it out.

Every ride since that install 1 month ago have been 49-51, 50-50, or 51-49 using Assiomas!
Here’s one from yesterday! Just a 1 hour 15 mins ride that resulted in a perfect 50-50. One of many:
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~18 minutes threshold climb portion of it:
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So I kinda can’t believe it but… Saddle was the issue. One thing that should’ve hinted me about this is the fact that whenever I got up off the saddle, my stand up efforts have been 50-50 with that saddle + assiomas reading power.

I actually have a post explaining in that Assioma thread. I would be 5-10 watts off of my wahoo bike with the Assiomas as I’m riding and live comparing. The moment I get up off the saddle, my Assioma would perfectly match my Wahoo Bike watts and read 50-50. I chalked that up to some sort of cadence related issue with Assioma. Or maybe getting up and pushing power with a different angle did something to it to work properly? To be clear, when I had this problem, Wahoo bike had the identical saddle as my road bike.

SO… All in all I don’t think it’s even the specific saddle’s fault. It might work for other people. But it must have been putting pressure on a nerve or something?? It’s bizarre and I’m so happy that this power imbalance issue is resolved for me.

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Not surprised at all. I have exaclty the same, but I mainly noticed at low powers. Around threshold and above it is 51/49 because I believe there is less pressure on the saddle so therefore didnt show up as much. I noticed that I sat differently when riding Z2, 55/45, would not be surprised if this would be less of a thing with a different saddle (although I’m not going to try a load to find out.)

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Surprised this is common!
Mine was kinda always the case low or high power. But I can definitely see how harder efforts would lift you up and give - whatever the problem area - a relief.

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