Baby Puke

.beOk experts, Here's my superman position, critiques welcome. But try to ignore newb-like wobbling and "ice cream pouch".

Saddle is now 2cm forward from the photo posted above, otherwise identical. I was thinking I could maybe lower the bars a smudge until Quinn hurt my feeling with that "closed up hips" remark. Thoughts? Sorry for the hijack,

Quinn8it

I think it looks good!
hip angle looks better than the pic on the track.

i would suggest sliding quite a bit forward on the saddle (get on the rivet!!)
that will tighten up the angle at your elbow and open up the hip angle a bit..

Iirc- you ride the five-gold which is shaped a lot like the Concor? I switched from the Concor to the regal because ithe regal is flatter and doesn't push you into the pocket like the Concor did.. Works for me

Baby Puke

Thanks Quinn. Yeah, it's a Five Gold, but that saddle is not nearly as curved as a Concor, it's just kinda sway-backed, you could say. The Concor has a really pronounced lip at the back. I've never felt good coming forward on the saddle, I prefer to keep my ass bones anchored against the rear of the saddle. Times when I've tried it I just feel disconnected from the bike and it feels like I don;t have any power.

So, lowering the bars would be a no-no? Seems like I have some room there.

carleton

To Quinn's point regarding hip angles: When the hip angle is too narrow, the hip flexors simply stop working. You get no flexing from them.

To illustrate this, get on a trainer and put moderate resistance. Pedal with 1 leg (which requires that you use your hip flexors to bring the pedal over the back-stroke). Now slightly bend forward (closing the hip angle) and keep pedaling. Keep bending over as though you will eventually touch your chin to your bars. There will be a point when you will not be able to bring the pedal up the back of the pedal stroke. You will have closed the hip angle so much that the hip flexors are shortened so much that they cannot flex and help with the pedal stroke. So, there is such a thing as being too low even if you are flexible enough to do so.

The "Superman" position addresses this by allowing the back to be lowered/flattened but moves the saddle forward undoing the closing of the hip.

This is also why road TT nerds like being able to move their saddle way forward because it allows them to lay their back totally flat and still use their hip flexors.

Baby Puke

I'd be interested to see how you're addressing this issue with your new super-back saddle position, Carleton. Care to share a vid/pic? Obviously there's a point where too fore or too aft (or too low, as mentioned) are gonna get counter-productive. Thanks for the comments, guys.

carleton

Bars have to come up. I used to ride with my bars maybe 1-1.5 inches above the tire line. They have come up a bit.

Old pics:




(I didn't do Glamour Shots with my bike. A buddy of mine was in photography school and asked to use it for an assignment)

carleton

More recent, when saddle was still 5cm back:



Compare those to this when I moved my saddle back to maybe 7cm. Bars went up:

Baby Puke

Can we see some with you on the bike? Bike alone is not really telling the story.

This sounds a lot like the type of positioning FGF user Issac has long advocated. Back and high. [Edit: That is, seat back, bars high. Not seat back and high, old school roadie style] His thinking is back produces more torque, while the prevailing thinking is that moving forward you may be able to get more speed, and of course can be lower. Always a balance. His model was the French sprint squad of the late 90's early 00's, Gane, Rousseau, Tournant, Magne. Those guys look pretty far back.

carleton

Sorry, I can't find any pics of me racing/riding from the side. I'll keep looking.

Yup. I always defer to Issac. That dude is like Yoda for track racing! I went and found all of the FGF posts that he made and saved them off to a text file. Pure gold.

Even at the world level, they all don't run super-low bars. Here is Kevin Sireau's rig:



He's taller than most, but his hips are more open that others.

Quinn8it

I'm my eyes- for the Kilo- Power trumps Aero!

i will run my bars slightly higher to be able to fully expand my chest and get as much oxygen in as possible and take a hit aerodynamically..

But I'm a fat boy- so any way you shake it I'm not that aero

carleton

Look at how high Sireau's bars are compared to his teammates' bikes in the backgroud:

Baby Puke

He IS Yoda! I swear he appears from the ether occasionally. Ok, looks like the French are still on a similar tack. Interesting. The Brits look to be a lot more forward, in a way more trad sprinter-style (except for the girly little bars, that is).

Dude, just hop on the rollers and shoot a vid for us! I just did that minutes ago. It's called procrastinating, and it's fun! (Supposed to be writing a paper...). Really, it would be cool if a bunch of people could just post up a bunch of vids of themselves and we can get a real conversation about this going.

I've moved forward of where I've been in recent years and have yet to confirm to myself whether it's better. Actually, when the UCI ruling came down, I had to move back like 1 cm (last year), and when it was just lifted (right? still some debate about this...), I moved it forward 2cm, for a net forward movement of 1 cm from the position I'd gotten used to, and had worked up with Issac.

BTW, a lot of people thought Issac was full of ****...

Baby Puke

Agreed on the power thing. I'll leave my bars where they are for now.

A little while ago Carleton posted a pic of Pete Billington's bike, and that guy had a SUPER low position and mother****er was fast. Of course that was before the 5cm back for sprinters thing came in.

Quinn8it

5cm back is out..

But if you ride inside of 5cm you can't claim a Morph on bar extension limits also... Only one of the two..

carleton

There was a lot of old-school "bro science" on FGF. Remember when narrow bars came out in late 2010? People thought they were a flash-in-the-pan fad. But Hoy had been using narrow steel Nittos for a while before then. Remember the talk about how world level Flying 200M efforts were done at 150+ RPM. A few said that they were lower and were scoffed-at. Then zoomed pics from the Olympics showed up with the power meters showing 135-140RPM at the fastest point in the 200M effort (first dive into turns 1/2). There was also chatter about crank length. 165 for sprinters and 167 for Kilo.

I have excuses
1) I'm at work.
2) I dropped my bike off with the guy that might be building me a new custom frame so he can measure off of it. So, I don't have track bike at hand right now.
3) I could show you pics of me on my spin bike, but there is no front wheel, so no frame of reference to see how high my hands are over the front tire.

Baby Puke

Cool. My extensions are stubby, I'm ok.

This is a major thread hijack.

Baby Puke

Thanks for moving this, Carleton. But maybe we should re-title the thread Track TT Bike Fitting Questions?

carleton

No problem and I updated the title.

sbs z31

Thanks for the new thread Carleton, I'm going to pay close attention to this thread!

Baby Puke

So . . ., nobody else on here is interested in getting some eyes on their position? Don't be shy people, it's the off-season-- the right time to experiment with changes.

Quinn8it

I'll post mine up at some point- it's a new frame, so it will not be perfected for sure

Impreza_aL

i'll record myself falling off the rollers...

Hermes

I will bite. Here is a video from my fit and aero testing session at Velo Sports Center with ERO.

Quinn8it

OK BabyPuke…
lets see if i can take what i dish out!

Disclaimer:
this is the first time i put aero bars on this frame.
i just switched everything over from my Dolan..
So this is truly a fist shot at transferring my Aero Position.

Last year i was on a short TT saddle at -5cm, this year I'm on a Sprint Saddle at -2cm
I had to pull my extensions back to be UCI compliant, and i switched to straight bars from "r" bars and shortened the stem..

Hermes

Quinn, considering you are at the UCI limit, that looks good. If you have the hip flexibility, you could decrease your back angle and lower your head since you seem to have enough thigh chest separation. The worst aero shape is a round object. Even with a helmet, your head is in the wind. To get a lower CdA with the same position, you could practice turtling your head which means you lower your neck with your head in the same position.